Medium In Search of a Message

Medium in Search of a Message

John Samuel


An ideal act of communication is a sort of communion. Communion is a state of sharing or exchanging the same set of thoughts, feelings and attitude. Communion happens within communities and communion is the result of a voluntary and participatory process. Creativity, communication and communities are the three major factors that make human beings distinct from the rest of the living species. Language and symbols are the binding force that consistently make an organic and dynamic interplay between human creativity , a primordial urge to communicate and the need for community living. One of the crisis of post modern condition is that the organic linkages between creativity, communication and communities have broken down . Language and symbols have become subservient to highly mechanised tools of exchange or communication. Hence there are entirely different set of languages and set of symbols for V channel, MTV, Star New, Zee TV, BBC, Doordarshan, Internet etc. When tools of communication determine the content of message, the act of communication increasingly get alienated from real communities and often give rise to imagined communities who are mechanically connected to each other through Newspaper, TV or Internet, but organically alienated from each other. When communication cease to have organic linkages with communities, that become a dehumanised set of information or entertainment dissemination rather than an act of true communication. In the absence of a set of dynamic symbols and language that connect communities and communication, human creativity, particularly aesthetic creativity, suffers substantially. The bewildering perplexity and anarchy of many of the new ‘music albums’ disseminated through MTV or V channels are telling comments on our present predicament. Fragmented and frozen images stare and laugh at you in the cacophony of lots of sound and fury. Where does this leave us? How do we, social change communicators, locate ourselves in this jungle of sound and fury? Why is that we manage to inform people but somehow fail to change their attitude and beliefs?

Social change communication is a continuous process of changing peoples attitude to facilitate a more just and human society. The purpose of social change communication is to inform and educate large number of people in a way that would help them to change or redefine their attitudes and values and enable them to become more socially responsible and empowered citizens. In the last twenty years, there has been concerted efforts to build effective communication strategies on various issues related to human rights, women’s rights, development, ecology etc. While such communication strategies helped to increase the outreach and efficiency of information dissemination, the effectiveness of such communication in terms attitudinal change remains a big question mark. One of the recent examples for this ‘mal-communication’ is the AIDS awareness campaigns to educate people and to change their attitude. The international development organisations and UN agencies imported sophisticated communication framework and mandarins to develop communication strategies and implementation channels. Millions of dollars were spent on five-star workshops and five-star consultants. But towards the end of the day, the exercise created more sound and fury about AIDS rather changing the attitude of people towards the socio-political implication of HIV positive or for that matter an informed attitude towards sexual choices. Even among the better run communication campaigns on Environmental Protection or Women’s right, the level information reception increased without much change in the attitude. Partly, this is due to the predicament of post modern communication as explained earlier; the inability of dehumanised communication modes to touch the heart of the people. In the proliferation of information dissemination, values, feelings and cultural ethos get completely marginalised or abandoned. Another important reason is that even the best of modern communication strategies fail to go beyond the middle class audience; even if the information goes beyond the middle class to relatively marginalised people in urban slums or rural areas the message often received without being digested. In the case of India, this means that the vast majority of people are either alienated or far away from the post-modern communication tools and strategies. The present predicament is that we are often more clear about the tools and strategies and less clear about the message to be communicated. The lack of ethical clarity or political positions tend to create ambiguous messages about the same theme from various institutions. So on HIV positive, WHO has one stand and UNDP has a different stand . And both of them are in the business of communicating the issue to people. The result is that ambiguous messages get lost in the labyrinth of tools and strategies.

Many of the social change organisations are like a medium in search of a message. This get more complicated when all the process of communications are mediated by institutional interests or the project priorities than the conviction in the message. In our enthusiasm to develop innovative medium and tools, somehow we lost the conviction in and clarity of the message for social change. One of the major hindrance for communication for attitudinal change is due to the big gap between the mechanically mediated communication and socially mediated communication. In a mechanically mediated mass communication people are treated as ‘targets’ and ‘objects’ that can be influenced or acted upon. In a socially mediated or community oriented communication people are participants in the process of communication. Hence, they themselves become a sort medium and own up the process. When they own a process, they can not remain indifferent to the messages involved. In mechanically mediated communication message is being treated like a ‘product’ to be delivered to a ‘target’. It is almost like ‘shooting at a target’- focused information dissemination. And communication strategies for mechanically mediated communication focus more on ‘packaging’ the ‘product’ to make it more saleable. In socially mediated and community oriented communication, it is the interactive process that matters. Such an interactive process involve the entire community or the ‘opinion makers’ within communities. Interactive communication process will not only help to receive a message, but enables to analyse and interpret the messages with the language and cultural ethos that determine the very identity of communities. Socially mediated and community oriented communication lead to internalised interpretative process that is capable of changing people’s attitude. The tool based on modern communication is an efficient means for broad-casting or mass information dissemination but the socially mediated folk communication methods are rather slow process best suited for narrow-cast or community based communication. The advantage of the folk methods of communication is that it is a creative, community based process of humanisation. While the modern multi-media communication is excellent to disseminate a set of information, it is relatively more dehumanised. Hence, it hardly helps to change peoples attitude.

The above observations are based on my own experience as a practitioner of communication. I have experienced the effectiveness of socially mediated and community oriented communication in the social change campaigns initiated by Kerala Sasthra Sahitya Parishat (KSSP) in the early eighties. Through a series of cost-effective, community oriented communication process, involving thousands of young people, KSSP was able to change people’s attitude in a very significant way. The best example is that of the Campaign against the Hydroelectric Project in the Silent Valley; popularly known as Silent Valley Campaign. In the late seventies when the campaign began, almost all political parties, trade unions and news papers were either against the campaigns or indifferent to the cause. People were by and large indifferent to the environmental cause. But the situation dramatically changed over a period of two years, as large number of common people began to support the campaign. There were processions and peoples participation in almost all parts of Kerala. The campaign triggered off a debated on the effectiveness of the development models and paradigms. It emerged as one of the most effective people-centred advocacy campaign for environmental protection and sustainable development.

There was no imported frame-work or communication mandarins, there was no ‘swadeshi’ or ‘videshi’ funding, there was no big institution. What made the difference was people’s participation in a communicative process and communicative action; socially mediated , community oriented folk communication methods clicked; it drew people into debates and discussions; it did not give people much of a space for indifference. Communication was organic debates at grassroots level. The issue was discussed and debated in the local tea shops with the morning cup of tea and newspaper. Newspapers could not afford to ignore the issue as it became topical at the grassroots level. As student activists, we used to make posters, write songs or perform street plays to build up a public debate and discourse. No one told us what was the strategy. But we knew what was the message. We were emotionally and intellectually involved. We had a language and a song on our tongues. We grew up with the folklore’s and local symbols. We were from the people. Many of us were at our creative best. We were the grassroots. Without learning any theory of communication, I instantly realised the organic linkages between creativity, community and communication .

After fifteen years, when I studied Silent Valley Campaign from the point of public advocacy, I was keen to know what exactly changed the public perception. Then I realised it is the active involvement of four poets and five poems that played a major role in drawing lot of young people to the campaign. Poetry, Sanmskarika Jathas (cultural procession), street plays, indigenous and spontaneous poster campaigns, village level debates and pamphlets were used extensively. But the major difference was the conviction in and clarity of the main message. Message preceded the medium, tools and strategies. There was no institutional interest, or communication framework to mediate between the people and the message. People became the medium and the message travelled across drawing rooms, to backyards, to tea shops to schools and colleges to the country side and city streets. There was no television or newspaper advertisement. But there was a lot of poetry and lots of people. It played a major role in my own and many others, formative years of convictions and activism.

I have also seen and experienced the power of socially mediated communication in the villages of Mizoram. Mizoram has a unique newspaper culture; there are scores of news papers in different size and shapes. There is a culture of discussion and debate on issues of social importance. The Young Mizo Association (YMA) makes use of socially mediated and community oriented communication process, particularly through songs, community level discussions and communicative action. When communication gives rise to action, it gives rise a social momentum. Such social momentum has a power to influence people’s attitude. Hence for any effective social change communication, we need to build up organic linkages between the process of socially mediated communication with streams of peoples action. Communication without action potential is a passive exercise. The best examples of the linkages between the socially mediated communication and collective peoples action can be seen in the communication strategies adopted by Buddha, Jesus Christ and reformers like Thukkaram and Kabir. The parables told by Jesus and the Jataka Kathas were powerful ways communicating to the people. Here the message was clear, simple and straight forward. Messages were for action . That changed attitude of people. That changed history. The songs of Kabir do not need an ‘extra’ music; they straight away go and touch the heart of the people. We need to go back to the people to learn the language, symbols and ethos. We need to become equal participants in the socially mediated communication, rather than playing the role of highly paid experts moving around with tools kits and framework for best communication medicine. We need to become more humble to look at our own backyards and indigenous traditions to learn from illiterate wise men and women in our villages.

We need to reclaim the organic linkages between creativity, communication and communities. We need to learn to bridge the vast gap between mechanically mediated communications and socially mediated communication. We need to be more clear and convinced about the social change message. If we ourselves don’t believe in what we say, people are not going to listen in spite of the best of strategies and tools. Let us create the message and let us become the medium; a medium for inspiring and rejuvenating the barren lands of imagination and social action.