‘Targeting the Target Group’ is still very often used in development speech, when it comes to thinking about how we are communicating with people. Emerging psychological research has told us that something as simple as a single metaphor (eg. target) can have consequences for how we think and have profound influences on how we conceptualise and act with respect to important societal issues. Moreover development and communication theories have taken a dramatic shift from a one way, top-down transfer of technology, knowledge and information to participatory approaches and have by now reached most of international development agencies and changed their approach towards development, adding the adjectives participatory and sustainable to the noun. Isn’t this what it’s all about in our ComDev studies in Malmö? So, why are we still targeting …? We could use instead ‘communicate with participants, audience, people’. What are your thoughts?
(2 years ago I wrote a longer thought piece on the topic)
Sabina v. Kessel
Thank you Sabina, this is very thought provoking indeed! Raising the question of the power of words, its funny how it resonates very much with Indigo’s article on how word’s can loose their meaning! I see you have engaged with her already.
Thank you !
Ref: https://wpmu.mau.se/nmict21group1/2021/10/18/blah-blah-blah-words-devoid-of-meaning/