2.1.3 THE STRATEGIES OF DEVELOPMENT COMMUNICATION

By analysing these definitions, we can arrive at three main strategies of development communication, namely the mass media, the popular media — also referred to jointly as the diffusion method [Morris, 2003:225] — and the participatory method that involves face-to-face communication. Here is a brief discussion on them to help us understand their advantages and disadvantages.


1) The mass media is one of the best strategies of propaganda and gradual persuasion. Deriving from a cognitive-neoassociationistic perspective [Anderson & Bower, 1973; Landman & Manis, 1983; as quoted by Bryant and Zillmann, 1994: 45], we can say that when people watch, read or hear about an event through the mass media, similar ideas are activated in them which “in turn can activate other semantically related ideas and actions” [Ibid]. In that sense, the potential of the mass media is immense.

As such, every year millions of resources are spent on campaigns to change attitudes of people in the desired direction – the issues could be as varied as political candidates and consumer products to health and safety practices, and charitable causes. The ultimate aim is to influence people’s behaviour so that they will vote for certain politicians or referenda, purchase specific goods, engage in safer eating and sexual activities, and donate money to various religious, environmental and educational organisations and institutions [Ibid: 91].

This can again be achieved in two ways: firstly, through widespread propaganda which has a direct effect on the attitude and behaviour of the recipients. But, very few social scientists today will credit mass media with such persuasive powers, even though the technological advances in the last few years have been unprecedented. This is because the audience has also become more discerning than ever before. So, the other way of achieving it is through the indirect method where the media influences the opinion leaders who in turn mingle with the masses to bring about changes in their behaviour [Ibid: 92].

McQuail [2000: 432-433] has come up with four models of influence: information processing, conditioning or associational, functional, and relational. The relational model focuses on the relationship between the sender and the receiver of the message, which is basically governed by power. The two must cooperate in this power relationship if influence is to succeed. People tend to reject power, so there must be sufficient motivation to cooperate.

Kelman suggests three basic processes of influence: compliance, identification and internalisation. He also emphasises that this relational model of influence is not power-oriented. However, McQuail feels that it’s the persuader’s task to convince the persuadee that acquisition of some product or behaviour can earn him social approval and acceptance. In this sense, a power relationship does seem to exist. And, it is a fact that the mass media, through commercials and popular programmes, tends to establish this kind of relationship with its audience [Ibid and Reardon, 1991: 176-7].

To achieve identification and subsequent compliance, here’s an interesting observation by Burnkrant and Unnava [1989, as quoted by Bryant and Zillmann, 1994: 103]. They found a message that frames its pronouns in the second person (for example, ‘you’) and not in the third person (that is, ‘one’ or ‘he’ and ‘she’), is more efficient in increasing personal involvement and processing of the information conveyed. And, this is the only way mass media can bring about enduring changes in attitudes and behaviours of the recipients. Here, Bryant and Zillmann [Ibid: 102] mentions the concept of “perceived personal relevance of the communication” which enhances interest and consequent internalisation of the media message.

However, there are certain drawbacks to the mass media as a tool of propaganda and persuasion. It is commonly believed that since the same programmes are available to all the people in the country at the same time, similar experiences are interpreted in similar ways by the audience. Reardon [1991: 172], in fact, considers the watching of television to be “one of the few social influence processes that appears to lend itself neatly to cause-effect explanations”. But, this assumption could be erroneous, in the sense that the reception power of the audience might vary with age and upbringing.

It reminds one of the famous saying that you can take a horse near the water, but you cannot make it drink. Similarly, one can persuade a person to watch/ hear a particular programme, but it is not always possible to motivate him to think about the message conveyed. This is because the recipient might consider the information to be irrelevant and react unfavourably or just discard it. Even if there are apparent attitudinal changes, they might be based on superficial interpretation of the messages as opposed to elaborate processing of the message. Another reason could be that the person concerned lacks necessary skills to translate the internalised attitudes into actions because of certain social constraints.

But the most important note of caution is that although the mass media can respond to the needs of the people, at the end of the day they are money-making enterprises selling what gets them revenue. As such, their messages are seldom accepted uncritically by the discerning audience.


2) Comprising basically performing arts, the popular media is an important tool for communication in support of development. It engages in the strategy of blatant propaganda and persuasion that the concerned recipients can relate to more easily than that of the mass media.

In the last few decades, a special type of popular theatre has developed called ‘theatre for development’ wherein the workshop participants are not only trained in dramatisation but also in basic sociological techniques. “This enables them to draw up an inventory of local community problems. In each play, one problem theme is explored by and for the local community” [Boeren and Epskamp, 1992: 8].

To respond to the need for development, performing arts are used for disseminating information on government ideology and programmes, as also convincing people to accept the ideas of modernisation. In the rural areas, it is used as a participatory and confidence-building tool that not only teaches the latest technology to the farmers, but also makes them literate and promotes community education [Ibid: 112].

These campaigns can either be (a) mobile in which the government hires professional troupes to tour as many villages as possible to publicise “government ideology and development programmes”. They operate on massive scales. For example, the Indian song-and-drama troupes are estimated to give 20,000 performances a year. (b) There can be another type of campaign for mobilisation. In this, large numbers of locally-based theatre troupes are encouraged to enact plays in their own areas “on national development policies or programmes” [Ibid: 113].

Besides the programmes on government initiatives that operate within a conventional framework, there is another category of “change-oriented theatre” that performs on non-governmental initiatives. These groups “aim at contributing to a process of structural transformation by movements of agricultural labourers, marginal farmers, migrant workers, urban squatters, and other marginalised groups”. Here, the popular media helps to educate and organise the deprived population to defend themselves against victimization and gradually transform the existing power structure [Ibid: 118].

Therefore, it seems, the efficacy of the popular media is theoretically more pronounced than that of the mass media. This is because the theatre groups engaging in impromptu street plays and road shows, reach a more targeted audience with a specific message. Moreover, they have no profit-making motives and that make their strategies more objective. However, this strategy may suffer from the same limitation of motivating the audience to process and internalise the message conveyed. Whatever changes in attitude might be evident could be superficial and temporary. Besides, as Boeren puts it [Ibid: 49], popular theatre comprises an expensive affair involving a group of people over a considerable period of time. So, the campaign costs are often too prohibitive to adopt. Again, although the actors use local idioms in the play, theatre for development does amount to external intervention and the benefits of the message conveyed, seldom reach the marginal sections of the society.


3) Participatory communication has been defined as a process that “solicits the involvement of the people to shape their own development, addressing the problems they have identified and providing solutions that are feasible to them” [Boeren and Epskamp, 1992: 57].

This strategy was born in reaction to the deliberate modernisation propagated by the developed West. As Uphoff [1985; as quoted by Yoon in http://www. southbound.com.my/communication/parcom.htm] puts it, there are four ways in which participation can be ensured in a communication campaign.

Firstly, through participation in implementation where people are encouraged to take up certain responsibilities and are required to contribute specific resources. Secondly, through participation in evaluation when upon completion of the project, the target population is asked to critically analyse its success and failure. Thirdly, they can participate in the benefits of the project; for example, by drawing drinking-water from the hand-pump. Fourthly, by participating in the decision-making, whereby people plan the activities that they will do as a community and discuss the pros and cons of a particular project. For example, the target group could decide whether to construct a school building or not.

While some development campaigns provide people with all these opportunities, others restrict it to one or two ways. It is argued that participation in decision-making is the most important form to promote as it gives people an opportunity to control their lives and environment, along with acquiring problem-solving skills. The other three forms of participation are considered to encourage pseudo-participation as people can easily be manipulated to accept plans made by other more powerful people. But there are others who argue that these three ways allow people “to build-up capacity to participate in decision-making”. They feel that “prematurely mobilizing people to make their own decisions and chart their own development can put the people at risk of conflict with powerful interests and jeopardize their safety” [Ibid]. Another reason put forth by some Asian countries against the Western concept of people’s participation, is that the target population should be educated before they are allowed to take decisions from a diversity of views. Otherwise, they might find it difficult to come to a consensus and it could lead to a conflict situation.

As such, participatory communication cannot be regarded as a “panacea for development” [Ibid]; they are not always suitable for solving all problems in all situations. It can be considered to be the best strategy that has the potential to involve people to pursue their aspirations, but it has limited influence on people’s commitment because whether people want to or can participate in developmental projects depend solely on the situations they live in. For example, a mother with a terminally ill child cannot be expected to take interest in such projects.

Although the participatory strategy is a bottom-up approach that makes people self-reliant, it also presupposes that the rural population cooperates with each other to pursue their common interest. But, in reality, it often leads to total chaos and conflict due to a lack of consensus in decision-making. This democratic dilemma brings us to Jurgen Habermas’ concepts of the ‘public sphere’ and the ‘ideal speech’. As Escobar [1995; as quoted by Jacobson and Storey, 2004: 101] points out: the universalism of these concepts “under-emphasizes the plurality of human experience and applauds as social progress the abandonment of tradition in the Third World”.

The communicative action that takes place in an “ideal speech situation”, assumes that all participants contribute to the discussion equally [Habermas, as quoted in Ibid: 103]. Yet, in reality, it is the one who argues better persuades the rest; and, a logical argument can involve deception. This theory can also be applied to cultural change and loss of identity — the potential outcomes of the participatory method of communication.

Again, the concepts of "participation" and "manipulation" can be interpreted from many perspectives. An interventionist, who attempts to impose his own decisions on the target population, also brings with him a whole set of “alien cultural premises”. On the other hand, the communicator of the message may enter a village with a particular “picture of reality and set of values” in mind. And, he might even expect the people to see their plight in just the same way as he or she sees it. This can be interpreted as manipulation as well.

Another drawback that is often overlooked is the price that people have to pay for taking part in participatory processes. “It is often assumed that the villager has nothing better to do with his or her time. For every hour spent ‘participating’ there is an opportunity cost; that is, the fact that the villager may be foregoing more productive activity if the participatory process does not lead to benefits, either in the long or short term” [Ibid].

The greatest drawback of this strategy is, perhaps, the fact that the communicator is totally alien to the conditions of the target population. Doing a research on a certain community from afar and spending a few months with them does not ensure a proper understanding of the living conditions and culture of the people. As such, the best way of going about with this strategy is to allow the villagers to take fundamental decisions, with the role of the communicator being that of a guide who steers them away from conflicting situations and motivating them to maintain their long-term commitments towards the project at hand.