Chapter 1

Question 1

What is the most apparent role for media in development?

Answer 1

A channel for delivering information to the public.

Question 2

How can media act as an important of information for individuals?

Answer 2

Whether through posters, television advertisements or SMS, for individuals regarding all manner of development-related issues, such as family planning, nutrition and HIV/AIDS prevention.

Question 3

What is the definition of M4D?

Answer 3

Strategic use of the media as a tool for delivering positive change in individuals’ knowledge, attitude and practice in order to achieve development results.

Question 4

What is the aim of M4D projects?

Answer 4

Design the most appropriate message, targeted at the most relevant audience, delivered through the most suitable media channel in order to promote desirable change in a particular behaviour.

Question 5

What is Development Media International?

Answer 5

DMI is a UK-based social enterprise, which describes itself as « delivering mass media campaigns to change behaviours and save lives in developing countries ». Its focus primarily on changing behaviours related to reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health, largely in Africa and Asia.

Question 6

Why is critical perspective crucial?

Answer 6

M4D is often presented entirely unproblematically, particularly in relation to new information and communication technologies.

Question 7

How is M4D represented in academic articles?

Answer 7

Rather than disappear from the literature, it seems there has been a resurgence of the use of this paradigm, either explicit or implicit, as fully 37.7 % of the articles made use of this frame for their research.

Question 8

What is the conclusion of Christine Ogan?

Answer 8

Perhaps the introduction of ICTs into the discourse of development has caused some scholars to forget that technology cannot provide a magic multiplier effect for the poorest of the poor. Only 20% of all articles were critical of any of the communication paradigms used to frame development

Question 9

What is the central argument of the M4D approach?

Answer 9

While the M4D approach certainly has the capacity to promote a particular kind of development (associated with individual behaviour change), under certain conditions, as with any intervention, there are inevitable limitations, assumptions and blind spots that need to be recognized. The M4D approach can also be accused of helping to reinforce the agenda of large corporations involved in international development, particularly when applied to ICTs.

Question 10

How is the M4D approach in practice?

Answer 10

In practice, media-related development projects can look very different to the ideal form of M4D discussed and critiqued here. It therefore outlines two particular hybrid forms of M4D that, to varying degrees, incorporate the strategies and objectives of other approaches.

Question 11

What are the features of the M4D approach?

Answer 11

Information provision, cultivating appropriate attitudes, assumptions about communication, audiences and behaviour change. Change is planned, controlled, targeted, measurable, predictable and managed by external change agents and an instrumental view of participation.

Question 12

What is information prevision?

Answer 12

It’s the central feature of the M4D approach that information acquisition by individuals is understood to be a vital part of the development process.

Question 13

What is the essential problem of information prevision?

Answer 13

Lack of (appropriate or accurate) information regarding particular issue, such as being unaware of free healthcare services or the necessity for climate change adaptation.

Question 14

What is the solution of the essential problem of information prevision?

Answer 14

To combat such (apparent) ignorance by providing individuals with relevant information, which, it is predicted, will result in desirable behaviour change.

Question 15

Why are mass media usually seen as the most effective mechanism for delivering the relevant information?

Answer 15

Unlike conventional, classroom-based, education, the mass media can reach relatively very large numbers of people very quickly, repetitively and inexpensively.

Question 16

What medium is particularly effective?

Answer 16

Radio in particular is often cited as being especially effective in many contexts, not least because radio audiences are not required to be literate. More recently, mobile phones are increasingly being used as the mechanism for delivering information.

Question 17

Why cultivating appropriate attitudes?

Answer 17

The M4D approach also commonly includes a focus on the importance of developing suitable attitudes. This emphasis on attitudes stems from the work of Max Wever and Daniel Lemer who both argued that the development of a society depends upon the predominance of a modern rather than a traditional mental outlook; characterized by being rational, calculating and forward thinking. Belief that culture and individuals attitudes are a key determinant of development remains – in the global North as well as the South.

Question 18

What is the function of media in an individual’s attitude is taken as a key driver of (or obstacle to) development?

Answer 18

Challenge traditional norms and values and instead develop a modern or more appropriate outlook. Culture is often understood as a barrier to development, and not as an ally of development or part of a way of life, as in alternative approaches to media and development.

Question 19

What is the two step flow model?

Answer 19

Suggests that information and ideas are transferred from media to the general public in two stages – first, from media to opinion leaders or local elites (who have the resources to access and respond to the information), and secondly, from such opinion leaders to the masses – through interpersonal communication.

Question 20

What is the key emphasis in the two step flow model?

Answer 20

Importance of targeting opinion leaders and of combining communication through media with interpersonal communication

Question 21

What has replaced the widely discredited hypodermic needle model of communication?

Answer 21

Emphasis on the importance of talk in behaviour change and the disaggregation of different target audiences has replaced the widely discredited hypodermic needle model of communication, which asserts that mass media have direct and powerful effect on passive audiences.

Question 22

What is the assumption in M4D?

Answer 22

Communication is a largely linear, unidirectional process in which information is sent from senders to receivers through particular channels.

Question 23

What is the theory of innovation by Rogers?

Answer 23

New innovations spread throughout society in a relatively predictable pattern, with the early adopters of new innovations having a tendency to be elites. After an innovation has subsequently spread among the majority of the population the last members of society to adopt will be the laggards, characterized by Rogers as having a focus on traditions.

Question 24

What are the five stages that characterizes the adoption of innovations as an individual decision-making process?

Answer 24

awareness, knowledge and interest, decision, trial and adoption/rejection. Whereas media are taken to be central to the first stage of the process. Rogers saw personal sources as most important during the later stages of the adoption process. This model of diffusion also emphasizes the vital role of both interpersonal communication and the differences between groups in society, just as in the two step flow model.

Question 25

How theories from social psychology are used in the theory of innovation?

Answer 25

Theories from social psychology are used to help explain how individuals learn and adopt new behaviours, such as condom use or hand washing, based on the experience of media consumption. Some of the most widely cited theories in this context include Social Learning Theory, the Stages of change Model and the Health Belief Model.

Question 26

What is the Stages of change Model?

Answer 26

Seeks to describe the sequence of stages through which an individual passes in the adoption of a positive behaviour. In this model the stages consist of: pre-contemplation, contemplation of the reasons to change a behaviour, preparation to change behaviour, action, and, finally, maintenance of that action.

Question 27

What is the role of communication in the Stages of change model?

Answer 27

Targeted at the stage being addressed, so, for example, to help move an individual from pre-contemplation to contemplation, the role of media might be to raise awareness of the issue and to demonstrate the positive reasons to adopt that behaviour.

Question 28

What characterized theories of behaviour change and theory of diffusion?

Answer 28

They assume that behaviour change is a product of individual psychology (rather than group norms and processes) and that decision-making is a rational (rather than emotional) process.

Question 29

What are the assumptions shared by all M4D interventions?

Answer 29

M4D interventions do all share a set of common assumptions about the nature of communication (as a linear, one-to-many, process), audiences (as relatively passive) and behaviour change (as based on individual, rational, decision-making).

Question 30

What are external change agents (ECA)?

Answer 30

Change is planned, controlled, targeted, measurable, predictable and managed by external agents: requires external change agents (usually foreign consultants) to play a central role in managing the process of change.

Question 31

Why are the ECA important?

Answer 31

The experts are communicating something of which they are in possession, to people who are ignorant of theses insights, implicit in this description is the idea that local people are not only ignorant but are also somewhat passive and predictable in the process of development. If the change agent was not there to identify the missing information, design the intervention and ensure it was delivered effectively, change would not otherwise occur.

Question 32

How is the change drive in the M4D approach?

Answer 32

From outside the community, but the change agent is also pursuing a particular kind of change.

Question 33

How does M4D interventions seek to achieve change?

Answer 33

They seek to achieve change that is planned in advance, targeted at particular audiences, limited in scope and aimed to achieve certain predetermined outcomes, limited to specific changes in individual behaviours, and that these outcomes can be both accurately measured and attributed to the M4D campaign.

Question 34

What is the instrumental view of participation?

Answer 34

Although projects adopting M4D approach may be managed by external change agents and characterized by a sender-receiver model of communication, they are not necessarily imposed on recipient communities without any consultation. If media are to be used effectively as channels for delivering information to audiences with the intention of promoting behaviour change, then it is vital for the messages to be relevant to the particular contexts in which they will be received.

Question 35

How these interventions are more likely to be effective?

Answer 35

Such interventions are much more likely to be effective if they are based on an understanding of what particular beliefs currently prevent individuals from engaging in particular behaviours, for example.

Question 36

How the target population can could be reach more efficiently?

Answer 36

Knowledge of the media consumption habits of the target population will enable them to be reached more effectively.

Question 37

How to achieve this level of understanding of audiences?

Answer 37

At least some level of participation from the local community is required and this must inevitably involve some degree of two-way and horizontal communication.

Question 38

What characterized the M4D approach?

Answer 38

The nature and extent of this participation. Participation of the local community in this approach is fundamentally a means to achieving more effective use of media. Rather than an end in itself.

Question 39

What is the aim of consulting with target audience, or of employing some local staff?

Answer 39

To maximize the effectiveness and delivery of predetermined messages, rather than to involve communities in determining the problems and the most appropriate courses of action themselves.

Question 40

Why evaluating M4D interventions are useful?

Answer 40

Not only help to reveal a number of the key dimensions of this approach but also play a role in legitimizing it.

Question 41

How these evaluations are conducted?

Answer 41

Such evaluations are commonly conducted in one of two ways: either the levels of knowledge, attitude and practice of audiences are measured before the intervention begins and compared to those after the intervention or reported changes in the knowledge, attitude and practice of those who have not been exposed to the relevant media output compared to those who have not.

Question 42

Why are these measures not complete?

Answer 42

Unless all other possible intervening variables are controlled for, such as age, gender, education level and employment, then we cannot be sure a single element in the media is the determining factor. Thus, while these measures help us to get closer to isolating the impact of an intervention and are often the best measures available, they are not complete or absolute proof of impact.

Question 43

How to ameliorate the problems associated with providing evidence of the effects of M4D campaigns?

Answer 43

Multiple regression analysis can be used to control for the influence of other variables and the use of control areas, which are not exposed to the intervention, can also help to isolate the role of media. Being able to compare control and intervention, can also help to isolate the role of media. Being able to compare control and intervention areas means that differences in behaviour change can be attributed to the intervention, rather than other variables.

Question 44

How quantitative measurements and linear cause-effect models can be very valuable?

Answer 44

In an increasingly competitive and accountability-based donor environment, such quantitative measurements and linear cause-effect models can be very valuable.

Question 45

What are the problems of quantitative measurements?

Answer 45

A narrow focus on individuals behaviour change and a quantitative measurement-oriented, approach to evaluation can mean that the complexity of culture and the context of development initiatives is not taken into account.

Question 46

What are the thought of Lenne and Tacchi?

Answer 46

Social change is not linear, not predictable, and is always contextual. While quantitative models mays go some way towards isolating the effect of media messages on individual behaviours in the short term, they say little about the longer-term consequences of communication campaigns overall for social change more broadly.

Question 47

What are the critiques of the M4D approach?

Answer 47

The role of social structures and the M4D and modernization.

Question 48

What is one of the major appeals of the M4D approach?

Answer 48

It suggests that governments, NGOs, corporate donors and multilateral institutions can design and deliver communication-based interventions which make a difference in a controlled and measurable way, but which don’t provoke social unrest or radical critique (perhaps even of their own interventions). In this scenario, the major questions left to be resolved are simply whom to target and how. But while the appearance of being apolitical may make the M4D approach attractive as we shall see, it is also the source of several key limitation.

Question 49

What are the key limitations of the M4D approach?

Answer 49

The M4D approach is limited by, and fails to address, social structures, the M4D approach can harm local media industries and exacerbate inequalities.

Question 50

How is the M4D approach limited by, and fails to address, social structure?

Answer 50

The outcomes of M4D-bsed interventions are severely constrained by the fact that individual behaviour change is limited, not just by a lack of information or traditional attitudes, but by more deep-rooted political, social, institutional and economic constraints. Individuals may know and even be positively predisposed towards having a smaller family size or sending their children to school, for example, but if the society they live in has no social security or they cannot afford to pay the schools’ fees, they may be unlikely to change their behaviour. Media may be able to deliver information to individuals, but information is rarely enough by itself to allow for changes in individual behaviour, without a broader transformation of the many complex social and political processes which determine individuals’ lives.

Question 51

How the M4D approach fails to address the broader structural drivers of poverty and inequality?

Answer 51

Targeting only a narrow range of apparent informative or psychological barriers. Dissemination of information, on its own is not sufficient to alter the marginalized position of excluded communities.

Question 52

How the definition of development is characterized in the M4D approach?

Answer 52

By a very narrow definition of development – associated with individual behaviour change – rather than broader social change involving tackling social structures and the roots causes of poverty and inequality.

Question 53

What is the tension with the definition of development and the M4D approach?

Answer 53

Between the choices to pursue relatively small-scale, discrete, but nevertheless very important, changes in individual behaviour – or to contribute to a much broader vision of development, associated with empowerment, equality and democracy.

Question 54

What is the point of view of Luis Ramiro?

Answer 54

An overall change of the social structure is the fundamental pre-requisite for the attainment of genuinely human and democratic development.

Question 55

What is the point of view of Manyozo?

Answer 55

Mobilising communities to uptake and adopt new knowledge and technology does not make sense if the communication interventions do not deal with fundamental causes of inequality that have put communities in such position.

Question 56

Why some believe it is inefficient to devote limited resources?

Answer 56

From a different perspective, one might argue that it is inefficient to devote limited resources to pursuing broad, complex and unpredictable development-related objectives, when the M4D approach claims to be able to produce targeted, measurable and cost-efficient change. At stake here are questions regarding the importance of accountability and cost-effectiveness in aid spending and what development actually means.

Question 57

How the M4D approach can harm local media industries and exacerbate inequalities?

Answer 57

There is an assumption in the M4D approach that the media are an independent variable, or a politically neutral tool which acts upon society but it not influenced by it. There are many examples of M4D projects which have been accused (either individual or en masse) of actively harming the local media capacity of the countries they work in – either by reinforcing unequal patterns of media ownership or by distorting the local market.

Question 58

What is the point of view of Beltran?

Answer 58

Communication itself is so subdued to the influence of the prevailing organisational arrangements of society that it can hardly be expected to act independently as a main contributor to profound and widespread social transformations.

Question 59

What is Sarah Cramer and Mustaf Babak point of view?

Answer 59

Large amounts of investment from Western donors in M4D-based interventions in the Afghan media sector in recent years have, alongside Afghanistan’s open licensing regulation, contributed to powerful political and religious figures managing to gain control of many of the outlets. As a consequence, they describe the Afghan media sector as having grown along historic tension lines, reinforcing differences rather than bridging them.

Question 60

How the M4D approach may actively contribute to the exacerbation of existing inequalities among populations?

Answer 60

This understanding of the media as a politically neutral tool is also associated with the claim that the M4D approach may actively contribute to the exacerbation of existing inequalities among populations. In most developing countries, access to different media is sharply divided according to gender, ethnicity, rural/urban setting, socio-economic status and many other variables. As a result, any M4D campaigns broadcast on television, for example, are inevitably more likely to be watched by particular members of society than other.

Question 61

What is the point of view of Paul Hartmann?

Answer 61

Information tends not to trickle through society randomly but flow along established channels defined by the social structure. The consequence is that those who are already marginalized in society are also the ones least likely to benefit from such interventions.

Question 62

Why M4D campaigns are inevitably less effective in countries where audiences are fragmented?

Answer 62

M4D campaigns, as an approach to achieving behaviour change, are inevitably less effective in countries where audiences are fragmented, as is increasingly the case, or where media penetration rates are relatively low. Unless concrete steps are taken to address existing inequalities of access, inequalities in health outcomes may expand

Question 63

How the apparent compounding of inequalities may be further exacerbated?

Answer 63

By the fact that some members of society are not only less likely to have access to technology, but are also less likely to be able to act on information they receive. Even if all members of society were informed, through media, about the benefits of a particular technological innovation, it will likely be those with great power who are better able to adopt and benefit from it.

Question 64

What is Sparks point of view?

Answer 64

Development can be a precondition for the acceptance of development messages, rather than the other way around.

Question 65

Why the influence of social structures is unavoidable?

Answer 65

While the M4D campaign may appear to produce change without getting involved in the messy business of politics and social relations, the influence of social structures is unavoidable. M4D campaigns not only fail to target social structures but their effects are limited by them and they can end up harming local media industries and exacerbating inequalities because of them.

Question 66

What is M4D and modernization?

Answer 66

The second major set of critiques of the M4D approach stem from its origins in the modernization paradigm of development. Beginning after the Second World War and for several decades afterwards, modernization was the dominant way in which development was conceived.

Question 67

What is the basic idea of the theory of modernization?

Answer 67

Underdeveloped societies should aim to replicate political, economic and cultural characteristics of modern developed Western societies. This evolution of society referred primarily to processes of industrialization, urbanization, democratization and the use of advanced technologies. These processes were also perceived to rely upon a simultaneous transition from traditional attitudes and values to more modern ones.

Question 68

How were the mass media perceived at the time?

Answer 68

The mass media were understood to be able to act as magic multipliers – or key drivers of changes in knowledge and attitude. Grand claims were made about the capacity of the mass media to transform societies.

Question 69

Why this view of development has been criticized?

Answer 69

This view of development as modernization has been relentlessly and substantially critiqued and undermined, particularly since the 1970s, not least for having a patronizing, one-size-fits-all, and ultimately self-serving view of development. Advocates of another development accuse the modernization paradigm of failing to recognize the agency and distinctiveness of local population and that every society must pursue its own unique path to development.

Question 70

What is the perspective of the dependency theory?

Answer 70

Modernization was criticized for actively promoting an oppressive world system in which poorer countries will continue to pursue closer integration into the world market. As a consequence of these and many other critiques, the dominance of the modernization paradigm of development has been replaced by multiple competing narratives about what development is and how it can be achieved.

Question 71

How is the modernization discourse today?

Answer 71

Despite its relative, though, the modernization discourse of progress still remains highly influential and is implicit in many development policies and intervention today – including the M4D approach.

Question 72

How the M4D approach can promote a Western vision of modernity?

Answer 72

While contemporary campaigns would not make the same claims about the direct and large-scale transformative capacity of media for all society, they do remain committed to some dimensions of the modernization paradigm – especially a belief in the superiority of modern over traditional ideas.

Question 73

What is the assumption about communication associated with modern medicine?

Answer 73

Communication of information and norms associated with modern scientific medicine and health practices that this assumption appears most valid. Few would object to the principle of promoting many health behaviours that are rooted in knowledge generated by modern scientific medicine, such as child immunization or nutritional advice. Similarly, cultural beliefs that maintain the practice of female genital mutilation/cutting are often cited as examples of traditional ideas that are universally unacceptable and should be eliminated.

Question 74

What is the broader question in the modernization paradigm?

Answer 74

While it may be difficult to disagree with the general premise of using media to promote specific attitudes related to health and to challenge certain others, the broader question of whether modern ideas are superiors to local or traditional ones, in all context is much more problematic.

Question 75

What is Wasbrod point of view?

Answer 75

Who has the right to determine which cultural practices are desirable and need to be preserved? When is universalism defensible? Does relativism always trump universalistic principles? What if communities invoke cultural sovereignty to defend practices that are widely contrary to other people’s (particularly Northern) norms?

Question 76

What is the effect of supply-led interventions?

Answer 76

If interventions are supply-led rather than demand-driven, as M4D projects often are, they may fail to recognize that what is appropriate in one society may not be so appropriate in another, or that the most pressing development needs of the population may actually be very different from the ones identified by external change agents. Moreover, given that it is almost exclusively ideas produced and accepted within the West which are disseminated by (largely Western-based) M4D campaigns, it is possible to understand how some M4D campaigns might still be accused of promoting modernization, or a Western model of development.

Question 77

What is Claude Alvares point of view?

Answer 77

Knowledge is power, but power is also knowledge. Power decides what is knowledge and what is not knowledge.

Question 78

What is the second critique of the M4D approach?

Answer 78

A second critique of the M4D approach, linked to its foundations in the modernization paradigm, concerns its implicit assumptions about the audience. The model of behaviour change which the M4D approach relies upon generally imply a passive and ignorant audience, which, as long as the message is suitably designed, will respond predictably and positively to a campaign.

Question 79

What is the point of view of Gareth Locksley?

Answer 79

Belief in the media’s ability to influence behaviour is evidenced by the amounts spent on global advertising – totalling about 400 billion $ in 2005. This large sum is targeted at influencing behaviour so it is safe to assume that the behavioural influence is valid.

Question 80

What is the storyline of Gareth Locksley?

Answer 80

The storyline is simple: the media can contribute to development by bringing about beneficial changes in the behaviour of individuals, groups, and organizations. Whether the media bring about change depends on its content, tailoring to target audiences, and, to some degree, its interactivity.

Question 81

Why is the storyline of media effects anything but simple?

Answer 81

Large amounts of spending on advertising are evidence only that media are assumed to play some role in public consumption habits – not that media necessarily have powerful and direct effects on what all audiences do. It is not difficult to appreciate that the effects that media have on audiences depend on far more than how well designed and targeted the content is. Audience research in media studies consistently makes clear that audience active in the negotiation of the meaning of media content.

Question 82

On what depend how each individual will respond to M4D campaign?

Answer 82

Within any group of audience members, each individual will respond differently to a M4D campaign (or any media text), depending on the context in which they consume it and their own personal background, beliefs, education and experiences. As a result, they may ignore it, laugh at it, misunderstand it, talk over it or interpret and respond to it in any number of alternative ways. Similarly, as active audiences, their future behaviour in relation to the subject matter of the campaign will be a function not only of their active response to the content, but also of their willingness and ability to negotiate the social, cultural, economic and political conditions in the society in which they live.

Question 83

What is the point of view of Waisbord?

Answer 83

The path from information to attitude to practice does not run straight.

Question 84

What are the reasons public may change their behaviour?

Answer 84

Not to argue that M4D campaigns may not have some effect on the knowledge, attitude and behaviour of individuals. Rather, it is suggested that he reasons why publics may change their behaviours, and the role that media play in those changes, are considerably more complex, contingent and unpredictable than is often claimed. Put another way, it may indeed be the case that a certain percentage of a population has adopted a changed behaviour during the time that a M4D campaign has run. But to suggest that thus is a direct consequence of audiences passively and predictably absorbing the messages sent to them, and rationally deciding to change their behaviours n response, would be to deny those individuals their very real agency in making up their own minds, and the complexities and contingencies of their decision-making. It is the suggestion that audiences in the global South are, at least some extent, passive and predictable which links contemporary M4D campaigns to the modernization paradigm. There is little room for self-determination in a M4D approach.

Question 85

Are there more valuable alternatives ways of making use of media to facilitate media?

Answer 85

If we accept that audiences are active, critical, imaginative and often resistant in their consumption of media texts, might there not be equally valuable, if not more valuable alternative ways of making use of media to facilitate development, rather than using these technologies only as channels for information delivery? It should be clear that we might take issue with the M4D approach on the grounds that it can be used to promote a Western vision of modernity that may not be appropriate in all contexts and that it fails to recognize or utilize the agency of audiences.

Question 86

What is the importance of a critical perspective on M4D?

Answer 86

Recognizing the various criticisms discussed here is clearly important for understanding what a M4D approach can and cannot achieve and how such projects should be designed and implemented.

Question 87

What is ICT4D?

Answer 87

Information and communication technologies for development. Concerned with the application of ICTs, including the internet and mobile phones, to development goals.

Question 88

What is Ogan point of view?

Answer 88

The more recent attention of ICT has to do with the constant search for the magic solution to bringing information to people to transform their lives. Despite years of research that tells us that information is necessary but insufficient to bring about this change, ICTs have become the most recent iteration of the Holy Grail for development. Because of the appeal of the modernization paradigm, there is a tendency to forget that it might not work.

Question 89

What says the ICT4D in the academic literature?

Answer 89

The articles which used ICT4D as the primary development strategy were far more likely to consider media as the prime mover of development, rather than as a complement to other factors or as having a minimal role.

Question 90

How are the claims about the magical potential of high-tech innovations?

Answer 90

Claims about the magical potential of high-tech innovations to transform the lives of individuals and communities across the global South are also particularly evident in discourses produced by private companies whose philanthropic foundations are involved in international development.

Question 91

What is the point of view of Anne Nelson in a review of private funding for media and development?

Answer 91

One enormous factor in the growth of media for development has been the emergence of a new generation of foundations grounded in new media. The Gates Foundation may not have intended media for development but in recent years it has undoubtedly helped to set the agenda.

Question 92

How the M4D approach is can easily be justify private donors providing subsidized access to ICTs in the global South?

Answer 92

So that everyone can benefit from the resulting access to information. A focus on providing access to new technologies – or bridging the digital divide – can also be interpreted as a mechanism for allowing corporations to establish new channels of market penetration.

Question 93

How does Gumucio-Dagron describes the ICTs?

Answer 93

The point of lance of the expanding wave of mercantilism. In the name of digital divide great business is being made.

Question 94

How the M4D approach the structural forces?

Answer 94

The M4D approach the structural forces which shape inequality are obscured and underdevelopment is attributed instead to individual psychological deficiencies. As a result, the M4D approach can be used to draw attention away from consequences of global capitalism and neoliberalism and to place the responsibility for poverty firmly on the individual.

Question 95

Are the government and multinational corporations at fault?

Answer 95

Government can no longer at fault for not providing adequate healthcare, for example, and multinational corporations are not to blame for the externalities of global capitalism. Instead, we are encouraged to rely upon the philanthropy and technical fixes of private companies as the most effective means of promoting development.

Question 96

How can the corporations use impacts of M4D approach as evidence of their success?

Answer 96

Corporations can use the seemingly measurable and directly attributable impacts of a M4D approach as evidence of their successes in delivering a public good. This evidence can be used to offset criticisms of their other corporate practices – for not paying taxes or fair wages, for example.

Question 97

How the M4D approach can advance the agenda of private global industry?

Answer 97

The seemingly neutral, apolitical, nature of the M4D approach and its conceptualization of change as direct and measurable may help to advance the agenda of private global industry in the service of the neoliberal project.

Question 98

What is the point of view of Anita Curumurthy and Parminder Jeet Singh?

Answer 98

The principal ICTD opportunity is to deploy ICTs in order to universalize market fundamentalism in all facets of life.

Question 99

Of what was accused the depoliticization of development in the 1970s?

Answer 99

Serving imperial ambitions and ideological purposes related to the Cold War, in the modern day the same depoliticization can instead be linked to the service of capitalism and a neoliberal point of view.

Question 100

What are the M4D hybrids?

Answer 100

Many media-related projects that have a focus on behaviour change, and which we might be inclined to characterize as adopting an M4F approach, actually contain multiples objectives. Two of the most common hybrids of the M4D approach are those that incorporate objectives associated with either media development or media advocacy hybrids.

Question 101

What are the M4D hybrids?

Answer 101

Media development hybrids and media advocacy hybrids.

Question 102

What is the example of DMI in media development hybrids?

Answer 102

DMI provide training and build the capacity of the Ministry of Health and local media organizations in exchange for free or heavily subsidized airtime for their campaigns. This not only means that costs of their campaigns are kept low, but that additional costs of conducting further campaigns are kept low, but that additional costs of conducting further campaigns on other issues are minimal. It also means that broadcasters can continue to produce their own materials in the long term when the intervention from DMI ends.

Question 103

How can capacity-building approaches may enhance the sustainability of M4D-based projects?

Answer 103

To be clear, their focus is on enhancing the media’s capacity to deliver more of the same kind of interventions. The fundamental aim – to use media only as a vehicle for individual behaviour change – remains. There are, however, many examples of projects which seek to combine effective behaviour change communication with broader contribution to media development.

Question 104

Where the outcomes of M4D projects can extend to?

Answer 104

Other sectors of the media, it is also important to recognize that their contribution to media development skills takes a particular, limited, form. Supporting the development of an enabling legal environment in order to sustain press freedom, for example, would require long-term, coordinated and strategic investment involving multiple stake-holders which is usually beyond capacity of organizations focused largely on using media to design and deliver development messages.

Question 105

What is media advocacy hybrids?

Answer 105

Many media-related development projects take seriously the idea that information alone is not enough to change behaviours, they seek to combine an information-based approach with an approach aimed at creating a more favourable social, political and economic environment for behaviour change. Facilitating the creation of such an enabling environment generally involves the strategic use of media to put pressure on policy-makers – an approach referred to as media advocacy. Such pressure can come either from using media to mobilize community groups or by attempting to influence news coverage of particular issues.

Question 106

What is the duel aim of contributing in media advocacy hybrid?

Answer 106

Duel aim of contributing to both individual behaviour change and to broader societal change is implied in many contemporary models of development communication, to varying degrees.

Question 107

What is the Adam Smith International?

Answer 107

Having the objectives of not only providing information and changing behaviour, but also of building coalitions. It defines development communication as the art and science of making people aware of the benefits of change and of facilitating that change through raising awareness, understanding, and dialogue among stakeholders. Its focus on information and behaviour change reveals its adherence to a conventional M4D approach, while its additional focus on dialogue with stakeholders and building coalitions signals its broader intention to engage with wider structural processes.

Question 108

What are the three spheres of influence in the Adam Smith International model?

Answer 108

Information, community and family.

Question 109

What is the meaning of the three spheres in the Adam Smith International?

Answer 109

The recognition that behaviour change requires more than information being delivered to individuals is also implied with their model by the reference to three spheres of influence – the information, community and family spheres. The very idea that their approach to development communication can be summarized and formulated in a technical model involving three objectives, three spheres of influences and seven steps is characteristic of pre-structured, expert-led, approach.

Question 110

What does their seven steps implies?

Answer 110

A one-time, linear model of project implementation that can be made applicable to any context. Despite references to dialogue, reform and building coalitions, we might conclude that Adam Smith International’s model appears still to be tied very closely to a conventional M4D approach.

Question 111

What is the Soul City approach?

Answer 111

Combining excellent social marketing strategies with additional components that promote dialogue, challenge power structures and promote community based action.

Question 112

Does the M4D approach still has its place today?

Answer 112

M4D approach has its place in the arsenal of strategies linking media to development, particularly in the case of health communication. Indeed, the M4D approach continues to be regularly used in the global North in public health information campaigns to address issues such as road safety and smoking. It is also very appealing approach because it presents itself as logical, apolitical and based on persuasive quantitative evaluations of impact and cost-effectiveness.

Question 113

What are the problems of the M4D approach?

Answer 113

This approach to media and development, whether applied to television and radio or mobile phones and posters carries a number of significant problems. In particular, it is limited in the breadth of its ambition – being focused only on promoting individual behaviour change, rather than addressing the deep-rooted social, economic and political structures which shape behaviours. Indeed, its neglect of social structures not only severely limits the impact it can have on most behaviours but may also result in M4D interventions contributing to the advancement of inequalities.

Question 114

What are the assumptions we might take issue with?

Answer 114

About the passive nature of audiences, the superiority of modern ideas over traditional ones, or the top-down and one-to-many view of communications. The existence of M4D hybrids may ameliorate some of these issues, it should be clear that M4D approach does not provide a panacea for development.

Question 115

How those ICTs for development affects the M4D approach?

Answer 115

Such debates about the value and limitations of the M4D approach have recently taken on a greater importance as the use of ICTs for development gathers pace and frequently adopts this approach (event if this is not made explicit). What is at stake in debates over the M4D approach is not just the effectiveness of one form of intervention over another, but the whole idea of what development is, who pursues it and why.