This issue of The Drum Beat features a small selection of summaries available on The Communication Initiative website from 2 of our knowledge sections - Strategic Thinking and Trends - which illustrate how communication and media are contributing to positive development action, around the world.

Please send additional project, evaluation, strategic thinking, and materials information on communication for development at any time. Contact Deborah Heimann at dheimann@comminit.com

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The Drum Beat 465 contains:

• New e-magazine: Subscribe to C-CHANGE PICKS.
• Become a CI ASSOCIATE.
• Selections from our STRATEGIC THINKING section.
• New DEVELOPMENT CLASSIFIEDS from The CI.
• Call for stories of IDRC-related IMPACT.
• Selections from our TRENDS section.
• New Theme Site with a focus on MEDIA DEVELOPMENT .

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STRATEGIC THINKING

1. Promising Practices to Protect Children From the Increasing Power of Big Media

by Jacques Brodeur

This chapter of the publication Censored2008, from Media Democracy in Action, discusses strategies to oppose what the article characterises as "child-abusing techniques used by the marketing industry" in their promotion of violent entertainment to children and teens. The author argues that the increasing influence of the media on public opinion has diminished decision-makers' power to regulate television for children. In this context, the "handful of conglomerates now control[ing] 85 percent of the media" decide what and how both programming and advertising will be presented to children; this should, according to the author, inspire resistance in parents, teachers, child rights advocates, and citizens. The aim of the article is to present some underreported promising practices from the United States (US) and Canada to counter the presence of violence in children's media.

2. Left Out of the Climate Communication Loop

by Rod Harbinson

In this commentary, the head of the Panos London environment programme, Rod Harbinson, places the international findings and discussions surrounding the United Nations (UN) Environmental Summit 2007, in Bali, Indonesia, into a context of local climate change news in the developing world. For example, the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report (a culmination of the previous 5 years of scientific findings) states that it is people in the global South who are likely to suffer most from climate change. Harbinson juxtaposes this information with the local news situation for farmers in rural Madagascar, where people live far away from the sphere of influence of central government but want to be heard by those who make decisions and those able to offer support and agricultural knowledge.

3. How Can Agricultural Extension Best Harness ICTs to Improve Rural Livelihoods in Developing Countries

by Don Richardson

This article points out that agricultural extension systems are involved with "new actors" who are seeking to provide rural communities with a variety of information and services related to health, education, the environment, product marketing, and telecommunications. The author suggests that extension services may have a role in addressing the constraints of those involved in agriculture, particularly the rural economically poor, as information and communication technology (ICT) opportunities and infrastructure evolve in rural locations. "Various forces are at work to change agricultural extension from a process of technology transfer (research institution to farmer) to a process of facilitating a wide range of communication, information, and advocacy services (demand-driven, pluralistic, and decentralized extension)."

4. Young Men and the Construction of Masculinity in Sub-Saharan Africa: Implications for HIV/AIDS, Conflict, and Violence

by Gary Barker and Christine Ricardo

This working paper from the World Bank explores what a gender perspective means when applied to young men in Africa, particularly as it relates to HIV/AIDS, conflict, and violence, and explores the construction of manhood in Africa. It states that gender is increasingly used as an analytical framework in World Bank programmes and in policy development related to youth. The authors contend that both a gender perspective and the mainstream conceptualisation of gender have too often ignored the role of gender in the lives of men and boys, and often exclusively refer to the disadvantages that women and girls face. According to the authors, two of the most pressing social issues in Africa - conflict and post-conflict recovery, and HIV/AIDS - are directly related to how masculinities are socially constructed.

5. Media and Elections/Governance

by Deborah Walter (ed.)

This section of the fourth edition of the Gender and Media Diversity Journal, published by the Gender and Media Diversity Centre, explores issues related to elections and governance, including: paradoxical images of women in the post-election media coverage in Kenya; the relationship of women, politics, and the media through the lens of an analysis of the role of women's activism in Zimbabwe; and the position and image of Russian women in the Russian mass media.

6. South Africa's Experience of the Closure of the Cellulose Sulphate Microbicide Trial

by Gita Ramjee, Roshini Govinden, and Neetha S. Morar

This article discusses the experience of a medical team closing a medical trial that examined the potential of a microbicide to prevent HIV transmission due to the unexpected result that those in the trial group had a higher rate of infection than those in the placebo group. A major challenge, according to the researchers, is informing people that the effectiveness of an intervention can be assessed only by measuring new HIV infections, and that people will become infected regardless of the intervention being tested. Despite attempts to be proactive in disseminating correct information, inaccurate and sensational stories, as stated here, appeared in local and national papers, including local language newspapers. One recommendation shared here is to ensure regular communication between sponsors, investigators, and regulatory bodies, who should prepare - in advance - community-friendly communication strategies based on all possible outcomes of a trial.

7. Environmental Communications Assessment: A Framework of Analysis for the Environmental Governance

by Emanuele Santi and Lucia Grenna

This document addresses the preliminary development of environmental communication planning through an assessment and analysis framework. From the abstract: "This framework consists of two components: 1) the situation and stakeholder analysis; and 2) the core communications analysis. The latter looks at (i) the socio-political context; (ii) the possible "sender" of the communication program; (iii) the receiver(s), intended as the group(s) in need of information and whose awareness, attitude, or behavior may need to be changed for the environmental initiative to succeed; and finally the (iv) the channels of communications which are most effective in reaching the above groups...."

8. Working Toward Evidence-Based Process: Evaluation That Matters

by Ailish Byrne

Informed by recent evaluation literature and the author's experience, this paper highlights the challenges - and the potential - of more inclusive, educational, and empowering approaches to the evaluation of social development and communication for social change processes and projects. The author focuses here not on how to evaluate these processes but, rather, on the underlying questions and assumptions that shape how this type of evaluation is carried out and that provide insight as to what its value is. In short, Byrne offers a framework for the evaluation of communication for social change, in the broader context of participatory development.

9 . Improving the Education Response to HIV and AIDS: Lessons of Partner Efforts in Coordination, Harmonisation, Alignment, Information Sharing and Monitoring in Jamaica, Kenya, Thailand and Zambia

This report, from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS)'s Inter-Agency Task Team (IATT) on Education, synthesises case study exercises undertaken to examine the quality, effectiveness, and coordination of the education sector's response to the HIV epidemic in 4 countries: Jamaica, Kenya, Thailand, and Zambia. In each country, stakeholders assessed: critical achievements and gaps in the education sector response to HIV and AIDS; the evolution and effectiveness of coordination mechanisms and structures; progress toward harmonisation and alignment; information-sharing on HIV and AIDS and education; key resources for the response; and monitoring and evaluation.

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DEVELOPMENT CLASSIFIEDS

Development Classifieds is a NEW initiative of The Communication Initiative which includes listings of any development-related jobs, consultants, requests for proposals (RFPs), events, training opportunities, and books, journals, or videos for sale. Please click here.

The next issue of the Development Classifieds E-magazine will be published November 5th 2008.

Please submit open vacancies from within your organisation, event information, training opportunities, upcoming RFPs, details about your consultancy skills, and information about books, journals, or videos for sale as soon as possible to ensure inclusion.

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Call for Examples of Impacts of IDRC-supported Research

IDRC will celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2010. To mark the occasion, they want to document and write stories about some of the projects and activities supported by IDRC since its creation that have had and continue to have an impact — that have improved people's lives.

From disease-resistant banana varieties to health system improvements that reduced rates of death and illness, IDRC would like you to share with them examples of how IDRC-supported research has made a difference. The goal is to show the range of work IDRC supports and has supported and the real impact it has had - and continues to have - on the lives of real people around the world.

Contact:

Lasting Impacts c/o Michelle Hibler

International Development Research Centre

PO Box 8500 Ottawa, ON, Canada K1G 3H9

impacts@idrc.ca

Deadline: December 15 2008

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TRENDS

10. Half of World's Population Has a Mobile

This article reports on data from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) concerning mobile phone use and high-speed broadband internet technology. According to the ITU:

* The number of mobile phone users worldwide was over 3.3 billion at the end of 2007, equivalent to a penetration rate of 49 percent. The global annual average growth rate stood at 22 percent.

* Africa showed the strongest gains in 2006-2007.

* More than two-thirds of all mobile subscribers were from developing countries by the end of 2007.

11. Media and Risky Behaviors

by Soledad Liliana Escobar-Chaves and Craig A. Anderson

This article investigates the relationship between the fact that United States (US) youth are spending increasing amounts of time using electronic media and that they are engaging in 5 types of adolescent health risk behaviours identified by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) - obesity, smoking, drinking, sexual risk taking, and violence. "Researchers, they say, have found modest evidence that media consumption contributes to the problem of obesity, modest to strong evidence that it contributes to drinking and smoking, and strong evidence that it contributes to violence." The document reviews studies of both television and film violence.

12. The Wisdom of Patients: Health Care Meets Online Social Media

by Jane Sarasohn-Kahn

This document addresses the function of internet-based social media as a source of emotional support for patients and as a source of information to help them manage health conditions. As the internet has moved from being an information-based resource to being a commons for generating and sharing content in and beyond social networks, this document contends that a new movement, labelled "Health 2.0", has arisen, and that it challenges the notion that health care happens only in a patient-doctor relationship. It suggests that collaborations online are changing the way patients, providers, and researchers learn about therapeutic regimens and disease management.

13. Goodbye to Freedom?

This survey of media freedom investigates the relationships between the media and governments across Europe. The country reports indicate the following: violence and intimidation of journalists and editors; criminal prosecution of journalists using secrecy or defamation laws and court orders to reveal sources of information; political influence in public broadcasting; media ownership by powerful business interests with political ties; exploitation of journalists through job insecurity; and media "wars" of words with those in political power, some of whom are trying to influence the media while others are trying to vilify them.

14. The Access Road

This ICTUpdate article describes a communication system that links internet kiosks in rural communities near Kigali, Rwanda - and in India, Paraguay, and Cambodia - with a hub computer system that can provide the communities with reliable internet access. The new technological link, DakNet, creates Village Area Networks (VAN) of 10 or fewer kiosk computers through a Mobile Access Point (MAP), a small box which can be placed inside any vehicle - on a bus, inside a car, or on the back of a motorbike - to collect data through a Wi-Fi antenna attached to the village kiosk computer up to 500 metres from the road. As the vehicle completes its circuit from village to village, it automatically forwards the collected information to the hub system, which then sends the messages. Simultaneously, the device receives stored replies to distribute on the same route.

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NEW CI THEME SITE

Media Development

...where media rights, freedoms, capacities, and diversity are central to humanity...

This is a new space, developed in collaboration and with support from CI Partner Panos London, which includes recent media and media development initiatives including programme activities, awards, evaluation and research results, networks, books and other materials, planning ideas, change theories, and other information recently placed on The Communication Initiative website.

Please visit the new Media Development Theme Site, click here.

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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

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