Development Communication - Early Development

Early Development

The Philippines is the birthplace of development communication, and it may be said to have begun in the university. As the first of its kind, the University of the Philippines in Los Baños established the Department of Development Communications in the College of Agriculture. offering both undergraduate and Master's degrees that train and prepare persons to assist in communicating the government policies of agricultural development. According to Felix Librero of the University of the Philippines Open University, the term development communication was first used by Nora Quebral in her 1971 paper, "Development Communication in the Agricultural Context," presented in at a symposium in honor of Dioscoro L. Umali, former Dean of the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture (UPCA) and University of the Philippines (UP) Vice President for Agriculture and Forestry Affairs, who had just been appointed FAO Deputy Director-General for Asia and the Far East. The symposium was held at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, with the theme "In Search of Breakthroughs in Agricultural Development." In her paper, Quebral argued that development communication was to be treated as science, so all the tasks associated with communicating development oriented issues were based on the rigors of scientific inquiry; a strong argument for undertaking rigorous research in the field of communication even if it was, at that time, limited to agricultural and rural development efforts (Librero, 2008, p. 8).

Elsewhere in the world, the term development support communication was being used in UNDP programmes under the leadership of Erskine Childers, who was operating from his UNDP office in Bangkok together with his co-author of significant development support communication papers and wife, Malicca Vajrathron. This brand of communication was clearly focusing on the support functions of communication in promoting agricultural and development programmes of the United Nations; clearly, therefore, development communication, Los Baños style, was, from the beginning, an academic field of study rather than just techniques program (Librero, 2008, pp. 8–9). The meaning of development, as espoused by Seers (cited in Quebral's 1971 paper), became a major point of argument in favour of the term, development communication, as opposed to Childer’s development support communication, which was used in public and in the scientific literature for the first time. Librero recounts that colleagues in agricultural communications in Los Baños agreed with Quebral, but colleagues from the field of mass communication in the University of the Philippines Diliman, and more so from other countries notably in North America, did not agree completely, although years later they ultimately accepted development communication, even if in the beginning they also focused on the concept of it being agricultural. Today, development communication is as acceptable to them as mass communication is.

The theories and practices of development communication sprang from the many challenges and opportunities that faced development oriented institutions in the last century. And since these institutions existed in different contexts, different schools of development communication have arisen in different places over time.

Manyozo (2006) suggests that the history field can be broken down into those of six different schools of development communication, with the Bretton Woods school being the dominant paradigm in international literature, and the other schools being the Latin American, Indian, Los Baños, African,and the participatory development communication schools.

The growing interest for these kind of applications is also reflected in the work of the World Bank, which is very active in promoting this field through its Development Communication division and recently (June 2008) published the Development Communication Sourcebook, a resource addressing the history, concepts and practical applications in this discipline.