Building Government Communication Capacity in a Time of Narrative Power Shifts

Debate about how the current information-abundant communication environment is impacting global politics has long entered the circles of communication practitioners and academics. However, findings remain mixed. Optimists argue that new information and communication technologies (ICTs) – mobile phones, commercially available satellite imagery, and, of course, the Internet – have fundamentally changed the power relationship between state and non-state actors such as NGOs, transnational advocacy networks, and citizens. Information is now available to various political actors at low cost, thus breaking the information monopoly of the nation-state. In turn, non-state actors gain in narrative power, understood as the capacity to generate, manage, and distribute information to the public. They increasingly have the ability to focus attention on problems state actors are either too weak or too unwilling to address, and thus command a power asset of growing importance in a world dominated by a kaleidoskopic 24/7 flow of images and content. New ICTs are therefore understood as a 'game changer' redistributing narrative capacities between state and non-state actors. In terms of governance this development is seen to have boosted the 'good guys' acting on the basis of 'moral judgment' rather than the power calculation of nation-states.

Skeptics, in contrast, maintain that state actors have become ever more adept and resourceful at using new ITCs to their end. The effective filtering and blocking of Internet sites shows that the web is not quite the untamed and unchecked information distribution system it is often assumed to be. In addition, political communication scholarship continues to produce evidence that state officials usually still command the attention of the broadcast media and therefore are capable of reaching a mass audience. Skeptics also take a dim view on the brave new world of good governance heralded by optimists. Rather, they point to the inherent tensions between narrow non-state advocacy agendas and broader governance responsibilities, as well as the potential over-burdening of the nation-state with demands on the part of NGOs.

This discussion suggests that the assumed shift in narrative power does not occurr unconditionally. While NGOs and other non-state actors gain ground in the narrative power game, state actors retain significant narrative capacity. In addition, shifts in narrative capacities are not necessarily zero-sum games. Often, state and non-state actors engage each other in discussing issues, in particular in transnational issue domains. State and non-state actors thus face communication constraints and opportunities depending on where information generates, which issue domain is concerned, as well as how and to whom information is distributed.

The question of how this affects aspects and processes of governance remains salient nonetheless. This is especially true for post-conflict and transitional societies. Here governments often display a severe lack of communication capabilities. Communication institutions are underdeveloped or destroyed. In addition, governments in some cases lack the capacity or willingness to engage in two-way communication efforts and thus inhibit the formation of a public sphere that allows for deliberation and accountability processes. Especially in post conflict societies, NGOs tend to be major political players, generating information about the needs and preferences of the population and sometimes even assuming governance responsibilities in the place of state actors. While these are major and important responsibilities, often the various communication flows between NGOs on the one hand and between NGOs and state actors on the other hand are not coordinated. State actors may thus be further overpowered by a cacophony of voices or prove not to be open to incentives to changing their communication behavior and to making it more transparent and accountable.

Especially in post-conflict and transitional societies the challenge and opportunity will therefore be to find ways in which thriving narrative power on the part of the NGO community may be brought into the service of building accountable communication capacities on the part of nascent or transitioning governments. The promises of transparency and the hopes connected to the ensuing power shifts between state and non-state actors notwithstanding, weak states with weak communication capacities can certainly not be an objective in this context. Democratically elected governments are still the ligitimate representatives of their population, to which NGOs are not in the same way accountable. Sorting out narrative power distributions between state and non-state actors in post-conflict societies and connecting this to the task of developing accountable government communication capacities will therefore be a growing and ongoing challenge at hand.

Photo credit: Flickr user Steve Rhodes