Development is meant to alleviate problems in the interests of the public good, yet the growing dominance of private donors problematizes this conceptualization. Working through a political-economic analysis of development, we see global communications as an industry that channels wealth from citizens into the hands of few corporate moguls, who then have the resources to assert their agendas in a global development context. We begin by conceptualizing development and social change within communication studies, paying attention to the privatization of aid within global capitalism. Next, we contextualize our case study, describing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and ONE, promoted by Bono, as the funding and management settings of the Living Proof campaign. We analyze the initiative's construction of development problems, its articulation of how communication is expected to work toward social change, and its conceptualizations of success. The dominant theme of Living Proof program is that "real people" have achieved development success, which can be shared as "proof" with website consumers. We conclude by considering how such a framing serves the agenda of privatized development within a neoliberal project.
AbstractIn the development communication equation, whether more theoretical, empirical and analytical attention is given to ‘development’ or to ‘communication’ makes a difference: where the emphasis is on development, it is at the expense of communication. Since communication and media arguably play an increasingly pervasive role in the everyday life of citizens and in the politics, economies and governance of most societies, the characteristics and role of specific forms of applied communication strategies in the context of the neoliberal project merit critical scrutiny. Given a complex global scenario, what can a political economy approach bring into an agenda for the future of development communication as a field of study, a practice and an institutional project? This article outlines ways in which a focus on political economy dimensions may contribute to understanding the obstacles and limits to a transformative practice of international development communication.
Este artículo examina las prácticas de circulación de la producción teórica en el campo de estudios de la comunicación y los medios en la actual fase de internacionalización, y revisa las relaciones problemáticas entre Sur y Norte. En base a la revisión crítica del proceso de edición de un número especial de una revista prestigiosa del campo disciplinar producida en inglés, reflexionamos acerca de los límites estructurales que influyen en la peculiar presencia y ausencia de producciones latinoamericanas e hilvanamos un conjunto de lecciones sobre los (des)encuentros entre el sistema de publicaciones científicas angloparlante y los estudios latinoamericanos, y los desafíos que estos implican para la internacionalización de los estudios de comunicación.
Mobilizing communication globally: for what and for whom? This question 2 motivated this special issue of Nordicom Review, grounded in a concern over the future of communication for development as a field of theorization and research tightly linked to practice the world over (Wilkins 2008 andEnghel 2011).Communication for development (Servaes 1999(Servaes , 2002(Servaes , 2007, also known as development communication (Wilkins 2008) and communication for social change (Gumucio-Dagron and Tufte 2006), has a well-documented history. Over time, critical approaches to the field have called attention to important issues, e.g. the implicit power dynamics at play in the development industry (Wilkins 2000); the relevance of scholarship on social movements for participatory communication research (Huesca 2001); the need to address conditions of absolute poverty in communication interventions (Thomas 2002); and the shift towards technological solutions in a context of increasing inequality (Chakravartty 2009). Dialogic, participatory and democratic approaches to strategic communication have been studied for years -see e.g.
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