"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
THEN THEY CAME for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
THEN THEY CAME for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
THEN THEY CAME for me and by that time no one was left to speak up."
In partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), CommGAP is launching a new publication entitled “Building Public Support for Anti-Corruption Efforts: Why Anti-Corruption Agencies Need to Communicate and How.” The need for this guide became apparent at a learning event organized by CommGAP and UNODC in November 2008. The workshop participants – anti-corruption agencies, government officials, senior practitioners and academics – agreed that the media plays a crucial part in their work by influencing public perception of corruption and building public support for their efforts. However, the question of how to establish good working relationships with the media was of deep concern.
Visual representations of the poor have the power to evoke visceral reactions which can be harnessed toward positive development outcomes. At the same time, those who use these images run the risk of exploiting the very same people whom they seek to help.
A comment to a previous post on this topic captures the trade-off rather well:
"… human strife is whittled down to a spectacle that often furthers cultural and economic divides when they should be bridging them. However, as visual representations can be an extremely effective way of communicating, we really cannot do away with them… one can only approximate the ideal of a just and compelling representation."
Imagine you are crossing the street in any major city. The light turns red and you're instructed by a flashing light, perhaps a police officer, to halt and allow for the flow of car traffic. Perhaps you look both ways, see nothing coming, and decide to walk anyway. Your actions are acceptable in most areas of the world but the public response to your seemingly acceptable behavior is unique. After landing on the other side of the road you are chased down by mimes, mocked mercilessly, people around you join in the mocking and hold up thumbs down signs while pointing out stars on the ground where pedestrians, like you, have died. No this is not a nightmare or a flash mob, this is just one technique in your communication tool kit that can be used to engage the larger public in community behavior adjustments. This particular public mocking/service campaign was the brainchild of the former Mayor of Bogotá, Colombia.
There is a common perception held by some that the dominating framework of social development practice is a community and that framework does not often extend beyond a certain group or a locality to include districts, provinces and other tiers of government. There is evidence, however, that social development can instigate structural changes and devolution of power by mobilizing a community to build associations and exercise their agency to influence broader national goals and policies. To illustrate this point, I want to begin with the evolution of self-help groups that are prevalent in India and Nepal.
Access is the big topic when people discuss ICT on this blog. The digital divide is still the biggest obstacle for using ICT in development effectively. The access issue has more than one side: It's not only about access to the technology, it's also about access to content that feeds into the technology.
Stereotypical images of the developing world include overpopulated and underserved urban slums, backward agricultural and fishing communities, environmental abuse and degradation, and political and social instability. Although many of these portrayals are most certainly products of serious photojournalism or efforts to render explicit social ills around the world, numerous warnings have been issued against perpetuating these pictures in our heads and using them in development work, more generally.
News broadcasts, documentaries, and more recently, social media, often reduce developing countries into images of shanty towns, garbage dumps, denuded forests, dead coral reefs, and of course, people who have been beaten or killed through military and police brutality. Charitable fundraising efforts also use evocative images, from children suffering from cleft lip to those with distended bellies. Many have argued that these images take advantage of the poor and downtrodden, reify exclusion of subaltern groups, and raise awareness (and funds!) at the high cost of damaging the development process.
A few weeks I had a chance to return to Nicaragua for a brief visit. The Fundacion Chamorro invited me to talk about the role of the state in processes of media reform. As usual, I learned a great deal by talking to old colleagues and new friends about ongoing efforts to strengthen media democracy in the country.
What’s going on in contemporary Nicaragua shows the potential of smart media aid to be effective, if it dovetails with local needs and promotes wide-ranging efforts. It’s not just what donors think is important. It is what local activists with vast experience believe is necessary (and Nicaragua, to put it mildly, does have substantive experience with reform). It’s not simply about targeting one set of challenges. It is taking a broad, multilevel perspective on the challenges of media systems.
Last week, the field of communication lost one of its most eminent figures, Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, who died on March 25 at the age of 93. A German public opinion scholar, Noelle-Neumann has had a powerful influence on the study of public opinion and political communication worldwide. Her most notable contribution, the theory of the Spiral of Silence, has made a lasting impression on the field.
If there is one historical personage that all finance ministers – or treasury secretaries – need to know, he is Jacques Necker (1732-1804). He was the finance minister of France in the 1780s. He was credited with popularizing the phrase ‘public opinion’ (opinion publique). What was his central insight? He noticed that the attitude of the French public to the king of France determined whether or not they purchased the treasury bills issued from time to time by the king. It they had a favorable opinion of the king they bought his bills; if not, they did not buy his bills. In other words, the financial health of the kingdom and the power of the king depended on opinion publique.
Necker pointed out that the same was true of the finance minister. He was clear that the finance minister ‘stands in most need of the good opinion of the people.’ He pointed out that fiscal policies needed to be pursued with ‘frankness and publicity,’ and that the finance minister must ‘associate the nation’ with his plans, including the obstacles he had to surmount. Necker practiced what he preached, launching a systematic management of public opinion. In 1792, he declared:
