Analyze the scope and importance of Development Support Communication in Pakistan. What are the factors for successful Development Support Communication?
The practice of Development Support Communication, DSC, is a multi-sectoral process of information sharing about development agendas and planned actions. It links planners, beneficiaries and implementers of development action, including the donor community. It obligates planners and implementers to provide clear, explicit and intelligible data and information about their goals and roles in development, and explicitly provides opportunities for beneficiaries to participate in shaping development outcomes. It ensures that the donor community is kept constantly aware of the achievements and constraints of development efforts in the field.
Development Support Communication makes use of all available structures and means of information sharing. Therefore it is not limited to mass media alone. It also uses both formal group and non-formal channels of communication, such as women’s and youth associations, as well as places where people gather. markets, churches, festivals, and meetings. But its contribution is in using these in a systemic, continuous, co-ordinate and planned manner, to perform linkage and enabling functions. It requires analysis of the communication environment, of the available and needed communication competencies and resources (hardware, software, financial and human), and clearly indicates expected results from specific resource inputs, so as to maintain accountability.
The term can be described as development planning and implementation in which adequate action is taken of human behavioral factors in the design of development project and their objectivities. It addresses development planning and the plan of operation for implementation. Development support communication is urgently suggested by UNESCO, UNDP and communication scholars and practitioners worldwide. It (DSC) stands for linking all agencies involved in the planned development works such as political executives, political planners, development administrators, subject specialists, field workers, opinion leaders, media representatives, researchers and the beneficiaries who continue the final delivery points and the consumers of the information. The route of communication envisaged are not only vertical as flowing from upper level to bottom or bottom level to upwards but also horizontal between the institutions and personnel connected with the process of development.
In short, DSC is a legitimate function of development planning and implementation. DSC therefore needs to be examined as a valuable «technology» for using the social communication process to foster and strengthen sustainable development at local and national levels. It should be taken more seriously in programs of social change, and should be reflected explicitly in development policy and strategy. One way of doing so is through the enunciation of a national information and communication policy, which can be explicitly integrated into national development thinking and practice.
The practice of Development Support Communication, DSC, is a multi-sectoral process of information sharing about development agendas and planned actions. It links planners, beneficiaries and implementers of development action, including the donor community. It obligates planners and implementers to provide clear, explicit and intelligible data and information about their goals and roles in development, and explicitly provides opportunities for beneficiaries to participate in shaping development outcomes. It ensures that the donor community is kept constantly aware of the achievements and constraints of development efforts in the field.
In short, DSC is a legitimate function of development planning and implementation. DSC therefore needs to be examined as a valuable «technology» for using the social communication process to foster and strengthen sustainable development at local and national levels. It should be taken more seriously in programs of social change, and should be reflected explicitly in development policy and strategy. One way of doing so is through the enunciation of a national information and communication policy, which can be explicitly integrated into national development thinking and practice.
Factors for successful Development Support Communication:
There are different factors, which may act as problem to communication a result in no communication of message; the chief factors that affect the development support communication are the following:
- Noise
- Distortions
- Filtering
- Selective Perceptions
- Language
- Non-Verbal Cues
