1. Changing Conceptions of
Development and Changing Roles of
the Media
Some preliminary thoughts
IDSC08 2013

2. Some Key Questions
• What are some common assumptions about the
roles of the media in society?
▫ What were the assumed relationship between Media
and Communication?
• What role did Media play in early development
thinking?
▫ Media mirror development?
▫ Media drive development?
• Did change in Media Production change the way we
think about Development?
▫ From “main stream” to “new” media

3. http://tedxutsc.com/

4. Remembering Aaron Swartz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

5. What is Development?
• Economic growth?
• Good governance?
• Equality?
• Social Justice?
• Happiness?
• Sustainability?

6. What are the functions of Media?
• Public Service?
• To inform?
• To educate?
• To propagandize?
• To entertain?
• Social control?
• Culture?

7. “The 20th century has been characterized by three
developments of great political importance: the growth
of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and
the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of
protecting corporate power against democracy.”
Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the
Mass Media, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky,
1988

8. http://nwothesis.blogspot.ca/2011/04/military-industrial-complex-in-5.html

9. http://www.21stcentech.com/human-prospects-arrive-2013/military-industrial-complex/

12. • Media Concentration – Global Oligopology
▫ Transnational ownership
▫ Acquisition of local outlets

13. Why media concentration?
• Media Logic and the Free Market Capitalism
• Media ownership and funding sources
• Government policies and citizens roles

14. Media and Development:
Paradigms and Assumptions

15. Paradigms of Development
Modernization Dependences
▫ Western societies as a model World systems perspective –
– emphasis on economic development defined in terms of
growth center and periphery
▫ Causes of Underdevelopment ascribed to the
underdevelopment inherent industrialized capitalist powers of the
in the countries themselves West
Information gaps – underdevelopment
▫ Focus on the nation-state
in the periphery is prerequisite to
development in the center
▫ Emphasis on individual
freedoms A country in the periphery must strive
for self-reliance and liberation from
▫ Vertical pattern of the world system
communication – from the
elite to the people. Emphasis on social equality.

16. Paradigms of Development
Modernization Dependences
▫ Western societies as a model World systems perspective –
– emphasis on economic development defined in terms of
growth center and periphery
▫ Causes of Underdevelopment ascribed to the
underdevelopment inherent The mass media
industrialized capitalist powers of the
in the countries themselves West
reinforce the
Information gaps – underdevelopment
▫ Focus on the nation-state dominance of the
Mass media in the periphery is prerequisite to
accorded a
▫ Emphasis on individual metropole over its
development in the center
freedoms central role in satellites
A country in the periphery must strive
the development
▫ Vertical pattern of
for self-reliance and liberation from
the world system
communication – from the
process
elite to the people. Emphasis on social equality.

17. Criticisms of media and development
• Growing media concentration, ownership and
content
• the hypodermic-needle model of media effects
• the need for social-structural changes
• shortcomings of the classical diffusion-of-
innovations model
• Limited effects of mass media
• Lack of study or methodologies

18. • "American communication research has grown
up in an atmosphere of behaviorism and
operationalism, which has made it correct in
technical methodology but poor in conceptual
productivity.” Nordenstreng (1968)

19. Media as…
• Tool for development
• “Mobility multipliers” (Mass Media and
National Development, Schramm 1964)
• “diffusers of innovations” (E M Rogers, 1962,
1976, 1983)
• “Network”

20. • Early warnings on the
limits of growth and
environmental
consequences
• Attributions of
“underdevelopment”
First published in 1972

21. • "It is capitalism, world and national, which
produced under- development in the past and
still generates underdevelopment in the present"
(Andre Gunder Frank, 1971:1).
• Multiple pathways to development

22. Everett Rogers
• “development as a widely participatory process
of social change in a society, intended to bring
about both social and material advancement
(including greater equality, freedom, and other
valued qualities) for the majority of the people
through their gaining greater control over their
environment” (Rogers, 1975)
Refer to assigned reading

23. Everett Rogers
• Diffusion of Innovations and Development
• field experiments and network analysis
• communication effects gaps and audience
participation
• Diffusion is uneven
• Local innovation and local problem solving

24. • “what is really new about communication
technology is not the technology per se as much
as the social technology of how the new
communication devices are organized and used.”
(1976: 34)
• Importance of interpersonal network in
knowledge transmission (not through “opinion
leaders”)

25. • 4 main elements that influence the spread of a
new idea:
▫ the innovation, communication channels,
time, and a social system.
• Diffusion is the process by which an innovation
is communicated through certain channels over
time among the members of a social system.
• Innovations progress through 5 stages:
knowledge, persuasion, decision,
implementation, and confirmation."

27. Emergence of the Participatory
Paradigm

28. Post-war paradigm
• “free flow of information” – meanings and
assumptions
• But how is this different from the “participatory”
approach?

29. • Development assistance, technology and
skills transfer
• Research, fact finding and dissemination
• Norm setting, principles and declarations

30. The McBride Commission Report (1985)
• Self-reliance and cultural identity
• international character of the media, their
structures, world-views and markets
• Globalization: concentration of media
ownership, monopolization of markets, and a
decline in diversity
• Emergence of the information society

31. The New World Information
Communication Order (NWICO)
• The Four “Ds”
▫ Democratization
▫ Decolonization
▫ Demonopolization
▫ Development