Survey on Media Development and Communications for Development
08.03.10
Development programmes deal with media in two ways. One—media development—has media as the primary focus. Donors fund programmes with the aim of improving the situation of media organisations, journalists or bloggers – often through training, or media law reform, or technology support. The assumption is that programmes building free, independent, pluralistic media help ensure freedom of expression, foster democracy, and contribute to the area’s economic and social development. The second category of programmes is communication and information campaigns undertaken as part of a development programme – public health, anti-poverty or agriculture development, for instance. A programme that aims to improve the health of mothers, for example, would make use of media to pass on messages to mothers on how to reduce health risks after birth, what services clinics provide, or general hygiene tips. Strengthening independent media is not the direct goal; instead, media are conduits for information.
The GFMD survey is in response to growing comments from donors that the successes of such communication and information campaigns are short term, that they don’t last. Donors note that they do see direct results during the campaigns, but that those tend to stop when the campaigns end.
So, there is a move to recognise media as a player in development beyond just a communication tool. This approach moves away from looking at media – from national television to citizen journalism Web sites – as a one-way conduit of information to citizens. It sees media playing a bigger role, including relaying back from the public their demands for quality services from local and national governments, and for engagement in democratic debate.
One example is an agriculture development project that takes place in several African countries and is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It gathers relevant agricultural research from government and other agencies, and it trains community radio to produce reports based on this collected data. It also encourages communities to use the information, and it closes the loop by helping organise community feedback into radio programming. The project is new and experimental, but it illustrates how media can go beyond carrying information to being a platform for debate within a community and feedback from a community to government.
Some early responses to the GFMD survey don’t fully support this new approach. Several media development NGOs said that they are not sure whether this linking of media and communication campaigns makes sense in their countries A respondent from Pakistan pointed out that media in his country are changing fast, and that they are politically divided and suffer from lack of professional skills and space. Without first creating conditions for free and independent media and building the professional capacity of the media sector, creating links between media development and general development programmess may not work. Building the media should be a priority.
But the GFMD also received some positive replies, including one from a small media non-governmental organization (NGO) in Zambia. That respondent suggested media should make development information a part of their editorial and business strategy, and that media outlets could specialise in areas of development information and work with NGOs, government and donors to build longer-term programmes.
The GFMD survey is on going and we need more replies to assess the value of the model. The deadline is the end of March. You can reply to the online questionnaire by going to the following link: http://gfmd.wufoo.com/forms/media-for-development-media-development.