Radio – C4D Network

How communications can change social norms around adolescent girls (ODI study, 2016)

October 11, 2018

A multi-year, multi-country study has been exploring the complex ways in which adolescent girls’ capabilities are shaped and/or constrained by gender-discriminatory social norms, attitudes and practices, and under what conditions positive changes may be brought about, particularly around norms and practices related to child marriage and education.

Evidence from this report showed that communications programmes could be an effective way of challenging gender-discriminatory attitudes and practices, reaching a variety of stakeholders with both broad pro-gender equality messages and messages on specific discriminatory norms. While no one approach was found to be more effective than others, programmes with more than one communications component and those integrated with activities other than communications were found to achieve a higher proportion of positive outcomes.

The study has been conducted by ODI in partnership with national research teams in Viet Nam, Nepal, Ethiopia and Uganda, commissioned by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) as part of a flagship programme on Transforming the Lives of Girls and Young Women.

Click here for full study.

The Effectiveness of a Social Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) Strategy in Changing Social Attitudes on Equal Rights to Property for Women – The Case of Kosovo (USAID Conference Paper, 2018)

April 20, 2018

Society in Kosovo is considered patriarchal and patrilineal, where property inheritance is traditionally transferred to men (Joireman, 2015). Even though the laws on Gender Equality and Law on Inheritance are considered egalitarian, the social norms continue to encourage patriarchal values that exclude women from property inheritance.

This paper addresses the social context and norms related to property inheritance. It discusses how it has negatively affected women’s ability to inherit and own property, and describes interventions implemented under the USAID-funded Property Rights Program (PRP), namely a multi-channel Social and Behavior Change Communications (SBCC) campaign, with the aim of countering these negative effects. The application of an SBCC methodology to encourage change in beliefs, attitudes and behavior on women freely exercising their property rights in practice is the focus of this paper.

This paper was presented at the Annual World Bank Land and Poverty Conference.

OII Technology and Mobilities in Africa Seminar Series: From FM radio stations to Internet 2.0 overnight – information, mobility and social media in post-failed coup Burundi (Oxford, UK)

March 13, 2018

The OII is excited to welcome JB Falisse from the University of Edinburgh for the Technology and Mobilities in Africa talk “From FM radio stations to Internet 2.0 overnight: information, mobility and social media in post-failed coup Burundi”.

The failed coup of 13 May 2015 led, overnight, to the quasi-destruction of independent media in Burundi. Ordinary citizens, journalists, and politicians turned to social media to gather information, voice their opinion, and try and influence public life. This paper considers this fast transition, the ways citizens, diaspora members, refugees, journalists, and politicians have navigated it, and the sort of public space it has contributed to building. In line with the literature on social media, it is argued that a new public space was –somewhat forcibly– opened. However, we also contend that this space is not necessarily more inclusive of the ordinary citizen, be they than the space available to citizens during the ‘golden era’ of Burundian FM stations (2005-2013). Although some platforms, and in particular WhatsApp, are vital for the circulation of underground information and can act as an alert system, social media seems, overall, ruled by a minority of brokers who partially overlap with the ruling elite.

This is a free event but registration is required.