Confluences: Global Information Flow Debates, Development Communication Perspectives, and Communication Theory

• In Event: Rethinking Development Communciation

Abstract

This paper responds to Padovani’s criticism of the MacBride Commission as treating the history of communication debates without attending to the social and economic context of those debates. It brings together different communication approaches, identifying the confluences between global information flow perspectives, macro and micro-level perspectives on development — including development communication — and broader debates about the role of communication in society. To this end, the paper proposes that perspectives on global information flow are consistent with macro-level perspectives on development, and broader views on the role of communication in society. And, although globalization and digitization may have altered these debates in some ways, they have also only re-ignited them in other ways. The paper concludes with a brief outline of a proposed contingent approach to development communication.

Author

• S. Senyo Ofori-Parku, U of Oregon