REQUIRED READING: Disciplines in the Field of Communication for Development and Social Change

Rico Lie and Jan Servaes

Who are the authors of the article ?

non-thematic and thematic disciplines

The articles aim is to frame the current state-of-the-art of the field from a development practice-based and communication science discipline-based perspective by examining subdisciplines of Communication for Development and Social Change. What are the distinctions they came up with?

non-thematic subdisciplines

This distinction of the discipline covers a domain within communication science.

thematic subdisciplines

This distinction of the discipline covers a life science theme in the development sector.

1. Strategic

2. Participatory

3. Dev’t Journalism

4. Crisis

5. Risk

6. International

7. Online media and Internet studies

What are the 7 non-thematic subdisciplines?

1. Health

2. Agricultural Extension and Communication

3. Environmental

What are the 3 thematic subdisciplines?

Strategic communication

This subdiscipline deals with the organizational planning of communication and relates to persuasive communication, marketing, and public relations.

Strategic Communication

This involves stakeholder analysis, ,a risk analysis, a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis, setting objectives, identifying target audiences, developing key messages, and designing an effective communication plan.

Strategic Communication

This sub discipline, the field of development communication, is often applied in the thematic subdiscipline of health communication,but is not restricted to this subdiscipline only.

Participatory communication

Associated with the new multiplicity paradigm and builds on widely formulated critiques on linear, top–down, diffusionist and modernist perspectives on the one hand, and the thinking of Latin American scholars such as Augusto Boal, Jesús Martín-Barbero, Luis Ramiro Beltrán, and Paolo Freire on the other hand (see, for instance, Barranquero, 2011; Huesca, 2002).

Crisis communication and risk communication

The study of how government agencies and organizations assess and manage risk and crisis situations, and how they communicate the nature of a crisis to stakeholders and members of the public”

Crisis communication and risk communication

It involves:

1. assessment and management of risk and crisis situations, and

2. communication with the public.

Crisis communication and risk communication

Address all assessments, managements, and communications related to unexpected events that could have negative impacts.

Development Journalism

Often takes more critical, independent, and community-based stands. It exposes poverty worldwide and helps to research the causes, and how to address poverty in developing nations.

International communication

Deals with communication that crosses international borders (see, for instance, Thussu, 2014). It is sometimes explicitly connected to intercultural communication (Gudykunst & Mody, 2001) or to development communication (Mody, 2003), but in the majority of the cases this subdiscipline is mainly concerned with international media, global (tele-)communication infrastructures, international communication governance, policy making, and the political economy of global communication.

International communication

It mainly deals with development communication by addressing questions of communication infrastructures and telecommunications in or in relation to developing countries. It also addresses policy issues and the regulation of information flows in the global South.

Health communication

This subdiscipline communication seems to have a close link with social marketing and with the discipline of social psychology within the social sciences.

Theory of Planned Behaviour and the Elaboration Likelihood Model

What theories have a similar position within health communication

Health promotion

The branch within health communication that studies the persuasive use of communication messages and media to promote public health.

Agricultural extension

One of the oldest subdisciplines of development communication. It has a particular history within development communication, which started with centralizing concepts such as diffusions of innovations (Rogers, 1962) and knowledge and technology transfer (see, for instance, Chambers, Pacey, & Thrupp, 1989; Hancock, 1984).

Environment Communication

Addresses all interactions of humans with the environment and is a relatively new subdiscipline within communication science. This not only involves the management of the environment, but also the study of public opinion and perceptions.

Environmental communication

As within the other two subdisciplines, communication is often closely associated with education.

Communication for Development and Social Change

What does CDSC mean?