The Governance and Sustainable Livelihoods Strands in Media Development

"Donors are often interested in strengthening the media as a way of speeding up governance reform. An alternative approach is to focus on the communication needs of the poor, argues scholar Linje Manyozo."

This paper provides a holistic overview of the field of media development, otherwise known as media assistance or media building. Media scholar Linje Manyozo traces the history and practice of media development and examines the 2 main theoretical models it is based on: good governance and sustainable livelihoods. He also presents 3 theoretical traditions (modernisation, information interventions, and public sphere) that have defined and shaped the way media development is understood today. His critical analysis shows that a great deal of development and reconstruction assistance is invested in strengthening democratic and independent media systems and institutions, an approach conceptualised as media development. This paper makes the case that the discussion on media development is biased towards Western theory and approaches, emphasising the universalisation and globalisation of western experiences and approaches in deliberative democracy to the neglect of local contexts and stakeholder engagement.

In the first section, Manyozo references his own previous work (2012) to define media development. Whereas media for development and participatory communication involve communication content and processes respectively, media development is more about structure - that is: "organized and strategic efforts at supporting and building the capacity of media institutions, policies, structures and practices as pathways towards consolidating citizenship and good governance, building fragile democracies and enhancing sustainable development....Based on this definition, this section explains an ideal and normative theory of media development." Having laid out several conceptualisations, Manyozo states that media development can be holistically conceived as centring on the deliberate processes of strengthening the role of media in development and governance processes. Its design and implementation are strategically guided and funded by governments, institutions, and private funding.

Manyozo next examines 3 theoretical and programmatic trajectories that have shaped the understanding of media development. What unites these trajectories is their reliance and emphasis on technological determinism, in which the power of media technology to influence and bring about change is highlighted.

• Modernistic development - Within western modernisation approaches, the mass media are conceived as stimuli to bypass or overcome "traditional norms" which modernists hold are characterised by less developed technologies, agrarian economies, and low levels of literacy. The premise by thinkers such as Daniel Lerner is that the spread of mass media helps countries establish western-like media systems to avoid "going back to an oral system of communication" (Lerner 1971, 871). Such a mass media system must have the capacity to produce, distribute, and generate audiences that should consume the information. On the level of individuals, the media is also considered an innovation to be adopted to facilitate the transformation of citizens from being traditional into modernity. For the majority of western media development projects, media refers and is exclusive to radio, television, social media, newspapers, and information and communication technologies (ICTs) rather than to developing informal and indigenous communication systems. Projects have tended to focus on training of media personnel, building media infrastructure, and capacity strengthening of media structures.
• Information intervention - Monroe Price (2002) discusses what Manyozo describes as "the deliberate interference with dominant media structures and narratives through the creative employment of strategic media and communications systems and content in order to facilitate the production and sharing of multiple voices as a reliable pathway towards consolidating good governance and democracy." The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) identified and proposed strategies for "development of communications" that focused on 3 aspects: infrastructure, technology, and policies (UNESCO 1980, 2014). It is these 3 aspects that Price's concept of information intervention seeks to address: The assumption here is that an increased number of media players increases the multiplicity of democratic voices and also that "the media should be employed strategically to contest the formulation of destructive nationalist discourses and memories."
• The public sphere - With its intellectual origins in the renaissance philosophy of Immanuel Kant, the Habermasean public sphere was, ideally, a political space where people met and held interpersonal rational-critical dialogues, exercising public reason on matters of public interest and enjoying immediacy of feedback in those reciprocal relationships with fellow dialogue participants. "The concern for Habermas was that a 'refeudalization' of the public sphere and a subsequent restitution of knowledge monopolies were underway. The growth of mass media as an industry attracted private and commercial interests, which were only interested in selling both the content and the audiences. In the process, the media lost their public service role as a fourth estate, in which they should have been mediating rationalistic public reason and discussion, but instead, chose to serve the commercial and anti-democratic interests." Manyozo explains that strategically designed media development initiatives today attempt to strengthen the public sphere by focusing on establishing and consolidating media models that lie outside the influence of the state; rather, they are within the sphere of civil society. It is assumed that within this sphere, the media can then become independent, free, pluralistic, diverse, and a watchdog of the state as well as of private interests. It is also within this theoretical framework that community media development is promoted. At its core, therefore, strategic media development emphasises pluralism and diversity.

Informed by these theoretical trajectories, the chapter next presents 2 strategies towards media development thinking and practice. The good governance approach, which is rooted in western neoliberal democratic political theory, is based on the notion that a strong and independent media can boost government accountability through its watchdog and monitoring roles. As such, international donors fund freedom of expression as a way of promoting good governance and democracy, with these distinguishing factors: 1) intervention according to democratisation phases, 2) integration in civil society, 3) the concept of "sound wave warfare" (e.g., underground publications for oppressed minority groups, pirate radio stations, signal jamming, and other unorthodox communication practices that characterise politically problematic occupation), and 4) the usage of media freedom indicators. The 5 principle categories of indicators are: 1) A system of regulation conducive to freedom of expression, pluralism, and diversity of the media; 2) plurality and diversity of media, a level economic playing field and transparency of ownership; 3) media as a platform for democratic discourse; 4) professional capacity building and supporting institutions that underpin freedom of expression, pluralism, and diversity; and 5) sufficient infrastructural capacity to support independent and pluralistic media. "Nevertheless, media development indicators have only tended to cater for the modernized governance systems, leaving out the traditional systems and their indigenous knowledges. This means that the good governance strand tends to ignore the theory of state formation in the south, which rests heavily on traditional governance systems." Manyozo describes Mozambique's Media Development Project as a case study in the governance strand.

Rooted in critical development theory, the sustainable livelihoods approach promotes community empowerment and micro-development objectives. It is about meeting the needs of the most vulnerable and economically poor and prioritises areas such as food, housing, clothing, and the environment. Manyozo argues that this approach can "change and even save lives", even in conditions with an absence of good governance. As a strand in media development, it has also been shaped by the work of Everett Rogers on rural sociology and agriculture extension, Nora Quebral's thinking around communication for development, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)'s experiments in agriculture extension and communication. The focus has been to employ media and communications as a strategy for encouraging economically poor people to participate in rural and agriculture development so they are able to meet their basic needs in life, i.e. achieve livelihood. A history of this media development approach is well documented in the exploration of the emergence of the role of the rural radio training institution CIERRO in French-speaking West Africa (see the text box for a case study on page 9 of the report). In the sustainable livelihoods strand, media development initiatives aim to strengthen citizen access to and participation in local community development initiatives. There are 3 characterising factors that define this strand: 1) the promotion of self-management (financial, social, cultural and institutional sustainability) as the highest level and form of participation; 2) the centrality of indigenous knowledge communication systems rooted in orality, memory, and narrative, such as folk media, village meetings, griot performances, poetry and storytelling, open marketplaces, proverbs, or drumbeating; and 3) the emphasis on improving social capital, local livelihoods, and local development. The discussion on this sustainable livelihoods strand demonstrates that capturing media development also requires a completely distinct set of indicators. Discussed here is one evaluation methodology known as the Most Significant Change (MSC), which has been employed as a participatory assessment instrument in evaluating media development projects.

In the next section, Manyozo briefly explores media development in Africa, noting that the explosion of the information and communication technology (ICT) sector on the continent has changed the way media development is conceived and understood. For example, local radio stations are converging with mobile phones and the internet in order to ensure that local voices become part of global efforts in rethinking development policies. However, Manyozo (2012) highlighted major challenges facing media development in the global south, namely, 1) the lack of relevant media technology and infrastructure and 2) reliance on donor funding. This discussion adds one more: 3) increasing public discontent with the state. "It is imperative...that media development involves transformation of state departments of information as well as state broadcasters into public broadcasters."

In conclusion, Manyozo states: "The overarching theme in media development is that strong and independent media systems and institutions offer a platform for ensuring that citizens become active participants in the development of their societies. How this objective is achieved depends on who is funding the intervention, the methodology, capacity of implementers and the quality of the evidence base upon which interventions are built, as well as several other cultural factors."