While computer commercials depict an idyllic "global
village" in which digital technologies facilitate international communication
and cross-cultural understanding, the impact of communication technologies
in the developing world is in actuality fraught with far more complexity.
Due to the economic and political realities of many developing nations,
communication policy and the implementation of information technologies
are rarely harnessed to the goals of grass roots empowerment, community
stability, democratization, and sustainable local economic development.
The Program in Development Communication at the University of Southern California is an interdisciplinary community of scholars founded in 1995 by a group of core investigators and supplemented in 1996 by an alliance with the Pacific Institute for Women's Health. The Program's scholars are committed to the examination of communication technology's potential for--and the barriers impeding--development, defined in this case as a "widely participatory process of social change in a society, intended to bring about both social and material advancement for the majority of people through gaining control over their environment" (Rogers 1995).
The particular objectives of the Program include:
- uniting the creative efforts of scholars in the field
of development communication from within and outside of USC;
- hosting a series of lectures to develop awareness, investigate
particular issues within development communication, and facilitate exchange
among the Program's network of affiliated scholars;
- designing and implementing a prototype for the use of
communication technologies to empower grass-roots organizations in developing
countries;
- constructing an extensive web site which would serve
as an international resource and "virtual consultancy" service
for grass-roots organizations, scholars and practititioners;
- exploring options for the development of an interdisciplinary
post-graduate enrichment program in development communication which would
service American students and international students working in non-governmental
organizations and in independent media.