This collection is the first of its kind on the topic of media development, and reflects on how advocacy groups, researchers, the international community and others can work to ensure that media can continue to serve as a force of democracy and development.

At the start of the 21st century, the relationship between media and development has never felt more important. Following a series of ‘media revolutions’ throughout the developing world – beginning with the advent of cheap transistor radio sets in the late-1960s, followed by the rapid expansion of satellite television networks in the 1990s, and the more recent explosion of mobile telephony, social media and the internet – a majority of people living in the Global South now have access to a wide variety of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs), and live in media saturated environments. Yet how can radio, television and mobile phones be most effectively harnessed towards the goals of purposive economic, social, and political change? Should they be seen as primarily a provider of channels through which ‘useful information’ can be delivered to target populations – in the hope that such information will alter those populations’ existing behaviours? Or should they be seen as a tool for facilitating ‘two-way communication’ between development providers and their recipients (i.e. as technologies for improving ‘participatory development’)? Or should new media environments be approached simply as sites in which people living in the developing world can define ‘development’ on their own terms? This timely and original book – which is based on a critical reading of the relevant literatures, and on the author’s own extensive primary research – introduces readers to all of these questions, and helps them to reach their own informed positions on each. It also examines the history of, and current debates regarding, media representations of development. Drawing on case studies from all over the world – including: ‘hate radio’ in Rwanda; theatre for development in India; telenovelas in Latin America; mobile banking and money in Africa, and; GIS and humanitarianism in Haiti – it will be of interest to all undergraduate and postgraduate students of media and development; international development professionals, and; simply to anyone with an interest in how media does, can, or should, change the world.

Media matters. From encouraging charitable donations and delivering public health messages to promoting democratic participation and state accountability, the media can play a crucial role in development. Yet the influence of the media is not always welcome. It can also be used as a mechanism of surveillance and control or to disseminate hate speech and propaganda. How then should we respond to the growing importance of the media - including journalism, radio, television, community media and social media - for poverty and inequality? The first step is to acquire an informed and critical understanding of the multiple roles that the media can have in development. To help achieve this, this book provides concise and original introductions to the study and practice of communication for development (C4D), media development and media representations of development. In doing so it highlights the increasing importance of the media, whilst at the same time emphasising the varieties, complexities and contingencies of its role in social change. The broad and interdisciplinary focus of this book will make it attractive to anyone with an interest in media, communication, development, politics and social change.

New media, development and globalization are the key terms through which the future is being imagined and performed in governance, development initiatives and public and political discourse. Yet these authoritative terms have arisen within particular cultural and ideological contexts. In using them, we risk promoting over-generalized and seemingly unchallengeable frameworks for action and knowledge production which can blind us to the complex global patterns and promise of social reality. This compelling book forces us to look at these terms afresh. Drawing on more than ten years of ethnographic fieldwork in Latin America, West Africa and South Asia, Don Slater seeks to challenge these terms as voicing specific northern narratives rather than universal truths, and to see them from the perspective of southern people and communities who are equally concerned to understand new machines for communication, new models of social change and new maps of social connection. The central question the book poses is: how we can democratize the ways we think and practise new media, development and globalization, opening these terms to dialogue and challenge within North-South relations? Rooted in sociological debates, New Media, Development and Globalization will also be a provocative contribution to media and cultural studies, studies of digital culture, development studies, geography and anthropology.

In the face of such challenges, this new volume in the World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development series offers a critical analysis of new trends in media freedom, pluralism, independence and the safety of journalists.

Popular Media, Democracy and Development in Africa examines the role that popular media could play to encourage political debate, provide information for development, or critique the very definitions of ‘democracy’ and ‘development’. Drawing on diverse case studies from various regions of the African continent, essays employ a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to ask critical questions about the potential of popular media to contribute to democratic culture, provide sites of resistance, or, conversely, act as agents for the spread of Americanized entertainment culture to the detriment of local traditions. A wide variety of media formats and platforms are discussed, ranging from radio and television to the Internet, mobile phones, street posters, film and music. As part of the Routledge series Internationalizing Media Studies, the book responds to the important challenge of broadening perspectives on media studies by bringing together a range of expert analyses of media in the African continent that will be of interest to students and scholars of media in Africa and further afield.

In this provocative book Terhi Rantanen challenges conventional ways of thinking about globalization and shows how it cannot be understood without studying the role of the media. Rantanen begins with an accessible overview of globalization and the pivotal role of the media.