Knowledge, Scale and Technology - Communicating for Social Change or I'm Speaking, But Who's Listeni

Knowledge, Scale and Technology

Communicating for Social Change

or

I'm Speaking, But Who's Listening?

Click here to download a Power Point presentation of this document.

One Practical Example

EcoNews Africa

• A sub-regional NGO which aims to create two way information flows between local communities and national, regional and international policy processes
• Negotiations around what became the Convention to Combat Desertification led to ENA entering a partnership with three CBOs in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to assist in their establishing community resource centres and community radio stations with a connectivity component
• The community media pilot project sought to provide the means to disseminate the results of this debate and negotiation to ensure the communities' interests were addressed in the treaty-making and in the treaty's implementation
• External challenges:
  
  • No or limited traditional infrastructure for connectivity (no power, no phone lines)
  • High cost and low availability of alternative technologies for connectivity (solar, HF, VHF and other wireless technologies)
  • Lack of supportive regulation (telecommunications)
  • Lack of planning, linkages and support for advocacy work (on issues of concern as well as on relevant communications regulation)

Another Practical Example

African Women's Development and Communications Network

• A regional women's network which aims to promote women's development, equality and human rights through advocacy, training and communications at the regional and international levels
• The review process of the Beijing Platform for Action led to FEMNET entering a partnership with the Association of Progressive Communicators Africa Women's Programme to establish a listserve and website: click here for FLAMME site - to debate and consolidate African positions for the review process
• The listserve is being used to debate and research African women's access to and use of NICTs for women's development and human rights. The website is being used to document African women's participation in the review process. And with the addition of Inter Press Service, the Flamme partnership produced strategic daily bulletins at the African Prep Com, participated in the production of strategic daily bulletins by the APC's Women Action group at the global Prep Com and is planning to do both at the Special Session
• Internal challenges:
  
  • Assumptions about our membership as a regional network (the process of access and dissemination of relevant information within our membership and therefore among each other via Flamme)
  • Lack of planning and support for consistent access and dissemination, as well as for translation and re-packaging for members not connected

What do we mean by `knowledge'?

• Does Experience = Knowledge?
• Does Information = Knowledge?
• Or do Experience + Information = Knowledge?
• This question is fundamental to our work because we tend to legitimise information over experience and therefore do not assume knowledge within the `communities' with which we work

Whose 'knowledge'?

Assuming knowledge within the `communities' with whom we work is the point of `participation'

Participation is key for the success of communications geared towards behaviour change:

• the input of external knowledge
• communications as a window

Participation is also key for the success of communications geared towards organisational or systemic change:

• the validation of, output of and action upon internal knowledge
• communications as a mirror

What is `knowledge' for?

• Identity
• Autonomy
• Having and Being
• Means and Ends
• Solidarity
• Reciprocity

Participants at a workshop on popular communications for participation in democracy and change, the Institute of Development Studies, the University of Sussex, May 2000

• `Knowledge' is to enable action, individually and collectively, around these issues of concern
• Participation here allows for the naming of, strategizing around and addressing of differences within `communities' in order to act appropriately:
  
  • the differentiated (impact of) issues of concern due to ability, age, class, ethnicity, gender, etc
  • the underlying intra-`community' power dynamics thus likely to arise during the communications and change processes
  • the identification of and planning for the additional capacity needs required to address issues of concern and negotiate the change process (both internally and externally)
  • the identification of and planning for the external challenges to the communications process

What do we mean by `scale'?

What inspires action?

• the legitimisation and validation of both experiential and theoretical knowledge
• the example of applicable (if not similar) action in similar `communities'

Scale recognises the value of the multiplicity of `community' experiences:

• scale is not necessarily about having every `community' work on every issue at every level
• scale is not about expanding or replicating a `community' experience at the national, regional or international levels
• scale has to do with linking `communities' with similar issues of concern to enable knowledge exchange and to expand awareness about strategic ways of acting upon issues of concern
• scale has to do with amplifying the `communities' voices at the national, regional or international levels to ensure the forgotten knowledge component (experience) is also input into policy formulation and implementation processes

Concluding questions?

• Defining knowledge: whose knowledge and what for?
• Defining scale: monolithic or pluralistic?
• Technological choice: whose options are available for what applications?
• Communications regulation: the need for advocacy with regulatory bodies and new partnerships

from Muthoni Wanyeki