Communication for Development: Looking Backward, Looking Forward
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
12-1-2020
Publisher
Springer
Abstract
The chapter will relay partly on the author’s fifty years working in international communication research and development communication and a review of the history of the latter field. In Section One he recounts his early training and experience in working on three large field project over the course of his work at Stanford and later at the University of Texas at Austin. These large projects in communication for development and social change were possible with funding available during the period of about thirty years (from mid-1960s), but is no longer available as sources have changed. The current focus is less for outside planners and more for indigenous researchers and planners. Section Two addresses the history of the beginnings of both the official field of communication study in universities as well as development communication applications from the late 1940s to the late 1970s. The figure of Wilbur Schramm was associated with the first graduate program in communication at the University of Illinois in 1947 while UNESCO promoted communication media for change in their member countries from the early 1950s. Later in 1960 Schramm helped to report on countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America planning on their uses of communication media for national development. The MacBride Report in 1980 began to show the cracks in the first paradigm of development communication that lead to more critical study of both communication and development. Section Three addresses the United Nations Millennium Development Goals after 2000. It reviews the major project that Jeffrey Sachs led between 2005–2015 with the different reactions to its success. It introduces the discussion of economists as to the value of large projects and small and suggests that the Noble Laureats in economics for 2019 have found ways to use smaller projects with greater effect. The author shows how one university center has tried to help smaller social startups in developing areas succeed. Section Four provides three examples from the previous section for analysis. Section Five discusses how innovative ideas for small communication for development projects might engage local university faculty and students in their field work.
Chapter of
Learning from Communicators in Social Change
Part of
Communication, Culture and Change in Asia
Editor
Jan Servaes
Recommended Citation
McAnany, E. G. (2021). Communication for Development: Looking Backward, Looking Forward. In J. Servaes (Ed.), Learning from Communicators in Social Change: Rethinking the Power of Development (pp. 33–48). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8281-3_4
