Florencia Enghel

This study scrutinizes the trajectory of an international development communication intervention aimed at mediating, rendering public and mobilizing processes of reconnection among estranged citizens across the former Yugoslavia. The intervention, which took place between 2000 and 2005 in the wider context of post-conflict international development assistance and peacebuilding operations in the region, was known as the Videoletters project. Centered on a documentary TV series aimed at promoting the reestablishment of relationships among ordinary people affected by ethno-political divisions, Videoletters was adopted by European bilateral funders for large-scale implementation and categorized as a “tool for reconciliation”.

Starting from an understanding of communication as a right to which citizens are entitled, as a responsibility of practitioners and institutions, and as a capability that is socially distributed in unequal ways and has an ambiguous potential, the study looks into the contextualized potential and limitations of international development communication intervention to attend to the citizens that it is supposed to benefit. By providing rich empirical details about a process of intervention, the study argues in concrete terms for the study of development communication not as a presumably positive tool, but as an institutionally driven practice that may or may not strengthen conditions of justice, with consequences that will differ depending on the specificity of sociopolitical situations in time and space. Depending on contextual and institutional conditions and on the forms of mediation privileged/disregarded throughout the process, the deployment of a specific development communication intervention may/may not foster proper distance, and thus strengthen/weaken conditions of justice for the citizens under consideration, who are subject to the governance structure of international development assistance.

By linking the practice of international development communication to a framework of justice, the study brings the political and ethical dimensions of said practice to the fore and contributes to a critical agenda for theorization and research that takes accountability into consideration and puts citizens at the center.

International development stakeholders harness communication with two broad purposes: to do good, via communication for development and media assistance, and to communicate do-gooding, via public relations and information. This book unpacks various ways in which different efforts to do good are combined with attempts to look good, be it in the eyes of donor constituencies at large, or among more specific audiences, such as journalists or intra-agency decision makers.

Development communication studies have tended to focus primarily on interventions aimed at doing good among recipients, at the expense of examining the extent to which promotion and reputation management are elements of those practices. This book establishes the importance of interrogating the tensions generated by overlapping uses of communication to do good and to look good within international development cooperation.

The book is a critical text for students and scholars in the areas of development communication and international development, and will also appeal to practitioners working in international aid who are directly affected by the challenges of communicating for and about development.

This book is the Yearbook 2009 of the International Clearinghouse on Children, Youth & Media (http://www.nordicom.gu.se/clearinghouse.php). It focuses on youth as a generation of actors and citizens who are increasingly exposed to and making use of media/ICT for entertainment and informational purposes, for social networking and mobilization, and for knowledge sharing.

At the core of this creativity and these innovative practices is media and information literacy. Young people’s competence in using media, their ability to produce, understand and interact with the multiplicity of both new and old media formats and technologies have been instrumental in the manifestation of social processes of change. This book seeks to explore theoretical assumptions as well as empirical evidence of media and information literacy in action. But it also gathers examples of how youth in developing countries have used their skills to bring about change.

Este ensayo breve propone elementos para una discusión crítica del problema del éxito en la investigación de la comunicación para el cambio social, y sugiere alternativas superadoras de las demandas impuestas por organismos gubernamentales y agencias de financiación a nivel nacional e internacional.

It is a paradox of communication and media studies that while media are widely seen as key institutions in the “project of time, space and life management” (Silverstone, 2005), not enough attention is given to the ways in which mediation is socially produced and becomes politically effective. Although rarely taken into account as an analytical variable in studies of international development communication, mediation is implicit in donor-driven practice. In the act of framing a problem and favouring a solution, and of communicating about a problem and solution in particular ways, donors seek to mediate their complex relationships with recipient countries and with citizens at both ends of the donor-recipient equation. But which forms of media engagement do they propose to these ends? How is mediated communication aimed at doing good for the citizens of recipient countries? How is it used to communicate do-gooding to the citizens of donor countries? Which media technologies are foregrounded and which media-driven practices are favoured to promote one and the other? Which perceptions of media engagement influence donors’ strategic choices, and how are citizens understood in those choices? Based on a qualitative study of a large-scale mediated communication intervention mandated by the British Foreign Commonwealth Office and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs to promote reconciliation and democratize media systems in the successor states to the former Yugoslavia in 2005 (Enghel, 2014), this paper examines forms of media engagement at work in donor-driven international development communication and considers their uses as components of a politics of mediation.

In the development communication equation, whether more theoretical, empirical and analytical attention is given to ‘development’ or to ‘communication’ makes a difference: where the emphasis is on development, it is at the expense of communication. Sincecommunication and media arguably play an increasingly pervasive role in the everyday life of citizens and in the politics, economies and governance of most societies, the characteristics and role of specific forms of applied communication strategies in the context of the neoliberal project merit critical scrutiny. Given a complex global scenario, what can a political economy approach bring into an agenda for the future of development communication as a field of study, a practice and an institutional project? This article outlines ways in which a focus on political economy dimensions may contribute to understanding the obstacles and limits to a transformative practice of international development communication.

The paper situates communication for development and social change in the context of the discourse and practice of multilateral organizations and of ongoing transformations in the international development/aid system. Contextualizing these elements provides grounding for a subsequent discussion on for whom and for what to mobilize communication for development and social change to address the complexity of current global conditions. This effort to rethink critically the role of communication in mobilizing a set of relationships among citizens, national states and transnational actors considering its dual potential for advancing both human rights and economic globalization/capitalist accumulation, is in turn expected to be of some relevance in the broader context of global communication studies.

This paper discusses two documentaries produced between 1997 and 2003 in indigenous communities located in the the provinces of Misiones and Jujuy, North region of Argentina: Ayvü-Porä/The beautiful words (1998), and Candabare/Late summer celebration (2001) . Both were based on the premise of making documentaries with and about indigenous communities through the implementation of a participatory communication approach. Key members of both production crews remained the same, while the funding sources changed significantly. Issues regarding the value added of participatory documentary-making as a strand of communication for development are analyzed as from “…a framework for communications research and teaching, which emphasizes communication as dialogue, communication as social practice, and communication as a social right” (Richards in Richards, Thomas and Nain, 2001) .

Analyses of both case studies bring to light information relevant for the training of communication for development practitioners and technicians, and provide elements for a state-of-the-art account of participatory communication practices. The relationship between author(s) and subject(s), as well as between author(s) and viewer(s), is examined. Both documentaries are assessed in the context of their production, dissemination/distribution and reception trajectories.

The conditions in which the indigenous communities involved in the making of both documentaries lived (and the concrete purposes that both specific media interventions intended to serve as regards those conditions) are set in the context of the political, social and economic situation of Argentina at the time in which the projects were developed. The dissemination/distribution and reception trajectories of the documentaries are inscribed in the context of the Argentine media landscape.

This book chapter is the Introduction to the anthology "Communication in international development: looking good or doing good?" published by Routledge in 2018. The anthology unpacks various ways in which different efforts to do good are combined with attempts to look good, be it in the eyes of donor constituencies at large, or among more specific audiences, such as journalists or intra-agency decision-makers. It also establishes the importance of interrogating the tensions generated by overlapping uses of communication to do good and to look good within international development cooperation.

The Videoletters Project was a high-profile case of international media assistance to the Western Balkans launched in 2005 with British and Dutch support. Its explicit goal was to promote large-scale reconciliation among ordinary citizens of the former Yugoslavia in the aftermath of the region's breakup. The project was welcomed internationally: reported on by the press, spotlighted and prized in documentary film festivals, and referred to in scholarly work and policy forums. This was despite the fact that its promise that it would mediate reconciliation via the making and broadcasting of a documentary was barely fulfilled. Based on a qualitative study of the project’s uses of communication to do good and to look good, this chapter considers how an international intervention that harnessed media for do-gooding shifted towards communicating the goodness of aid to donors’ own constituencies. It moreover raises questions for the future research of donors’ dual deployment of communication to do good and to look good.

This chapter introduces the edited collection "Communication in international development: doing good or looking good?" starting from the following question: In which ways, and to which effects, are endeavors to do good via communication, primarily directed at developing countries, combined with attempts to communicate good done and/or make aid look good in the eyes of various audiences?

En el año 2000, en el contexto de un seminario organizado por la Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura (UNESCO) en colaboración con el gobierno de Uganda con el objetivo de promover el desarrollo de los medios comunitarios en África, el comunicador nigeriano Alfred Opubor planteó una pregunta provocativa: “si los medios comunitarios son la respuesta, ¿cuál es la pregunta?” (Opubor, 2000). Parafraseando a Opubor, cabe preguntarse: si la comunicación para el desarrollo es la respuesta, ¿cuál es la pregunta? Asimismo, si la comunicación para el cambio social es la respuesta, ¿la pregunta cambia? ¿Cómo entender hoy desarrollo y cambio social desde una perspectiva comunicacional? ¿Qué lugar le corresponde a la comunicación en la tarea de promover y fortalecer formas de ciudadanía que prioricen al ciudadano como sujeto de derecho? . ¿Qué formas de la comunicación pueden impulsar un modelo de justicia social orientado a reducir la inequidad entre las diferentes posiciones sociales? (Dubet, 2011). ¿Qué políticas públicas  son necesarias para hacer frente desde el ámbito de la comunicación al triple desafío de reconocer las diferencias, corregir las desigualdades y conectar a las mayorías con las redes globalizadas, planteado por Néstor García Canclini (2006)? ¿Cómo articular respuestas a estas preguntas que tengan en cuenta las diferentes escalas geopolíticas involucradas en los procesos de desarrollo , así como las tensiones y contradicciones que estas imponen?

Provided that communication is understood both as a social practice and as a right, it can be promoted as a meaningful capability that prepares children to critically read, and thus have the potential to transform, their everyday worlds. Communication can be an avenue towards strengthening children’s resilience and encouraging their participation in those matters that affect them.
This article explores communication from three angles considered relevant to facilitating children’s ability to voice their needs and claim their rights: intergenerational communication, which focuses on the ways in which adults can best communicate with children; communication for development and social change, which focuses on the ways in which communication can be used strategically to address problematic social issues and their solution; and
representations of children in the media, which focuses on the ways in which children should be communicated about in society at large as well as on the ways in which children can engage in redressing misrepresentations.

Since their origins in the late 1950s, Latin American communication studies have become increasingly institutionalized and thematically diverse. This evolution, however, has circulated to a limited extent beyond borders, as noted by North American scholars in the 1990s. Attentive to this problem, this article reviews how Latin America has featured in Communication Theory’s archive since 1992 and introduces a Special Issue that incorporates recent contributions from the region into the journal’s corpus. The analysis shows the extremely limited presence of Latin America in Communication Theory both in terms of substantial contributions to theory-building arising from the region, and of Latin American authorship. We argue that this state of affairs evidences the need for explicit editorial policies aimed at addressing the gap, and for increased cross-border interaction among scholars. The Special Issue hereby introduced contributes to resituating Latin America in international communication theory by foregrounding situated approaches generated in the region.

Desde sus orígenes a fines de la década de 1950, los estudios latinoamericanos de la comunicación se han expandido en términos de su institucionalización y diversidad temática. Esta evolución, sin embargo, ha tenido una circulación limitada más allá de la región. A fines de la década de 1990, la escasa atención prestada a la investigación latinoamericana en Estados Unidos llamó la atención de los académicos norteamericanos. Con esa preocupación como punto de partida, este artículo evalúa la presencia de América Latina en Communication Theory e introduce una Edición Especial que incorpora producción reciente de la región al corpus de la revista. Nuestro análisis demuestra la escasez de contribuciones teóricas sustantivas provenientes de América Latina, y la necesidad tanto de políticas editoriales explícitas destinadas a contrarrestar dicha ausencia, como de mayor interacción académica transfronteriza entre investigadoras/es. Los contenidos de la Edición Especial presentados en el artículo contribuyen a resituar a América Latina en la teorización de la comunicación a nivel internacional, destacando enfoques situados generados en la región.

Desde suas origens no final da década de 1950, os estudos em comunicação na América Latina têm se expandido em termos de institucionalização e diversidade temática. Essa evolução, entretanto, teve uma circulação limitada para além das fronteiras do continente. No final da década de 1990, a incipiente atenção dedicada à pesquisa latino-americana em comunicação chamou a atenção de acadêmicos norte-americanos. Tendo essa preocupação como ponto de partida, esse artigo avalia a presença da América Latina no arquivo de Communication Theory e introduz uma Edição Especial que incorpora contribuições recentes da região ao corpus da revista. Nossa análise demonstra tanto a escassez de contribuições teóricas substanciais vindas da América Latina quanto a ausência de autores latino-americanos na revista. Tal cenário evidencia a necessidade não apenas de políticas editoriais explícitas que preencham essa lacuna, como também de intensificação nas interações entre autores internacionalmente. Os conteúdos da Edição Especial que introduzimos nesse artigo contribuem para redefinir o papel da América Latina na teoria da comunicação internacional apresentado abordagens situadas com origem na região.

In December 2013, the Swedish culture magazine "Balder" invited me to write a short piece reflecting on the quality of communication among strangers in the public realm at a time of smart phones. The magazine's editor and I had discussed this matter informally more than once, referring to Stockholm. This is not an academic article -it is a brief reflection on questions that occupy me at present, albeit from a different angle, in my doctoral research. "Balder" published it in Swedish, in a generous translation by Swedish writer Anna-Karin Palm. What I am posting here is the original text in English.