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Communication, digitalization and development are three fields that can harbour many different aspects of society. One thing that digitalization has done for development is that people can react quicker on different development projects. If it earlier was a monitoring and evaluation officer that recorded and tried to see how a development project worked out, today there are other ways of direct feedback and forth and back communication that was not available in the same way a few decades ago.
Another angle that is new because of the digitalization in society is that anyone, private citizen or investigative journalist, can look at how aid organizations work and what they spend their money on. More and more information is available online, and instead of waiting for an annual report, anybody with internet access and some reading skills can scrutinize how development work is done.
The digitalization and the development that has given more and more people access to the internet has also changed how NGOs tackle advocacy issues. Instead of making a classic TV advertisement, the ability to use mobile phones and cameras has opened a new world of showing off your work to the world. One organization that has mastered this is Doctors Without Borders or, when a catastrophy is near to happen, the Norwegian Refugee Council, with boss Jan Egeland sitting in a tent with children in Afghanistan, saying ”we are here, and we are not going anywhere”. The increased availability of media tools has made it easier for some organizations to show themself for fundraising purposes and building credibility.
Denskus and Papan (2013) discuss blogging as a way of reflexive engagement. In the sphere of weblogs, or blogs, people from different fields discuss how development is done. On the one hand, blogs can be written by individuals with no strong ties to an organization. On the other hand, this can also be done by individuals with an organisational affiliation: There are aid workers and academics that write blogs, as well as staff at NGOs or think thanks or other organizations, with the motivation to influence others for their own purposes.
Why do people blog about development? To understand this, Denskus and Papan have interviewed people in the field and have seen that ”active engagement with social media has become an important feature for communication and feedback on development issues and practices, as highlighted by the comments of the interviewees.”
One of the interviewed bloggers, talesfromthehood, writes to Denskus and Papan: “Because I blog about the issues that I’m thinking about and dealing with in the course of my everyday job, I’m able to gain a wide spectrum of input and perspective on those issues, whether via comments on my posts, posts on other blogs that ‘riff’ off of mine, or – again – twitter conversations spun off of those same blog posts … I spend more time on aidrelated blogs and twitter than I spend keeping up with technical things. It’s that important.”
But how important is blogging really? The revolution of information and communications technology and new media has given us who want to keep corruption in check more tools at hand, whether we are working as investigative journalists or just have a passion for fighting injustice. But where does this revolution lead to, or affect development in marginalized regions? I will have a look on this issue in my next posts and hope you like this one, or add a comment to give a broader perspective.
References:
Denskus, T. & Papan, A. (2013), Reflexive engagements: the international development blogging evolution and its challenges, in: Development in Practice 23:4, pp. 435-447