Post-Conflict

In my last blog post I wrote about the dangers of biased communication to a fair and level political playing field. In Western media systems the political polarization of media reporting (I hesitate to call it "news") is a somewhat recent phenomenon, but it's stark reality in countries where the media is owned by the government or a few influential political factions. Biased communication is not only problematic with regards to misinformation of the public.

In fragile states in particular biased communication can keep conflict alive, stir up unrest among the population, and endanger the formation of one unified idea of a nation. In fragile and post-conflict countries, communication, including the mass media, should ideally contribute to restoring a shared national identity and strengthen citizens' loyalty to their country. But consider the case of, for instance, Iraq: Ownership of private media is in the hands of competing political and ethnic factions. Their respective broadcasts reflect conflicting agendas, potentially widening the gap between Iraq’s communities, weakening a sense of national belonging and furthering the development of competing identities along sectarian lines, setting the country on a course of partition.

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.

Communication is - sadly - not at the core of most development work. At CommGAP we often hear: we need to strengthen the economy first. We need to stabilize the country first. We need to ensure the delivery of public services first. We can think about building an independent media system later, but first we must make sure the people don't starve, or die in conflicts, or are supressed by their governments. Yes - and no. Of course these are the main objectives of development work. But communication mediated through a free and independent media is an important but underutilized component of peacebuilding efforts, of nation building, of economic aid.

CommGAP's work on a toolkit for media development continues - last week our round table of experts, led by Shanthi Kalathil, met again. This time the discussion focused on how to make development projects economically sustainable. Well - or not. Participants agreed that sometimes such projects aren't supposed to be sustainable. In conflict situations, for example, donors may want to establish a short term project that is only active during the conflict.