COMMUNITY MEDIA AND ICTS

The Role of Community Media and ICTs in Political Economy and Social Change

The Role of Community Media and ICTs in Political Economy and Social Change

Introduction

Information and Communication Technologies and communication media are expected to play crucial role in our societies. New Social Movement theories place an importance upon ideology and identity. In some countries today, communication media is being used to propagate true ideology and bring peace in country.

Modernization theory focuses on how the agricultural countries transformed into industrialized societies, while the globalization theory focuses on the behavior of one country influencing other country and how other countries react to happenings in another country. The question remains, are ICTs and Community Media are being applied to achieve modernization or to start a social movement?

Community Media and ICTs

Community media are highly recognized medium in international development community, and governments also recognize this medium for reach and usefulness. Today, community media are being defined within other mainstream systems, as a third layer of media. Community media were perceived as a medium through which depressed raise voice against poverty and unsupportive regimes. We find numerous examples of unlicensed community media, which were forcibly closed by the government. Today's recognition of community media is a direct result of thousands of community media activist, who are being heard when drafting new policies and laws. Community media are defined as a process, where, communities take control of their issues and development by using technology. These are not IT based institutions but rather dynamic entities. (USAID, 2010)

ICT is an acronym for Information and Communication Technologies. With the usage of computer in schools in 1970s, people stared to speak about computer in education. Afterwards, scanners, printers, disk drives, digital cameras were invented, and the word IT (Information Technology) became popular. Then internet era began with an introduction of computer networks, search engines, websites, and e-mails. Today, the word ICT is used to define technologies which we use to send and receive information (Anderson, 2010).

Community Media

The role of community media can be summarized by this saying of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, “By giving voice and visibility to all people - including and especially the poor, the marginalized and members of minorities - the media can help remedy the inequalities, the corruption, the ethnic tensions and the human rights abuses that form the root causes of so many conflicts” (Betz, 2004).

Radio has been used as a tool for economic, social and political mobilization of communities. Radio has been used for social development and as a tool for social movements. Lets briefly study the role of radio (a community media tool) in social development of Africa. The primary reason of using radio by sub Saharan Africans is due its accessibility, high acceptance and low cost. Radio OKAPI was developed in February 2002, which was a joint project of Hirondelle foundation (a Swiss NGO) and the U.N. mission in the democratic republic of Congo (Betz, 2004). The goal of Radio Okapi is to become the first community media ...