Will the internet change development communications?
At my first job in international development 15 years ago, I was a temp in the communications department of a well-known London-based NGO. I was given the task of overseeing the brand guidelines, which involved measuring logos with a ruler, matching colours and ensuring that only brand-approved images were used. I soon noticed that our brand-approved image library consisted entirely of pictures of women and children. So I began asking colleagues: “Where are the men? What do they do all day?” No one could answer my question. It was then I realised that the headquarters staff of the organisation were so caught up in their own brand that they struggled to think outside of it.
I wish I could say that today this is no longer the case, but check any website or fundraising material from organisations working in international development and you will see the same success stories and narrative structures over and over again, accompanied by carefully selected images that exclude as much as they include.
It is, of course, reasonable for any industry to focus on success stories. In development we are often driven by donor preferences — whether it is major bilateral donors, UN organisations or individuals providing funding, success sells, and each has its own preferred success narrative. Stories also change: today in development, for example, we increasingly focus on stories of innovation and private sector involvement. I am not saying these narratives are untrue, far from it; but if we restrict ourselves to our preconceived guidelines of what makes a success story, we are telling our story, not theirs, and we may fail to educate our audiences and effectively advocate for the real needs of the people we are seeking to assist. In the most egregious cases, by prescribing how our partner communities are to be seen — the very people we are meant to be empowering — we are doing the opposite, undermining them.
It is no longer a matter of choice. The world has changed in a way which means that how we present our work to our donor audiences will increasingly affect our relationships on the ground. We no longer work in a world where a photographer takes a picture and the subject of the photograph will never see it, or where we tell someone’s story and they will never read it.
A few weeks ago, I met groups of youths and citizen journalists in Nicaragua. We swapped emails and Facebook details and my visit to the country was being reported by them before I had written a word. Today, we and our beneficiaries may well recognise each other from social media by the time we meet. And we must be able to face those people knowing we have told their story how they would have it told. Our work depends upon co-operation, trust and mutual respect, and if we are distorting people’s lives to meet our needs, then we cannot expect those vital qualities to be maintained.
The same communications technologies that have played a varying and complex role in undermining pernicious dictatorships from Latin America to the Middle East and beyond will gradually undermine the controls international development organisations have in place of how the developing world is presented. The question for development communicators is not whether this will happen, but what kind of partner will we be helping them tell their story. And just as authors like VS Naipaul and Wole Soyinka have reclaimed the narrative of the colonial era, the very people we partner with are increasingly reclaiming the narrative of development. Examples range from veteran advocacy groups for slum dwellers to local journalist networks, Facebook groups, all the way to a mockumentary on NGO excesses.
Our brands should be descriptive, not prescriptive. We need to think about the people we work with as the same as us, not photo-opportunities with fungible stories. Before we write any narrative, we should ask how would we want to be presented? Would I want my daughter presented as a sickly baby rescued by a Norwegian hipster cradling her to his chest? As the world draws us closer together through technology, we no longer have a monopoly on the tools of our trade. This is and can only be a good thing. We should embrace this connectedness that will help us to do our job, even as it changes the nature of that job.
Originally published at www.theguardian.com on May 16, 2014.
