Abstract
It is unusual for CSC academics to explore issues related to power precisely because communication is often seen in development as the ‘missing link’. John Durham Peters (1999: 2) has referred to this ceaseless quest for a communication Utopia as a ‘registry of modern longing’, for ideal communication, for a communication that will make all the difference. Ever since the early days of ‘effects’ research in the 1940s, there has been a dominant meme that has been the basis for media interventions in development, a meme that suggests that the right infusions of communication will enable and facilitate development and change. In other words, a general belief that communications interventions will result in ‘magic multiplier’ effects, to inter-sectoral and individual development and to impacts that are ‘neutral’, apolitical and wholly beneficial. With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the dominant meaning of communication in development via successive technological revolutions has been guided largely by an instrumentalist understanding of communication in the direct effects tradition of media research. The accent, in other words, is on technology-mediated interventions making a difference in health, agriculture, family planning and so on.
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© 2014 Pradip Ninan Thomas and Elske van de Fliert
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Thomas, P.N., van de Fliert, E. (2014). Communication, Power and Social Change. In: Interrogating the Theory and Practice of Communication for Social Change. Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137426314_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137426314_4
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