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Communication Theory

#7 from 2012: Knowledge Management is Not Mere Dissemination

Our Top Ten Blog Posts by Readership in 2012

Originally published on April 3, 2012
 

Knowledge, or the lack of, is often associated with the success or failure of development initiatives. For decades, communication’s main role was to fill the knowledge gap between what audiences knew and what they needed to know, with the assumption that this would induce change. We now know that this is seldom the case. In the modernization paradigm, media were expected to provide needed knowledge through messages that could fill knowledge gaps, build modern attitudes, and eventually shape behaviours. After years of under-delivering on their promises, development managers and decision-makers are increasingly realizing that it is not enough to have sound technical solutions and disseminate information in order to have audiences adopt the innovations.

Is There a Global Public Sphere?

Sina Odugbemi's picture

One of the ways in which the world we live in today feels very different from the one we lived in even a decade ago is how ‘connected’ we all feel these days. It does seem that there are issues that we all talk about, personages and celebrities that we all know, and technological means of information sharing and exchange that we all share.  Yet, can we say that one of the consequences of globalization is that we now have a global public sphere, especially now that Fareed Zakaria of CNN calls his talk show ‘The Global Public Square’?

You will recall that a public sphere is a metaphor for a space that still exists in some contexts: the village square, the town hall… a place where people come together to talk about common concerns, a process that leads to the crystallization of public opinion.  Beyond the level of the village or the small town --- situations where most inhabitants can conceivably gather and talk – the public sphere becomes a grand metaphor, but a useful one. As Denis McQuail asserts in his classic text on communication theory, in most national contests today the ‘media are now probably the key institution of the public sphere, and its “quality” will depend on the quality of the media’. [See McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory, Fifth Edition, page 566.]

Why Sound Technical Solutions Are Not Enough: Part I

Recently I was invited to hold the XI Raushni Deshpande Oration at the Lady Irwin College in New Delhi, India. This blog is a summary and a reflection of that presentation. As it can be inferred from the title, the focus is on why so many development initiatives have failed in the past and many are still failing in the present. Why after all these years, after all the money poured in, all the construction being made and all the resources dedicated to address this issue, are latrines still not being used in many places? Or they are used but not for the intended purpose? And why are bed nets aimed at preventing malaria adopted even when they are easily available? And many more ‘why’s’ such as these could be added to the list.