Global community of professionals working in Communication for Development
Risky sexual behaviors are associated with the transmission of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and unwanted pregnancies, both major health concerns for youth worldwide. This review studies the effectiveness of narrated mass media programs in promoting safer sexual practices among youth in developed and developing countries.
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Authors: Catherine Sutherland, Bahle Mazeka, Sibongile Buthelezi, Duduzile Khumalo and Patrick Martel
Can datafication increase the ‘visibility’ of informal settlements in South Africa, in the context of a national and local state that holds both progressive and repressive approaches towards informal settlements?
This case study explores a datafication process that has been in place for five years in an informal settlement in Durban, which has been established through an inclusionary, participatory data collection and production process. It examines how and when the data moves in the information value chain, and the implications this movement has for achieving rights-based, instrumental, structural and distributive justice. It argues that procedural and rights-based justice can be achieved to a certain extent through the construction of an inclusionary datafication process. However, instrumental, structural and distributive justice is dependent on how the interventionist and developmental state of South Africa engages with the data, and whether it takes it up in a meaningful way, thus enabling it to lead to fundamental shifts in discourses, approaches and practices towards informality.
The results reveal that the ‘governance and knowledge platforms’ that are built through the datafication process are more important and powerful at first, than the actual data itself. However, informal settlers and other data intermediaries, who have learnt how to engage data to secure the ‘right of informal settlers to the city’, have begun to use the data in interesting ways, acting as champions, and re-shaping citizens’ relations with the state. While this does not secure tangible changes in informal settlements, it begins to shift discourses and power relations, which is critical to informal settlement upgrading.
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Author: Dr Valentina Baú
B
y unearthing the connections between the literatures on participatory communication and civic engagement with the reality of postconflict peace, this article demonstrates how a communication for development (C4D) approach to engaging citizens in peacebuilding contributes to strengthening the reconstruction process at the end of the violence, while engendering a bottom up process based on dialogue and inclusivity. After offering a brief overview of the peacebuilding contexts, this article presents a theoretical discussion that brings to the surface not only the role of C4D in facilitating citizens participation in government decision making, but also its significance in creating an inclusive peacebuilding process that starts from the community. At the same time, this discussion begins to shed light on the relationship between communication for development and participatory governance.
You can access the article here: Baú, V. (2016) Citizen Engagement in Peacebuilding. A communication for development approach to rebuilding peace from the bottom up, Progress in Development Studies, Vol.16, No.4, pp.348-360
For decades, social and behavior change communication (SBCC) has been used in malaria programs to positively influence behaviors around case management, malaria in pregnancy, insecticide-treated nets and indoor residual spraying. However, the evidence base for the impact of SBCC on malaria-related behavioral outcomes is still growing, especially with the recent introduction and scale-up of several malaria interventions and commodities.
To document and assess the evidence for malaria SBCC, HC3 conducted a critical review of the literature using a multiphase search and review process, involving abstract and full-article reviews of approximately 3,600 peer-reviewed articles and 1,700 grey literature documents. Each article was then scored on two indicators: the strength of the evidence presented in the article and the extent to which the SBCC activity used best practices during the design and implementation of the program.
The result is the Malaria SBCC Evidence Package, which includes a searchable online database, factsheets and infographics that compile and highlight key SBCC successes on malaria outcomes. The database below presents a collection of 80 articles describing interventions or studies that address malaria challenges through SBCC approaches. Some studies address the same intervention across multiple articles, while other studies evaluate multiple interventions in the same article.
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