Part 2: A changing communication environment (from the Background Paper for Communication for Development Roundtable)

Although communication technologies have dominated the discourse around recent developments in information and communications, there have been equally rapid and fundamental change in the wider communication environment in which most communication initiatives operate, particularly regarding new technologies and the media. There are perhaps seven key trends, some of them contradictory, which have emerged over the last decade and particularly over the last five years:

• New technologies, principally in the form of the internet as well as mobile telecommunications, are creating major new opportunities for disseminating information, networking, amplifying marginalised voices and for creating synergies between new and old media. The potential of allying the power of the internet with the reach of radio offers particularly strong opportunities to create more knowledge based societies. New technologies are creating much more information based, increasingly horizontally networked and highly complex communications environments. They are leading to increasing information saturation for those who are connected, but also potentially major new forms of information (and therefore political and economic) exclusion for those who are not.
  
  
• Media Liberalisation: A major liberalisation and opening up of the media in much of the developing world, particularly Africa, transforming both print and broadcast media from a largely government owned, monopolistic and uncreative media environment to a more dynamic, popular, democratic, creative and complex one. The print media have, despite their sometimes limited readership, played a critical role in providing increased internal scrutiny of governments, and a free press has become increasingly regarded as a precondition for effective and sustainable development and good governance. The number of print titles in many countries has increased rapidly, and while many of these rise and fall rapidly, particularly during election periods, many have been able to sustain themselves both financially and retain a genuine political independence from government.
  
  The broadcast media have also been transformed in many countries, with competition ushering in a new environment of choice and creativity in programming, with many new private and community radio and (to a lesser extent) television stations rapidly establishing audience dominance over old state run broadcasting systems. Private radio stations, while often criticised for relying heavily on formulaic, music based programming, have also been praised for the opportunities they are providing for on-air discussions and for creating important new spaces for genuinely public debate.
  
  This new environment has also created opportunities for the more rapid emergence of a community based media, although new regulatory environments in several countries have proved unsupportive to the development of genuine community media movements... Satellite broadcasting of television, and more recently in digital radio, is adding a further layer to an increasingly complex media environment.
  
  
• Consumerism: Liberalisation has led not only to greater media freedoms, but also to the emergence of an increasingly consumer led, business oriented, advertising driven and urban centred communication infrastructure, one that is arguably less and less interested in the concerns of the poor, and in the case of broadcast media, decreasingly interested in providing news and information to its audiences.
  
• State run broadcasting systems have found it difficult to transform themselves into public broadcasting entities and are generally in decline, with a concomitant decline in language programming and the lack of strong and relevant programming of most concern to rural people. In the case of print media, journalists are finding it increasingly difficult to secure editorial space and resources to report on issues of most concern to the poor, and particularly to travel to rural areas, and there are in many cases fewer and fewer journalists who are interested in doing so.
  
  This is arguably leading to an increasing "invisibility" of the poor, and poverty related issues, in public and political debate. The print media in many countries are also becoming increasingly "localised" and national in their outlook and editors are reporting less and less interest in international stories, particularly stories from other parts of the developing world.
  
  The advertising driven nature of the media is also leading to highly sexualised, stereotypical images and messages around the role of women in society, images that have long been criticised in the North but are far more pervasive within many developing countries as a result of liberalisation.
  
  
• Media Freedom and freedom of expression: Media freedoms have been hard won and fought for but remain under constant threat in many countries. New international networks have emerged to help protect media freedoms and donors have increasingly made their support conditional on governments guaranteeing free media. New technologies have made censorship and state control of information far more difficult. While there has been a general global trend towards much greater media freedom, sometimes this trend has been confined largely to urban metropolitan middle classes rather than the population as a whole.
  
  
• Globalisation and transnational ownership of the media is resulting in an increasing concentration of ownership of media and communications organisations internationally, with increasing numbers of mainstream developing country media institutions being bought by trans-national conglomerates. For most Southern based media, reliance on Northern based news sources for international news has grown rather than diminished and, with the exception of internet based news services, the number of independent southern based news and information sources has decreased, and the degree of regional reporting - and consequently of public understanding of events and attitudes in neighbouring countries - has declined.
  
  
• Women continue to suffer marginalisation in and from communication networks, and evidence of the scale of sexual harassment and discrimination within the media itself in Africa (and elsewhere) is growing. When in 1995, UNESCO sponsored a global media monitoring project to explore the representation of women in 71 countries, it found that women made up just 17 per cent of all interviewees in the news world-wide. Women interviewees were much more likely to be lay voices, even on topics which were very woman-focussed. Male interviewees were more typically interviewed as voices of authority. 29% of all female interviewees were portrayed as victims of crime or accidents, compared with just 10% of male interviewees. A follow-up world-wide study in 2000 has found similar results and these are relatively consistent across regions. Similar findings have been repeated in many national studies. A further twist in the story is the split in news coverage between urban and rural concerns - the latter receiving comparatively little attention. In one Kenyan study, rural women featured in a tiny fraction of news coverage and a striking 76% of rural women who appeared in the media were portrayed as criminals or victims.
  
  
• Media and conflict: The media continue to play a critical role in relation to the fuelling, and sometimes in the alleviation, of regional tensions and conflict. Nationalistic, sensational and ill-informed (or misinforming) media remains a major problem in some countries, and is making a major contribution to inciting public resentment, hatred and intolerance to neighbouring countries, migrant communities or particular minorities.