New Roles for Communication in Development?

A recent issue of the IDS Bulletin (September 2012) has a theme that would interest most readers of orecomm.net: New Roles for Communication in Development?

From the editors’ blurb (link is also to the Table of contents):

“The landscape of research communication in development has been undergoing a significant shift in recent years. The very visible emergence of new technologies has been accompanied by other shifts in the politics and business of development knowledge: the understanding of what constitutes “expert knowledge” in development, a growing emphasis on process over product in development research and new understandings of what drives social change and policy influence.

With the rise of participatory and co-constructed communications have come suggestions that we have neglected the rigour and “hard evidence” needed to influence policy. As some have turned back to grassroots forms of communication such as community radio, they face ambivalence from others struggling to see what is new or innovative about such ‘archaic’ approaches.”

A couple of articles are freely available (as usual in the IDS Bulletin), most important the “Introduction: Is Development Research Communication Coming of Age?”, by Blane Harvey, Tessa Lewin and Catherine Fisher. Depending on your library connection you might have free access to the whole issue (if logged in to Malmö or Roskilde university libraries, you have).

The contributors to the issue also write in the IDS Impact and Learning blog.