‘Looking good’ and ‘doing good’: Understanding the role(s) of media in development

The Development Studies Association 2016 Conference, The politics of development, (Oxford, UK, Sept. 12–14 2016), invites applicants to send proposals until April 25 for a panel on media & development. 

The role of media in international development has conventionally been understood in one of two distinct ways: either as a tool for delivering or facilitating positive social change amongst ‘beneficiaries’ (communication for development, or C4D) or as a means of informing or ‘educating’ audiences within donor countries about aid spending (communication about development, or CAD). However, recent studies suggest that donors are increasingly combining C4D and CAD in hybrid initiatives, with potentially undemocratic consequences. For example, Florencia Enghel (2014) suggests that donors perceive development-driven interventions involving communication as particularly suitable for making them ‘look good’ in the eyes of their own constituencies. Enghel also calls for further research into such hybrid initiatives in order to determine the extent to which efforts aimed at ‘looking good’ are being prioritised at the expense of ‘doing good’.

In this context DSA is seeking papers which address the politics of the interplay between C4D and CAD, through the following questions:

• To what extent and in what forms do ‘hybrid’ C4D-CAD initiatives exist, at national, international and supranational scales?
• How are different conceptualisations of ‘the media’ and its effects understood within such hybrid initiatives?
• What institutional and political factors contribute to the apparent growth in projects aimed and ‘looking good’ and ‘doing good’?
• What contradictions are there between the politics of ‘doing good’ and of ‘looking good’?
• What are the potential consequences of the overlap of C4D and CAD for citizens’ communication rights at both ends of the donor-recipient equation?

• Find out more and submit a proposal here until 25 April.

Image: screenshot from nomadit.co.uk