Description

About the Book

Understanding Development Communication
From modernization theory to participation and empowerment with an emphasis on the cultural aspect in development Editors : Jacob Srampickal Rrul Aram Of all the areas in communications, we have found the study of Development Communication the most necessary and important to Indian universities, and not surprisingly, the most neglected. And we were struck by the fact that there is hardly any book that speaks directly about the topic. There are many books that give an all round picture of communications, media studies and even development. But hardly anyone focuses on Development Communication per se. Many misunderstand the concept of DevCom (as it is briefly called) for development, communication or for using media in development. We try to clearly delineate the concept in this book. We also make attempts in this book to focus on the thinking of the third world theoreticians. The contributors have exemplary knowledge in development and communication studies with experiences in the third world and their reflections contribute to the continuing debates on DevCom. We believe this book will be an eye-opener to students aspiring to be media practitioners in a developing country like India, where media training has to a great extent been limited to mastering technologies and producing programmes mainly for entertainment. A shame considering the fact that the media has such tremendous potential for development!

About the Authors

Jacob Srampickal has a doctorate in DevCom from the university of Leeds, England and has authored several books including, Voice to the voiceless, the power of people’s theatre; Babel to Babri Masjid and Beyond; Media Education: A text bookfor teachers; Media Education: Emerging Perspectives; Messages or Massages; Cross Connections: Interdisciplinary communications studies at the Gregorian University — – etc. Is co-founder of NISCORT, a communication college at Ghaziabad \New Delhi, and is presently Director, Interdisciplinary Centre for Social Communications, Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome.

Arul Aram is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Sciences, Anna University, Chennai, India. He was formerly Chief Sub-Editor with The Hindu newspaper. He had also served as President of the Madras Press Club. He had presented papers in several international conferences. He has published two books and over 30 papers. He is an Associate Editor in The Journal of International Communication. He is a post-doctoral fellow from the London School of Economics.