from The Communication Initiative...global forces...local choices...critical voices...telling stories...
Subscribe to The Drum Beat: click here!
===
This issue of The Drum Beat features a small selection of summaries available on The Communication Initiative website from two of our knowledge sections - Strategic Thinking and Trends - which illustrate how communication and media are contributing to positive development action, around the world.
If you would like your organisation's communication work or research and resource documents to be featured on The CI websites and in The Drum Beat newsletters, please contact Deborah Heimann dheimann@comminit.com
===
1. Tackling Social Exclusion in Health and Education
by Janet Gardener and Ramya Subrahmanian
This paper draws on case studies from Nepal, Bangladesh, and India to identify ways of tackling social exclusion through promising practices in health and education in the Asia region. The objective of this study was to accelerate progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for primary education and infant/child mortality by looking at educational and women's health delivery systems. The paper examines processes through which ethnic minorities, disadvantaged castes, the ultra-[economically] poor, women, and migrants have been excluded. It then outlines several ways to realign incentives for greater inclusion and draws programmatic lessons for the design and implementation of more effective responses. For example, community participation and ownership can change exclusionary patterns, and social marketing of health care systems and client-centred services can build trust in existing systems accessible to excluded populations.
2. Pope Says Dialogue Can Help End Terrorism, War, Religious Strife
by John Thavis
Published by the Catholic News Service, this article describes one strategy for resolving conflict around the world: what the author describes as "authentic dialogue and debate" in which religious leaders play a key role. John Thavis details a 4-day pilgrimage undertaken in November 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI, during which time he spoke to international diplomats, stressing that dialogue can build "ecumenical and interreligious bridges" in places where there are a variety of cultures and religions. Respectful, honest, and open communication, he indicates, can bring together diverse groups such as Christians and Muslims. Such a strategy, according to the Pope, might facilitate the involvement of religions in addressing conflict, particularly in the context of what Thavis describes as "a time of rapid technological change."
3. Five Myths about the HIV Epidemic in Asia
by Peter Godwin, Nigel O'Farrell, Knut Fylkesnes, and Sujaya Misra
This essay shares the perspective of implementers who have worked with HIV/AIDS programmes in several countries in the region - personnel who "are concerned...about a number of misinformed beliefs, or myths, about the epidemic - myths that are widely circulating in Asia, disseminated in both public and professional discourse, and often dominating policy and political debate." They explore 5 such myths, suggesting areas of policy related to each one that they feel need attention in order to guide focused, coherent, evidence-based HIV/AIDS programming in Asia and the Pacific.
4. On Collaboration: How Do We Communicate with Thee?
by Jim Ware and Charlie Grantham
This article discusses 3 primary kinds of communication tools - voice, text, and video - noting that: telephone technology is a common and familiar collaborative tool; text is widely used for its "forethought" feature and for a possible "simultaneous" connection with a widespread work group or set of groups, and now, with wireless and cellphone technology, for its portability; and video is still less accepted, but facing growth possibilities. Based on this overview, the authors suggest asking which medium fits the message. They also note that an etiquette would help deal with the overload of asynchronous messages, but acknowledge that individuals need daily "think" time in which they are not available to anyone.
5. Sexual Development, Social Oppression, and Local Culture
by Gilbert Herdt
This paper explores the role of social oppression in the development of young people's sexuality. Gilbert Herdt delineates a new research and policy framework to understand how "structural violence" resulting from poverty, racism, heterosexism, religious persecution and anti-Semitism, homophobia and anti-gay violence, the diaspora of transgender people, xenophobic bias against immigrants, ageism, and discrimination against individuals with disabilities impacts young people's sexuality. Herdt's key conclusion is that by, taking into account cultural and social factors impacting sexuality in health communication research, policymaking, and programming, "we can increase the sense of inclusion and belonging...by creating, through the best research and thoughtful social policies, the means for people to achieve a better voice in their own sexual and social development and destinies."
===
Please VOTE in our current POLL:
The highest priority Development focus should be:
- Advancing democracy
- Effective HIV/AIDS action
- Real anti-poverty progress
- Removing trade barriers
- Investing in local analysis and action
- Improved agency coordination
- Reducing corruption
- Other
VOTE by clicking here.
===
6. Media Should Help in the Fight Against Negative Propaganda
This article details some of the actions taken by Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) provincial Health Department, in collaboration with the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO), to eradicate polio during the January 16-18 2006 polio campaign throughout the province. Journalists were asked to spur people to vaccinate their children by raising awareness about the importance of the polio vaccine. The government and health officials also held meetings with district coordination officers, political agents, and prayer leaders to help dispel negative myths about the polio vaccine.
7. German Project Approaches Sex Education from a Different Angle
A German bank-funded project initiated in Viet Nam drew on peer educator approaches, participatory club models, visual arts, films, songs, stories, and theatre in order to improve the knowledge of youth and the quality of information about reproductive health and advisory and health services available to them. According to student activist and peer educator Vu Kim Dung, "All activities of the project were based on the real demands of adolescents and young people in both urban and rural Viet Nam."
8. Summary Results of GKP Consultation with Practitioners for the 10th Inter-Agency Round Table on Communication for Development
by James Deane
This report summarises the results of a consultation that the Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) carried out with communication for development (C4D) practitioners in January 2007 for presentation at the 10th United Nations (UN) Round Table on C4D in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. C4D is a concept rooted in the role of communication in enabling participation and exercising voice. The gist of the consultation feedback seems to be that C4D practitioners welcome UN engagement in this field and feel that it has an important role to play - in many realms (e.g., advocacy) and at many levels (e.g., nationally and internationally). While potentially very potent and positive, increased coordination in the C4D arena on the part of the UN carries the risk, many respondents noted, of stifling innovation, empowerment, and pluralism - in large part because the UN system works principally in support of and in partnership with government.
9. Fostering and Enabling Legal and Policy Environments for Sex Worker Health and Rights
This report synthesises presentations, debates, insights, and action points from a June 2006 meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, which was convened in an effort to advance sex workers' health and rights. Participants sought to map, by sharing on-the-ground knowledge, key laws governing prostitution and sex work globally and to assess how these regulations might impact sex workers' health and rights. Networking and participation were identified as key strategies for sex workers, allied communities, donors, and others seeking to: forge a common understanding of key health and social justice issues; identify common goals and priorities; and mobilise around targeted advocacy campaigns to achieve sex workers' health and rights. To make this possible, "[r]egular and well-coordinated communication between local and international allies is needed to ensure that the latter are engaged in a strategic and productive manner, and that they grasp the nuances of the local struggle at hand."
===
Access all information on the issues you choose through a Theme Site on The CI website by clicking on the tag labeled "Theme Sites" at the top of each page on the site, or by directly visiting these URLs:
===
10. The New Arab Conversation
by Gal Beckerman
According to this article, the summer of 2006 was "a watershed moment for the Middle Eastern blogosphere. The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah not only brought attention to the many different Arab conversations that had taken place on homemade Web sites in the past two or three years, but also launched thousands more of them. And they were more than just a handful of aberrant voices. They reflected a new culture of openness, dialogue, and questioning..." Gal Beckerman spotlights the increasing use of blogs - especially among young people - in the Middle East, which is opening up these societies, building bridges between people, and possibly sowing the seeds of political action. "To hear the bloggers themselves describe it, blogging has taken off in the Arab world because it presents an opportunity to reclaim individuality. In a region where leaders...claim to speak on behalf of all Arabs, a blog is a chance to contradict, to undermine, and to assert" - an opportunity described by one blogger quoted here as "something you don't always find in Lebanese media".
11. Dialing for Health in Africa
by Manasee Wagh
This article explores trends in the use of mobile phones as a strategy for tracking epidemics such as HIV/AIDS and for facilitating the provision of health care, with a focus on Rwanda. Since about 60% of the population of Africa lives in areas with mobile phone coverage (a figure the author predicts will climb to 85% by 2010), mobile telephony appears to be a promising direction on this continent for "supporting the development of a national health information system". These are the words of an official from the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), one of the organisations taking part in the Phones-for-Health partnership. By using mobile phones and software developed for the project, medical clinics in Rwanda will communicate patient information, order medicine, and receive treatment information.
12. Online Newspaper Audience Sets Records in First Quarter
This news release provides a summary of, data from, and links to further information about a report detailing the extent to which people in the United States are reading newspapers online. An analysis provided by Nielsen/NetRatings for the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) indicates a trend away from reading of the printed format of the newspaper, and toward online viewing. For instance, in the first quarter of 2007, more than 59 million people (37.6% of all active internet users) visited newspaper websites on average, a record number that represents a 5.3% increase over the same period a year ago; this created a collective 3 billion page views a month. Another finding was that users continue to increase the amount of time they spend on newspaper websites.
13. Foundation With Real Money Ventures Into Virtual World
by Stephanie Strom
This piece explores the way in which an online game network called "Second Life" is increasingly being used to gain insight into how virtual processes can stimulate discussion amongst young people about development issues, and to spur philanthropy. Built and owned by its users, this 3-D virtual world is "has grown explosively" since 2003 "and today is inhabited by a total of 7,450,830 people from around the globe." Reportedly, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is sponsoring events in Second Life in an effort to gain insight into how virtual worlds are used by young people, to introduce the foundation to an audience that may have little exposure to institutional philanthropy, and to take part in and stimulate discussions about the real-world issues that it seeks to address. Nonprofit groups are also beginning to migrate into the so-called "metaverse"; for example, the United Kingdom (UK)-based Adventure Ecology staged a virtual flood in Second Life to show what global warming might bring, and a psychiatry professor at the University of California, Davis (in the United States) created a way, in Second Life, for his students to experience what a person with schizophrenic hallucinations lives through.
14. Mobile Phones and Social Activism: Why Cell Phones May Be the Most Important Technical Innovation of the Decade
by Ethan Zuckerman
This article traces trends in the use of the mobile phone around the world as an "activist technology". Zuckerman suggests that "[t]he only technology that compares to the mobile phone in terms of pervasiveness and accessibility in the developing world is the radio. Indeed, considered together, radios and mobile phones can serve as a broad-distribution, participatory media network with some of the same citizen-media dynamics of the Internet, but accessible to a much wider, and non-literate audience." He cites Interactive Radio for Justice, a participatory radio show in the Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DMC) that uses short message service (SMS) to enable listeners to ask questions about justice and human rights to a panel of Congolese and United Nations (UN) officials, who answer questions over the air. As Zuckerman explains it, the producers ask callers not to identify themselves for fear that some pointed questions may lead to retribution. As suggested by this example, "the anonymity of mobile phones is one of the key reasons they've been so useful to activists".
15. Facts about Newspapers in 2007...Not the Myths
by Gavin O'Reilly
"The chorus of disapproval for newspapers is certainly a global trend these days...But their views are belied by the facts about the relevance, vibrancy and future vitality of newspapers in this fast-growing digital age." Gavin O'Reilly argues that newspapers are very much alive and growing. For instance, according to World Association of Newspapers (WAN)'s "World Press Trends 2006" (which was updated in February 2007), the global circulation of paid-for dailies increased by 1.9% in 2006 (amounting to 510.4 million subscribers). The presentation also indicates rapid growth in free dailies across all regions. O'Reilly explains these trends by noting that newspapers have benefits like being portable, convenient as to time and place, engendering loyalty to a title (not a medium), accessible worldwide (off- or online), disposable, content-rich, non-perishable, review-able, and cheap to consume. The author suggests that "newspapers are continuing to focus on doing what they do best...local, local, local..."
16. Young Women Dominate UK Net Scene
According to this article, Nielsen/NetRatings indicate that women in the 18-34 age group are now the most dominant group online in the UK. They account for 18% of all online Britons, and also spend the most time online - accounting for 27% more of the total UK computer time than men in their age group. Those asked to comment on these findings indicate that this trend represents a "seismic shift". As indicated here, figures from the Entertainment Software Association suggest that, even in the traditionally male-dominated world of gaming, women now account for 38% of game players. Women over 18 represent a significantly greater portion of game players compared to boys under 17.
===
The Drum Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.
Please send material for The Drum Beat to the Editor - Deborah Heimann dheimann@comminit.com
To reproduce any portion of The Drum Beat, see our policy.
To subscribe, click here.
To unsubscribe, reply to this message with "unsubscribe" as the subject.