VIEWPOINT
DEVCOM MINDSET: ARE WE READY FOR IT?
Felix Librero
In December 2011, University of the Philippines Los Baũos (UPLB) Professor Emeritus Nora Quebral delivered a lecture on development communication at the London School of Economics, where she was awarded an honorary degree for her achievements in development communication. Her lecture was essentially a summary of the e-Book titled Development Communication Primer that was released in Penang, Malaysia by Southbound Publishing Company in January 2012. This Primer contains both Professor Quebral’s definitions of development communication in 1971 and in 2011, four decades apart.
In 1971, Professor Quebral said development communication was the “art and science of human communication applied to the speedy transformation of a country and the mass of its people from poverty to a dynamic state of economic growth that makes possible greater social equality and the larger fulfillment of the human potential” (Quebral, 1971). In December 2011, she said development communication was the “science of human communi-cation linked to the transitioning of communities from poverty in all its forms to a dynamic, overall
growth that fosters equity and the unfolding of individual potential” (Quebral, 2012).
These definitions are not drastically dissimilar. Perhaps the fine distinction between the two might be that in the new definition the unit of measure, as it were, is the individual, as in “individual potential,” while in the old definition the unit of measure was “humanity” as in the catch phrase “human potential,” which definitely was much more difficult to measure. Besides, in the new definition there appears to be a stronger and more definite role and function of communication in the process of achieving social development because “communication is linked” to the process of development, while in the old definition communication was merely “applied” to the transformation of society.
appears in mass communication or corporate communication activities and efforts.
What this is telling us is that the definition of development communication could change, as it has many times in the last four decades, usually depending on who the definer might be, or the context in which the definition is anchored. But, as a concept, development communication has not changed. If anything, it has strengthened as an academic discipline. The definition, in spite of what appears to be some differences, minor as they are, actually remains necessary because that is what definitions are for, as anchor for everybody to maintain their moorings to the concept. What does change is the manner in which the individual constructs the meaning he or she attaches to it and its processes, which become the basis for the development of a mindset. For example, in the early years of devcom, I personally considered devcom as a vocation, some kind of a calling. I still do, and I have, in fact, stuck to that mooring much more deeply as I have learned to view development phenomena from a more personal perspective.
In the decade of the sixties, development meant economic development. Then, beginning in the seventies and on to the eighties the social and even spiritual dimensions were added to the equation. From the largely economic development orientation in the sixties, devcom practitioners
in the succeeding decades became increasingly concerned with total human development. It was during this transformation that I internalized at least a little bit more confidently what devcom was, given the totality of my own experience and exposure to human conditions under varying circumstances that I did not experience earlier on.
During the first decade after the introduction of devcom, I was focused on economic development issues as a direct result of experience and was a bit detached from the realities of other social and psychological dimensions of the human development agenda during that time. This influenced my own personal concept of what communication could do as a variable in the development equation.
Concept of a Devcom
Mindset
Now, I am looking at devcom
as communication mindset
respond to and interpret a situation in order to be better prepared to pursue it through various means of communication.
In other words, we must be willing and prepared to pursue people’s development, whatever it takes. That phrase “whatever it takes”, however, must be tempered with creativity and rationality. You don’t just plunge without a clear understanding of the problems you are committed to help solve and a clear defensible course of action to take. You do things deliberately based largely on a scientific understanding of the problem situation.
For me personally, it has come to a point where when I look at an activity I get that feeling of connection where I can say “this is a devcom situation” or “this is not a devcom situation.” The first time the idea of devcom being mindset crossed my mind was in 2007 when I was speaking before participants of an international seminar on development communication at Kasetsart University in Bangkok (Librero, 2008). At that time I had considered devcom as mindset at a very crude stage.
The devcom mindset is a comprehensive psychological state that still defies a formal definition, but a situation heavily influenced by what has been accepted as the definition of development communication. It is a situation wherein one just knows when
he or she is doing development communication work. It’s a situation wherein you do things practically automatically without bothering about definitions. When you consciously go by definitions and sets of criteria in the business of the human development enterprise, you tend to do things more mechanically, which could even mean you may be less sincere and, therefore, less effective in the ultimate analysis.
Understanding the
Communication Contagion
The Concept of Contagion
Moving towards achieving a devcom mindset means that we need to gain a clearer understanding of what may be referred to as the communication contagion.
messages that affect behaviour (Burt, 1993; Contractor and Eisenberg, 1993). As a result of this exposure to this network, it is assumed that members would develop beliefs, assumptions, attitudes, and behaviour similar to those individual belonging to said networks (Carley & Kaufer, 1993).
Contagion theory, therefore, seeks to uncover the relationships among organizational members or members of the network. The significance of this relationship is that all members of the organization, the network if you will, are presumed to have similar levels of knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours. Under this condition, members of the communication organization or network would tend to influence one another into demonstrating similar levels of knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour.
Applying this conceptual framework to a communication situation, it is hereby proposed that when we communicate a specific message, there is always a focus for the communication act which is a product of the interaction among the major strategies of communication, of which we are not always mindful. This communication contagion is the influential interaction among different communication strategies (Librero, 2012) such as the development communication, mass communication, and corporate communication, which is to say that devcom, masscom, and corcom
are three major communication strategies that are being referred to.
In this article, mass
communication is referred to as generally focused on informing and entertaining the audience; that mass communication evolved through the practice of propaganda that further evolved into public opinion and public relations, which eventually influenced the development of the study of advertising. Mass communication essentially evolved from the practice of journalism and advertising.
Corporate communication, on the other hand, is generally focused on informing and convincing its audience – the stakeholders of the organization concerned. It evolved from public relations.
Development communication, finally, is generally focused on informing and educating its audience. Its roots may be traced back to agricultural journalism,
educational communication
technology, and advertising.
The fundamental parameter for this model is that the over-all purpose of communication is to achieve the end-goal of the specific communication strategy, as clarified earlier in the differentiation of mass communication, corporate communication, and development communication.
The reference to these three communication strategies (masscom, corcom, devcom), is not incidental but by design. Each of masscom, corcom, and devcom has its own definition and follows specific sets of processes and procedures in order to achieve specific purposes. However, features, characteristics,
Figure 1
The Devcom-Corcom-Masscom (D-C-M) Contagion.
Education Journalism Propaganda
Public Opinion Public Relations AVCom Ag. Journ.
Educ’l.
Media
EdComTech
Advertising
MASSCOM (generally, to inform
and entertain)
DEVCOM (generally to
inform and
educate) (generally to inform CORCOM and convince)
END-GOAL OF COMMUNICATION STRATEGY (Masscom; Devcom; Corcom) Communication
Contagion
NOTES:
Corcom and Devcom have become independent of and more purposive than Masscom Masscom is slowly being overtaken by Mediacom.
The broken lines indicate ‘direction of influence’
Everything operates within the ambit of human communication
procedures, processes, tools, and even general measurements of success are not mutually exclusive among these three. It is more of a zero-sum game such that when you highlight devcom, you would correspondingly lessen references to masscom and corcom; when you highlight corporate communication,
you correspondingly lessen
references to masscom and devcom; and when you highlight focus on masscom, you correspondingly lessen references to devcom and corcom. That is what the contagion is about.
Blurring of the Boundaries
These various focuses are governed largely by the initial intention of the communication act. This communication contagion refers to the situation whereby each of masscom, corcom, and devcom interact with and influence one another in order to achieve the end-goal of the communication act, or the communication strategy’s end-goals. In the past, we have been clearly emphatic in our efforts to pursue specific intentions for mass communication, or corporate communication, or development communication. Today, that seems to no longer the case.While we can always initially say that we will do development communication, for example, in actual practice we would be
employing the methods and tools that are also methods and tools of both masscom and corcom. The result is a blurring of the boundaries among the three strategies. They are differentiated only by the context in which they are undertaken, but they use similar procedures and similar tools, using similar measures of success or failure. The difference lies mainly in the focus of intention or context.
In order to facilitate the achievement of the objectives of, say, devcom, the communicator could use entertainment as one of the techniques of making content more palatable to and enjoyable for the target audience. The same thing happens in the case of corporate communication or mass communication.
Need for Systems Thinking
to Achieve Devcom Mindset
There is a powerful concept that could easily galvanize the idea of devcom mindset, and this is systems thinking. Systems thinking, according to Peter Senge (1990), is a “conceptual framework, a body of knowledge and tools that have been developed over the last fifty years, to make the full patterns clearer, and to help us see how to change them effectively.”We may have varied ways of looking at things and would, therefore, work out mentally our individual approaches to certain phenomena. In the process of doing this, we go by our training and even gut feel, which would include but not limited to becoming generally reductionist in our perspective. We may have become used to thinking linearly all the time such that any time we deal with a problematic situation our approach would generally be linear. Indeed, when the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to look at problems as nails. Systems thinking is a powerful perspective, which includes a set of tools that one can use in addressing stubborn problems in life (Pegasus Communication, n.d.). It encourages you to “step back and see the whole picture, rather than focusing on just its parts” (Lyneis, 1995). In
other words, systems thinking helps us explore the interdependencies among the elements of a system in order to uncover patterns rather than simply memorizing isolated facts.
In a simpler way, systems thinking refers to our ability to understand and explain the causal interrelationships of various entities affecting our focus of interest. When this becomes second nature to us, then we tend to look at problems in their more complex nature thereby enabling us to see significant events that are not always easy to see.
As we talk of development communication, therefore, we become more interested in understanding the elements of development itself and the elements of effective human communication and how these affect one another.
in which communicators shall formulate a plan to promote said development efforts in the same community. In other words, in a simple one-on-one relationship, we can say that each influences the other. When there are multiple variables, such as in cases where there are multiple development programs and multiple sets of beneficiaries, each one affecting the other, then we must be able to develop in our minds a quick picture of these vast network of relationships. We should be able to generate in our minds a clear picture of how factors associated with the problem situation and determine how these factors interact, and what those interactions could result in. We should, as a consequence, immediately be able to generate a quick communication reaction plan to deal with the second generation situation. Naturally, under these circumstances, we should, at the same time, arrive quickly at potential effects of our communication actions so that we could also generate some kind of plan to respond to such reactions. This is what happens when we have developed some mastery of systems thinking.
Concluding Statement
I wish to encourage the reader to refer back to the communication
contagion. There is more here than simply meets the eye. We need to do more serious clarification and explanation of the blurring boundaries of the various communication strategies.
Today, we find ourselves confronted with a situation where the boundaries between general communication approaches have become blurred. Increasingly, these boundaries are becoming unclear mainly because these communication approaches or strategies are now using the same tools and procedures to achieve practically similar end-goals. The newer technologies of communication are making this happen quickly, but I would hasten to add that this phenomenon becomes much more easily understood if we look at it from the lens of systems thinking.
There is a need to clarify the blurring boundaries as well. Now, if we can not identify and explain the blurring of boundaries among the communication strategies, would that mean we would be converging on the single concept of the human communication enterprise where there would no longer be any differentiation between mass communication,
development communication,
References
Burt, Ronald S. (1993). Structural holes. The Social Structure of Competition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Carley, Kathleen M. and David S. Kaufer. (1993). Semantic connectivity: an approach for analyzing symbols in semantic networks. Communication Theory, 3:183-213.
Chaffee, Steven H. and Miriam J. Metzger. (2001). The end of mass communication? Mass Communication and Society, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Contractor, Noshir S. and Eric M. Eisenberg. (1990). Communication networks and new media in organizations. In J. Fulk and C.W. Steinfield (Eds.). Organizations and Communication Technology. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE. pp. 143-172.
Defining Corporate Communication. http://www.uk.sagepub.com
Librero, Felix. (2012). Understanding the Devcom-Corcom-Masscom Contagion. Discussion paper presented in the Training Program for the ADB’s Department of “External Relations Staff with the theme Integrating development communication in ADB Projects, October 10-11, 2012, ADB Headquarters, Ortigas Center, Pasig City, Philippines.
Librero, Felix. (2008). Quo vadis, development communication? (thoughts on the practice of devcom in a knowledge society). Original version was presented in an International Seminar on Development Communication, Kasetsart University, Bangkok, Septermber 2007. This version appeared in the Maiden Issue of The Philippine Journal of Development Communication, 2008.
Lyneis, Debra. (1995). Systems thinking “in 25 words or less.” Retrieved from www.clexchange.org/ftp/documents/whyk/12sd/Y_1995-08STIn25WordsOrLess.pdf Mosco, Vincent. (nd). Mass communication.
http://www.uk.sagepub.com Systems thinking. Retrieved from
www.pegasuscom.com/systems-thinking.html
Quebral, Nora C. (1971). Development communication in the agricultural context. Paper presented at the symposium on the theme “In Search of Breakthroughs in Agriculltural Development in honor of Dr. Dioscoro L. Umali, College, Laguna, Philippines, 9-10 December.
Senge, Peter M. (1991). The Fifth Discipline, The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. New York: Doubleday.
Steyn, Benita. (2002) From “Strategy” to Corporate Communication Strategy”:
A conceptualization. Paper delivered at the 9th International Public Relations Research Symposium, Lake Bled, 4-7 July.
