State Dept. getting in on the act
Who says the bilaterals aren't at the cutting edge of social media?
During President Obama's Cairo speech in June, where he called for a “new beginning” to relations between the US and Muslims around the world, he promised more support for online learning, networking, and partnership.
I just spotted on BoingBoing that State is putting its money where the president's mouth is; $2.5 million for:
New Empowerment Communication Technologies: Opportunities in the Middle East and North Africa
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"Two Questions: The What and the How?"
Sina Odugbemi from the World Bank opened the session by quoting a former colleague: "I'm interested in two questions about media and governance: the what and the how?"
Pippa Norris from the Kennedy School engaged these questions with vigor, presenting findings from a new report, Public Sentinel: News Media and Governance (See http://www.pippanorris.com/) She offered data from studies by former World Bank official Daniel Kaufmann, showing some direct correlations between press freedom and reduced corruption -- in functioning democracies, that is. (Alas, partial democracies and non-democracies don't show the same results.)
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SPEAKERS SAY: Norris and Goldstein
Pippa NORRIS, MacGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics, Harvard University: "We know the classic argument about media development: is there evidence? But, it's not just the policy makers that haven't had the data, the scholars haven't either. So what kind of evidence do we have about the role media plays in development?
Actually, if we look at the available data we find very strong evidence that economic and social indicators improve where media penetration increases. Accountability and good governance improves, as does economic output. Unfortunately, the data does not show that free and independent media automatically reduce corruption in non-democratic states.”
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QUICK HITS: Levy, Newton, Deane
Brian LEVY, Advisor, Public Sector Governance, The World Bank: “Our normative frameworks take us only a limited distance in identifying a way forward. We need to spend less time repeating the normative frameworks we have traditionally applied to media development, and more about the real power dynamics in the countries where we are working. This way we could make more progress in identifying some real potential entry points for greater progress.”
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[Video] Interview with Vanessa Mazal
Vanessa Mazal is a program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Global Development Program. In this interview she talks about the differences and complementary nature of media development and media for development. She also tells us about a new Gates Foundation initiative in partnership with Highway Africa.
LOGIN TO COMMENT | POSTED ON OCT. 8, 2009