PARTH SHARMA

DEVELOPMENT
JOURNALISM
COMMUNICATIO
N AND
DEVELOPMENT
DEVELOPMENT JOURNALISM

THE PASSING OF TRADITIONAL SOCIETY ,

1958
▸ Communication as a tool to accelerate development
▸ According to Lerner: to overcome underdevelopment - substitute
traditional ways of thinking - by more modern ones- use mass media
to do so.
▸ Individuals as a key factor - social change
▸ Modernisation?
▸ Lerner argues that the Western model needs to be followed
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▸ Western model still provides the most developed model of societal

attributes ( power, wealth, skill, rationality)
▸ People and their search for better lives- change through direct
experience
▸ Physical mobility brings about social mobility - system of
bourgeois values - social change is then normal
▸ Lerner: mobile society has to encourage rationality - people look at
personal prospects in terms of achievement rather than heritage
▸ Increased urbanisation- increased media exposure
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▸ Essentials of western modernisation: mobile personalities.

(empathy) and mobility multipliers ( mass media)
▸ Middle East- Egypt, Iran ,Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and turkey
▸ What happened in the west over centuries, they are trying to do it
in years.
▸ “Catching up” with the media of their time became a slogan
▸ Acceleration of history: abrupt transformation of a single
generation
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MOBILE PERSON AND MOBILITY

▸ Mobile person: a high capacity for identification with new aspect
of his environment, he comes equipped with the mechanism
needed to incorporate new demands upon himself that arise outside
of his habitual experience.
▸ Empathy: the inner mechanism which enables newly mobile
persons to operate efficiently in a changing world. Empathy is the
capacity to see oneself in the other fellow's situation.
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▸ The transition needs adaptation to new roles- empathy then becomes

crucial to understand the environment
▸ Psychic mobility
▸ The main hypothesis of Lerner's theory is that "high empathic
capacity is the predominant personal style only in modern society,
which is distinctively industrial, urban, literate and participant“
▸ Media participation: buying newspapers, owning radios and
attending cinema
▸ High media engagement -spread of empathy -participation of social
sector = Participant society - modernisation
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FINAL NOTES ON LERNER

▸ The theory emphasises a high degree of structural differentiation
and specialisation
▸ Based on a capitalist mode of production
▸ Growth of rationality through bureaucratic systems
▸ Individualism
▸ Democratisation
POSITIVE
DEVIANCE
DEVELOPMENT JOURNALISM

APPROACHES TO DEVELOPMENT
▸ Development was always looked at through a “needs based
approach” - top down identification - external
▸ Asset based approach- bottom up- capitalise on internal assets and
knowledge
▸ Positive deviance is an example of asset based approach
▸ Positive deviance, 1976, Central America: low income families but
highly nourished children
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▸ Follows 5 core principles:

▸ The communities possess the solutions and expertise to best
address their own problems
▸ These communities are self-organising entities with sufficient
human resources and assets to derive solutions to communal
problems
▸ They possess a collective intelligence
▸ Find solutions based on sustainability
▸ Behaviour change is best achieved through practice and the act of
“doing
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APPLYING POSITIVE DEVIANCE

▸ Obtaining invitation from community for a problem that they have identified
▸ 4 Ds of Positive Deviance
▸ Define: 5Ws and H, stakeholders
▸ Determine: Identity the deviants
▸ Discover: Uncommon behaviour and assets
▸ Design: Strategy
▸ Discern: Effectiveness
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FACILITATOR: PD
▸ Patience
▸ Active listener
▸ Empathy
▸ Withhold personal expertise until asked for
▸ Effective communication