E Book Communication and Development Everest M. Roger (1976)
E Book Communication and Development Everest M. Roger (1976)
E Book Communication and Development Everest M. Roger (1976)
Everett M. Rogers
1976
The most influential book about communication and
development is probably Wilbur Schramm's Mass Media and
National Development. When it appeared in 1964, social
scientists thought they understood the nature of develop-
ment and the role of communication in development. The
ensuing decade shows us that our conception of development
was rather limited and perhaps not entirely correct. Today
we see that past notions do not entirely fit the reality
and potential of the contemporary scene.
In this paper, I shall (1) describe the old concept
of development and contrast it with some emerging alterna-
tives, and (2) set forth our previous conception of commu-
nication in development and contrast it with some of the
roles of communication in the emerging models of develop-
THE DOMINANT PARADIGM OF DEVELOPMENT1
CRITICISMS OF THE
DOMINANT PARADIGM OF DEVELOPMENT
Intellectual Ethnocentrism
In the very late 1960s and the 1970s, several world events
-combined with the intellectual critiques just described and
began to crack the prior credibility of the dominant paradigm.
Criticism of the
dominant paradigm
by radical economists
like Frank and other
dependency theorists
CRITICISMS OF COMMUNICATION
IN DEVELOPMENT
But there was at least some hope that by raising the public's
aspirations for modernization, pressure was created toward
changing some of the limiting factors on development.
ALTERNATIVE CONCEPTIONS OF
COMMUNICATION IN DEVELOPMENT
In this section we describe some of the directions under
way in newer conceptions of development communication: self-
development, the communication effects gap, and new communi-
cation technology.
Self-Development
Most nations in the past have implicitly defined develop-
ment in terms of what government does to (and for) the people.
Decisions about needed development were made by the national
government in the capital city and then implemented through
development programs that were carried out by government
employees who contacted the public (at the operational level)
in order to inform and persuade them to change some aspect of
their behavior. This top-down approach to development implied
a one-way role for communication: the sources were government
officials seeking to inform and persuade a mass audience of
receivers.
In recent years, several nations (examples are the People's
Republic of China, Tanzania, the Republic of Korea, and Taiwan)
have recognized the importance of self-development at the village
and uiban neighborhood level. In this approach, some type of
small group at the local level (mothers' clubs in Korea, farmers'
associations in Taiwan, radio listening clubs in Tanzania, and
communes and/or work brigades in China) takes primary respon-
sibility (1) for deciding exactly what type of development is
NOTES
1. The following section is adapted from Rogers (1975b).
2. A critique of centralized economic planning of development in
light of actual accomplishments appeared in a chapter by Caiden and
Wildavsky (1974: 264-292) with the charming title "Planning Is Not the
Solution: It's Part of the Problem."
3. Karl Marx in Das Kapital stated: The country that is more
developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of
its own future." Lerner (1967: 115) stated: "Indeed, the Western model
is virtually an inevitable baseline for Asian development planning because
there is no other model which can serve this purpose." This predominance
of the Western paradigm of development was probably correct at the time
of Lerner's writing.
4. An assumption criticized by Fortes (1973): "Ibdernity as a
consequence of Western structural transformations may have little to do
with, or be in fact detrimental to, causes of development in Third World
nations."
5. Caplan and Nelson (1973) argue that social scientists are more
likely to accept an individual-blame definition of a social problem that
they investigate than a system-blame definition. For instance, unemploy-
ment and poverty are considered to be due to laziness, not to the unavail-
ability of work and to blocked opportunities.
6. Note how my thinking has changed as to the definition of develop-
ment in the past seven years: "Development is a type of social change
in which new ideas are introduced into a social system in order to produce
higher per capita incomes and levels of living through more modern produc-
tion methods and improved social organization" (Kogers with Svenning, 1969).
7. In these investigations, modernization was considered as the
individual-level manifestations of development: "Hadern man is an informed
participant citizen, has a marked sense of personal efficacy, is highly
independent and autonomous, and he is ready for new experiences and ideas"
(Inkeles and Smith, 1974: 290).
8. A much-quoted list of what the mass media can and cannot do
in development was provided by Schranm (1964).
9. Similar conclusions about the lack of agricultural content in
the mass media in Latin America were cited in the Beltran article in this
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