the lifeblood of communities indeed
societies and for the last 20 years I
have practiced how to gather information
to inform and to evaluate median
communications interventions designed to
bring about social change particularly
in the international development sector
this is included multi media campaigns
short and long format programming radio
and television dramas all designed to
shift levels of knowledge attitudes
behaviors and social norms around a
range of issues from gender Human Rights
Health governance and education and I
use the term practice very deliberately
because I often find myself drawing on
theories and methods that were derived
in judeo-christian cultures and applying
them in contexts that are very very
different a conductor this work from
Papua New Guinea to Pakistan from Malawi
to Myanmar and this evening as we
imagine the next century I invite you to
reflect on three considerations about a
culture in a society where ideas and
creativity are nurtured the three ideas
are first of all the value of insight
secondly innovation and the folly of
silos and thirdly assumptions about how
change happens in each case I will draw
on the work of people that I’ve learned
from I will give examples of how I’m
applying those considerations in my own
work and then finally pose a number of
questions for the next century in 1980
new loaf Whelan was one of the first
professors at DCU and I learned a lot
from Nuala Nuala was a writer a teacher
a TV producer is perhaps best well known
internationally for her memoirs are you
somebody
and I remember very distinctly in one of
her classes Nuala introduced an image of
a Victorian woman sitting in a window
reading a book and she challenged the
class to express their assumptions about
who the woman was about gender about
social class about privilege about work
and about leisure and she reminded us of
how so much of our world and our world
view is socially constructed and about
the plethora of assumptions that we make
about other people and the content that
they’re interested in and I also
remember a number of years later working
with senior executive producers at
commercial television networks in the US
and as well as public television and at
the BBC where they pontificated about
what audiences needed to hear but newly
sensitized me not to make those
assumptions not to make judgments about
what other people needed to see or hear
particularly when I had an influence
over the content that was being created
a number of years ago I conducted a
study in rural Afghanistan and the study
was focused on non literate rural women
with the intention of encouraging these
women through radio programs to register
in the elections and to vote in the
elections we conducted our research we
did our due diligence and subsequently
after the elections we went back and we
spoke to those women again and yes
indeed they had registered in the
elections and yes they had voted but
there was little evidence of any
knowledge or understanding that the
decision they made would impact a
decision in Kabul to select a man who
would make policy decisions to affect
their lives I had made significant
assumptions about those women and I was
wrong and that mistake clearly impacted
the success of our program and so I
suggest two questions for us in terms of
the next century and in terms of insight
is first of all what cultural mechanisms
will we have in place
for individual and collective reflection
and secondly how will we influence the
content that’s produced in our name for
number of years later I also worked with
Everett Rogers fondly known as EV and
Everett Rogers is known in the
innovation and social marketing sector
as the author of a classic text on the
diffusion of innovation and the
diffusion of innovation is an attempt to
explain how and why and at what rate new
ideas and technologies are adopted a key
concept in the diffusion of innovations
literature is the notion of homophily
and homophily is the predisposition for
us to surround ourselves with people
like us people who have similar
demographic characteristics similar age
similar sex similar gender and also
similar psychographic characteristics or
similar attitudes and similar values and
whatevs work has uncovered is that
homophonous situations lend themselves
very well to the diffusion of
innovations they do not however lend
themselves very well to new ideas why
because there’s very little in exchange
of new information because we all think
very similarly currently working in
South Sudan with the World Food Program
and the objective of the project is to
develop what’s referred to as a
complaints and feedback mechanism
whereby beneficiaries that is people who
get food or food vouchers from the World
Food Program can actually express their
feedback and complains about how that
process works and dinner again in our
due diligence in our research in the
first stage or first phase of
consultation we uncovered very very
little in terms of expectations and and
perspectives on this potential mechanism
a research base and spoke to a much
broader range of people that we began to
see that it was a much broader range of
expectations and perspectives and so
every odd Jers idea of header awfully
introducing a broader range of
perspectives and ideas and expectations
into the process meant that we had a
much more creative innovative new idea
and mechanism for the World Food Program
what does this mean for the next century
well first of all in the current global
political climate and the increasing
intolerance of difference the question
for us is how do we maintain a
perspective on difference as positive
and secondly how do we avoid what I’m
referring to as the folly of silos and
rather embrace an interdisciplinary way
of thinking at the forefront within the
social sciences there is a particular
focus in terms of media and social
change on what’s commonly referred to as
media effects it’s very much a top-down
perspective in terms of how does media
change society how does it change
society in terms of violence in terms of
sexuality in terms of stereotyping I was
very fortunate to work with a media
sociologist sandra ball rollcage whose
perspective on the relationship between
media and citizens was slightly
different
Sandra’s perspective was to focus not on
the media but on citizens on individuals
and to really understand not what the
media does to people but how people use
the media and that that was her frame of
reference with citizens and citizen
engagement within the International
Development sector training journalists
is a very very common practice
particularly in developing countries and
fragile and conflict affected states and
the purpose of training journalists is
typically to increase the amount and
quality of coverage in mainstream and
and community media
with the ultimate intention of holding
governments to account and making
governmental processes much more
transparent but from a research
perspective the key challenge for me and
the teams I work with is to actually
substantiate that these training
programs have made a difference try to
actually present evidence of a return on
investment and a key metric for us in
that is actually looking at citizen
engagement the extent to which citizens
have engaged with that content and made
decisions about their own lives as a
result what does this mean for the next
century well first of all what political
efficacy can citizens expect in Ireland
in the future and under what conditions
is that likely to happen and then
secondly what are the ways in which that
that political efficacy can actually be
exercised particularly in in the context
of schools and training young people to
be able to exercise a political life
efficacy more broadly as a preference to
my final remarks I want to challenge us
to think not so much about the question
that was posed tonight to imagine the
next century but actually to pose the
question slightly differently and to say
how can I engage to mold what that next
century looks like that’s a very
different question because the chips the
focus back on us as individuals it
shifts us back into an active position
rather than a passive position and
taking that responsibility opens up
several opportunities first of all it
gives us more control over the insights
derived from the content that’s produced
for us and also greater critical
thinking skills to actually understand
and interrogate those words and images
that define us secondly it allows us to
appreciate other world views and other
perspectives not as superior or inferior
but rather as valuing difference as
inherently positive and then finally it
forces us to think about us as active
agents in that process rather than a
passive participants so let us not view
the next century without mechanisms for
critical thinking and insight without
diverse of the diversity within
innovation and without critical
individual citizen engagement in social
change I thank you [Applause]