The US civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the ecological movement and the anti-tobacco movement all provide striking examples of rapidly increased awareness of rights and the possibility to bring about change through collective action.

These changes would never have happened without people communicating with each other, exchanging information, engaging with new knowledge.

But development communication can be difficult to define, and social movements have a different political agenda to non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Warren outlined a continuum from participatory communication within local development projects to work with the mass media and journalists.

The MDGs are here to stay

Within the development field it has been difficult to answer the bottom-line question the MDGs pose: what impact does development communication have on people living in poverty?

The MDGs make up the “landscape on which we are walking”, said Warren. Every major bilateral agency or UN agency is focusing on the MDGs for their policy and funding strategies. So people working in development communication must engage with the MDGs.

Despite a mismatch between the MDGs and development communication, Warren insisted that it is possible to answer questions of impact: “We have a lot of data that we don’t utilise,” he said.

Action

Warren outlined five areas of action that would enable a better match between development communication and the MDGs:

Identify and accelerate communication that enables people to hold governments accountable.
Return to basic information and use simple, culturally appropriate ways to get that information out.
Use technology strategically to connect people.
Enable collective analysis and action by the people most affected by a development problem.
Harness existing communication processes rather than seeing them as a tool to deliver a message.

Using the data

We need to move beyond the idea that communication is impossible to measure. Evidence to demonstrate the impact of development communication exists and can be improved, insisted Warren.

Independent studies, appropriate methodologies, turning grey literature into articles for the bigger peer-reviewed journals: these will make a real difference.

Looking at the bigger picture and ensuring a balance of evidence between the different areas of development will also help. For example there is more evidence on the impact of communication on health than on gender equality and education. And evidence on governance is just starting to come through.

Synthesis of existing evidence is also necessary in order to represent the body of literature rather than the body of experience.

Warren went through the eight MDGs and pulled out evidence on the impact of communication from articles published in international peer-reviewed journals (see MDGs impact section of CI website).

Still a mismatch?

However, differences between development communication and the MDGs are still obvious:

MDGs	Development communication
Centrally decided agenda	Agenda decided by people affected
Experts shape and manage action	People shape and manage activities
Universal and technical approach	Values, politics and experiences are central
Artificial timeframe that emphasises short-term action	Emphasis on social complexity and long-term goals
Present themselves as neutral to context and culture	Sensitive to culture and context
Non-political	Political

It is counter-intuitive to imagine anti-apartheid action or the women’s movement organised around something like an MDG.

But a root strategy of improving evidence on the impact of development communication is an essential step to taking both policy and practice forward and making a difference to people living in poverty.

Key points from discussion

Collaborating more on evaluation that emphasises collective analysis is a way to pool resources in the development field.
Communication needs to be built into a programme or project at the start.
It is particularly difficult to research and measure the impact of technology as a connector but evidence of the important role of dialogue and discussion is growing. For example in the Soul City 4 evaluation people having a discussion about safer sex had the most impact on behaviour change.
Developing a methodology needs to be seen as research in itself - resources are needed to do impact stuides and design appropriate methodologies.
It is interesting to link learning and governance. When we communicate research it is more often than not to policy level but if we want to empower people to hold their governments accountable, we should also communicate research to other levels.
Development communication is about identifying and stimulating processes that are relevant to local people.

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