This paper uses case study analysis to examine one edutainment radio project in particular produced by BBC Media Action in Ethiopia. This edutainment project, funded by the UK Department for International Development, was created to improve maternal and neonatal health, and takes an interesting approach regarding gender differences. The content of the data is qualitative in nature. The research design uses a mixed-methods approach and consists of interviews with program hosts and station/program managers; a review of existing research reports and communications produced by BBC Media Action; and a review of relevant grey literature.Using a gender and development approach to frame my research allowed me to examine how gender issues are addressed and affected in the programmes aimed at improving maternal health. What is unique about these programmes in comparison to other edutainment programmes aimed at improving maternal and neonatal health in rural areas of Africa is that although the primary target audience is women of child-bearing age, the programmes are also designed to target their husbands.I argue that the radio programs, Biiftuu Jireenyaa and Jember, seem to focus on changing men’s behaviour while protecting existing power dynamics, instead of challenging them. BBC Media Action’s project claims to have been successful in affecting a degree of change in terms of health practices aimed to improve maternal and neonatal in rural Ethiopia. The project, however, does not seem to have impacted the power differences between men and women. Instead, they seem to have used the existing power differences to assist their health aims.

This thesis aims to study how two organizations communicate to empower women in Tanzania. It is a comparative study of the New Hope for Girls Organization (NHGO) and Young Women Christian Association (YWCA). Furthermore, this study focus on how different contextual factors, such as the size of the organization, religion and values, affect the organizations´ content and strategy of their communication. This study is based on a theoretical framework of previous research about communication from NGOs, Development theory and African feminisms. The empirical data was collected through semi-structured interviews, ethnographic interviews and observations. The result of this study shows that YMCA is highly influenced by its international ties through its international founders and world-wide connection, while NHGO is mainly influenced by the local community in which it operates.

The International Committee of the Red Cross and Crescent Moon (ICRC) is a leading global humanitarian organization. Despite an exemplary operational record, the ICRC has an imperfect communication history: slow to respond; painfully neutral; and unwilling change. ICRC history, diplomatic and humanitarian communication has been well researched. However, few studies, outside of Maillot (2017), address ICRC SM communication within the ICRC historical context. There is a fundamental value in understanding how an INGO is responding to the challenges of public advocacy communication on SM. This review should allow the identification of improvement areas for digital diplomacy. As a first mover, ICRC policy on SM would lead the industry through a digital evolution.  Inexhaustible SM growth has increased both the type and the frequency of posting. INGOs are now posting multiples times per day; visuals are the dominant media form; and there is a growing need to use visual content that stands out. This sudden proliferation of visual, including 360 ° video footage (Garcia-Orosa, 2020), has opened conversations on the dehumanization of suffering (Chouliaraki, 2006), the lack of representation, and repeated content with colonialist tone. Capability gaps have become apparent as organizations struggle to keep pace with the change. This Case Study reviews the visual content of the ICRC on Facebook within the historical visual context. Focusing on visual Facebook posts from the ICRC, the selected ICRC visual content was analyzed using Barthes (1957) Mythological approach within a historical context. It will be argued that opportunities exist to evolve the visual identity to avoid reinforcing social stereotypes and improve authentic representation. To raise awareness and funds, the ICRC continues to use more old-fashioned and occasionally colonial visual imagery; it feels like the organization is imprisoned by the strength of its historical identity. Solutions are outlined to help define a new way forward including: first, a cultural evolution to help the organization avoid the pitfalls of the past; second, an openness to training. capability gaps are normal – seeking help to train the organization will improve SM effectiveness.

Typically, when we think of Sweden it is often thought in terms of a harmonious society where diversity, equality and freedom has intertwined itself into the daily fabric of society. This essay explores the experiences and expectations of immigrants who arrived in Sweden in the 1980’s. It is a qualitative study and uses semi-structured interviews and focuses in particular on immigrants of Syriac and Assyrian decent who arrived in this time period. In general, this paper aims to look at how and what information they had been communicated before entering the country and whether or not their own personal expectations were met in regard to access to food, shelter and education. The overarching research question is: the experiences of immigrants and aid workers alike – are they in line with the communicated expectations they had upon entering Sweden. The aim is to explore what motivated the immigrants to choose Sweden in particular and if there were any hindrances or predispositions that they encountered. The results that emerged from the qualitative data suggest in general the move to Sweden was based on the communicated experiences of relatives and the church, thus what they had expected and experienced was similar. This essay is guided by a constructivist epistemology with a hermeneutic perspective that aims to describe, analyse and draw conclusions based on the purpose of the case study.

This research project aims at exploring the role and potential of digital media in the current democratization process in Myanmar. Understanding democratization as a process of social change that implies empowering civil society and ensuring equality, the question is how digital media contribute to building a participatory democracy in Myanmar after a five decades long military regime. The fast chain of events that led to the recent gradual opening of Myanmar raises doubts and expectations colliding with the vibrant reality of the country. In order to analyse the role of digital media within such a fast-changing scenario, this research intends to answer the following questions: a) How do digital media portray Myanmar? This question will be analysed in relation to the media discourse of the official visit paid by Myanmar’s President Thein Sein to US President Barack Obama in Washington on 20 May 2013. b) How do stakeholders in Myanmar use digital media for democratization? To what extent can digital media become a tool for democratization within a very limited connectivity context? What challenges may the digital media imply in the democratization of Myanmar? Semi-structured interviews with stakeholders were conducted in Yangon to gather up-to-date and first-hand insights. The combination of two qualitative research methods, discourse analysis and semistructured qualitative interviews, aims at building a deeper understanding of the role and potential of digital media in Myanmar. This research pays attention to specificities of Myanmar’s cultural, political and economic context, with a focus on technology and Internet. Field research showed the importance of taking into account the role of social media. A brief theoretical discussion of key concepts such as ‘digital media’, ‘social change’ and ‘democratization’ is provided to build a solid basis for analysis.

Climate change has hit the Pacific Island nation of Kiribati hard over the past decade, with unreliable weather patterns, drought, flooding and king tides all affecting the homes, health and livelihoods of residents. As the effects of climate change increase, women are rising up as advocates, fighting for action on mitigation and adaptation strategies locally and internationally. Through in-depth interviews with five I-Kiribati women, this study explores the strategies and impacts of their climate change advocacy. It addresses the questions: ‘How are I-Kiribati women advocating for climate action?’, and ‘What impact do the I-Kiribati women mobilized for climate action hope their voices and stories will have locally and transnationally?’.The qualitative study draws on feminist theory and discourses on vulnerability and women in development, with a view to breaking away from the rhetoric of women as ‘victims’ and focusing on women’s agency in climate change advocacy. It explores the nuances of gender and climate change in Kiribati and the effects of shifting gender roles in local communities. Findings highlight the role of narratives and storytelling in Kiribati and internationally to translate science-based arguments into easily understandable messages for the public.

Inspired by recent work on value-based messaging in migration-relatedcampaigning to elicit sympathy, this project explores theoretical rationale foremploying values in the field of communication for social change (C4SC),understood in its broad sense as aspiring to engender prosocial behaviour. The project is framed by the main question of how values, emotions and(prosocial) action relate to one another. Historic and more recent sociologytheories related to values, emotions and action such as the Jamesian Theory of Action, Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory, Schwartz’s Refined Theory ofValues, Caprara et al’s Prosociality, inform my theoretical hypothesis that for anindividual responding to a stimulus values are relatively stable frames whichguide goal setting, whilst emotions perform a cognitive function of evaluation,combined they create the impetus for (prosocial) action, though do notguarantee the impetus will be acted upon. Whether evidence that this hypothesis is enacted by traditional C4SC actors is the second endeavour of this project, for which a 42-text comparative analysisis performed to observe whether and how calls to action (CTA), values and emotions are present in existing prosocial campaigning. The texts are sourced from Instagram, the growing visual-first social media platform that offerscomparable units and serves as symbolic representation of the actors’communication. The main finding of this analysis is that values and emotions are present acrossthe range of themes and content producers. Whilst values associated withprosocial behaviour feature strongly across the board, values are present in a multitude of ways, sometimes in provocative or counter-intuitive ways within anindividual text. This diversity is positive for the potential of individual texts to engage a wider audience by reflecting the complexity of each person’s ownvalue profile. Being more subjective, the types of emotions elicited is less clear than valuesspoken to/challenged. Nonetheless the ways emotions are employed provideample food for thought for researchers and practitioners, and there is credible proof that each text will evoke some form of emotional engagement, whichanswers to the criteria in the hypothesis for emotion-facilitated evaluation. The findings on CTAs are informative, particularly when compared between thedifferent C4SC actors studied; there is a tendency for global level campaigningto be more general and national and local level more specific, whilst governmental level demonstrates limited CTAs for social change, focusing oncelebration of progress instead. The findings on the three units of interest in this project demonstrate fertileground for further research into the interplay between values, emotions andaction, as well as demonstrating to practitioners that understanding the value profile of target audiences is a worthwhile step in campaign design, and toconsider how a campaign might provoke certain emotional responses leadingeither to heightened engagement or risking emotional dissonance.  The project contributes to C4SC by testing a methodology for decoding CTAs,values and emotions, providing a baseline on how these units are used incurrent campaigning, and proposing various avenues of follow-up research,including connecting this work to intent and impact i.e. the extent to which thecampaigns motivated prosocial action. It builds on the work that inspired me bydefining why an emotional response is useful in prosocial campaigning and howthis relates to values and action.

The increasing accessibility and sophistication of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in generating high-quality images and texts presents opportunities, risks, and ethical dilemmas in the Communication about Development (ComDev) sector. This dissertation asks: how do ComDev professionals navigate the ethics of using AI to create visual and written content to raise funds and motivate action on global social issues? Drawing on the idea that AI ethics cannot be understood or achieved independent of a broader ethical structure, the project develops a theoretical framework of ethical storytelling, suggesting this can be successfully applied to AI and non-AI-generated content. Based on semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis of the resulting transcript, findings can broadly be categorised into concerns regarding intentional manipulation and misleading through the use of AI tools, as well as unintentional harm caused by biased models and outputs. The participants' reflections revealed an interest in and concern with ethical storytelling. The way in which these ethical concerns and proposed strategies for mitigation are navigated supports the thesis that the same ethical storytelling framework can be applied to content creation and outputs regardless of the techniques used to generate it. The findings illustrate a tension between ethical storytelling and practical considerations related to fundraising experienced by ComDev professionals as they consider the risks and opportunities of this emerging technology. This conclusion contributes to, and supports findings within, an existing body of research on how people working in this sector navigate the complexities and ethical dilemmas of their work.

Solomon Islands along with other Pacific Islands nations is adopting legislation designed to protect traditional knowledge and expressions of culture from misappropriation, attrition and loss of economic opportunity for owners. These developments require the state to engage across a highly pluralistic customary and social landscape. Ethnographic studies have shown that owing to such plurality unintended consequences may arise from attempts to rationalise indigenous conceptualisations such as customary laws to render them accessible to outside interests. The preservation of intangible cultural heritage requires understanding of the communicative processes that maintain its significance and value and which are involved in its continuation, transformation and transmission. This study approaches this challenge from the perspective of social knowledge; the common-sense and empirical reality experienced by the owners of a representative aspect of the culture. The case chosen for this research is the ritual taukuka tattooing practice of the Bellonese people of Solomon Islands. Social representations theory is used to show that the field of representation of this cultural practice is heterogeneous with consensual and non-consensual features. Whilst revival of the taukuka is unlikely due to prerequisite religious ontology, its preservation as significant heritage where ownership remains with the lineages and families may best be assured through cultural education and artistic representations.

This degree project involves a self-reflective analysis of an Australian Centre forInternational Agricultural Research (ACIAR) funded multimedia series. I produced thework in 2017, about the impact achieved in an agricultural research for developmentproject, working with cattle farmers in Indonesia. The overarching purpose of this study isto examine how I would embed greater participation throughout my filmmaking process ifundertaken again. The work is published online and comprises of five short films whichare accompanied by a series of photographs and text story. I chose to examine apreviously completed project of my own, knowing that it was undertaken with a limitedCommunication for Development (ComDev) perspective that has since been developedthrough my Master’s degree at Malmo University. Through my research, I seek first toidentify what aspects of the previous filmmaking process were participatory; second,investigate if there is a filmmaking process that could be recommended for future use toensure a greater level of participation among people; and third, determine if my donorfundedmultimedia impact stories only serve the public relations outcomes of thedevelopment industry.