“Rogers maintains that mass media diffusion and ready access to information are needed to raise awareness of an issue, while participatory communication is needed to mobilise action towards a development objective.”
in development communication, a wide range of theoretical responses emerged, at one end of the spectrum, scholars from the "modernistic", diffusion school began to incorporate participatory dimensions into their research. At the other end, scholars critical of traditional development communication embraced participatory development as a utopian panacea. In other words, participation was conceptualized either as a means to an end, or as an end in and of itself (Huesca, 2002). Some scholars from the "participation as an end" group saw any attempt to merge the two approaches as passive collaboration, or manipulative consultation done only to help advance a predetermined objective (Dudley, 1993). White (1994) argued that any use of participation by those espousing diffusion will evolve into an "insidious domination tactic" if incorporated into the dominant development discourse, due to its historical association with "Western political hegemony."
MEDIA MATTERS SECTION 4: Mapping the Sector: Literature, Surveys and Resources
Not everyone agreed with this resistance to the harmonization of approaches. Einsiedel (2000) notes that the participatory approach is particularly important when questions on development issues are much more complex and with greater historical specificities than that addressed by Lasswell’s (1964) linear questioning of who says what to whom with what effects."We might ask whose voices are heard, what values are articulated, what representations are foregrounded, or what discursive practices are framed," she says. However, Einsiedel speculates there may sometimes be a need for both approaches. The most viable solutions to the world’s development challenges may indeed come from "viewing boundaries not as impermeable walls, but as sites for exchange and developing the 47 vigour that can arise from hybridism." This approach to research, she says, pursues multiple approaches to development, using each approach to both inform and critique the others, questioning what they derive from each other, and respecting the differences between perspectives.
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An example of this syncretic approach to development communication is found in more recent editions of Rogers’ classic, Diffusion of Innovations. Rogers argues that both approaches are necessary. He maintains that mass media diffusion and ready access to information are needed to raise awareness of an issue, while participatory communication is needed to mobilize action towards a development objective, be it HIV prevention or community participation in local government. A combination of the two can lead to what Rogers calls the "critical mass" in the diffusion of an innovation or to what Malcolm Galdwell (2000) refers to as the "tipping point": when a small change, such as a few more individuals practicing safe sex to avoid HIV transmission, triggers a big change in the rate of adoption. Cecilia Cabañero-Verzosa, a senior communications officer at the World Bank and author of Strategic Communication for Development Projects (2003) believes that all development projects are essentially about behavioural change. She also believes in an approach that incorporates both dominant development communication paradigms. She says that in order for a communication strategy to take an empowering approach, one should look not only at employing top-down methods such as mass media through newspaper or television, but also bottom-up or interactive methods such as town hall meetings. Both media plans and interpersonal communications should play a complementary role in the process. Cabañero-Verzosa refers to this as a "dialogical process" which implies integrating upstream and downstream communications. IF EVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET 47 A term Rogers (2003) uses to refer to as an “informal network of researchers who form around an intellectual paradigm to study a common topic.”
Many development practitioners are avoiding the semantic debates outlined above in order to harness the benefits of both approaches. For them, what is most important is not what an approach is called, the origins of an idea or