The City of Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city, has high ambitions when it comes to inclusion and participation from local businesses and universities, NGOs and citizens. The decision to democratize management and to change the city’s processes towards working on (more) equal terms with relevant actors, was made by the City Council in 2014 as a step towards a socially sustainable development. The City Planning Office of Malmö has the main responsibility for city developing projects. One of the city’s current developing projects is called Amiralsstaden, defined as a geographical area and a development process. The ambition of the project is to “through broad participation and co-creation, improve the city- and living environment and investigate how new housing and new businesses can be established” (malmo.se 2018: a) The project focuses on creating new ways of working with physical planning and to create new models for participation (Reflecting Paper 2018). Since 2017, Amiralsstaden has facilitated two different participatory communication processes for development. Communication for Development scholar, Linje Manyozo (2012:222), argues that development communication no longer is a question of relevant technology or local contexts, nor a question of top-down or bottom-up approaches. Instead, he says, it is a question of how power figures in the political economy of both development and communication. A key indicator of whether media and communication for development interventions have played a critical role in society should therefore revolve around an understanding of how power has been negotiated and contested in favour of people. With Amiralsstaden as case study, this thesis sets out to explore how the ambitions of participation on policy level translate into ‘real world’ city planning and what impact it has on development. More specifically, I want to know how citizen participation in communication processes for development is practiced, experienced and what these processes lead to in terms of results and outcome for the city and for the participants. The study is based on qualitative research methodologies, mainly in-depth interviews and observations. Concepts related to participation, such as power, voice, and representation, are in focus to analyse and understand participatory processes and how they contribute to city development.

Multi-country surveys indicate widespread pessimism about global progress and about the effectiveness of the international development sector, despite indicators showing significant advancement in most areas. These perceptions are especially noteworthy because they can influence the public’s opinion on other social issues such as multilateralism, migration, or poverty. This pessimism originates in part in the information about development that organizations working in that sector produce. Development communicators are both creators, as well as audiences, of this material, but empirical evidence on the impact their world views have on the content they create is limited. This thesis aims to address this gap.Findings were canvassed using a qualitative method in the form of in-depth interviews. Seven participants were selected for having a decision-making position within their organizations, along with a mix of nationalities, type of organization and work experience – headquarters and field. The approach for this research was informed by postdevelopment critique, which examines the power of the discourse of development in constructing ideas about people and development. This study concludes that development communicators are as pessimistic as the general public, although it remains unclear to what extent this pessimism impacts the messages and content they produce. A key finding is that communicators deny being influenced by their personal views, citing instead organizational rules and Communication objectives as their main influences when creating content. They also deny being influenced by the media, not recognizing their role as audience. In general, this study points to a lack of self-reflection and self-awareness among development communicators of their personal input and biases in their work, and the full impact of their output on their audiences’ perception of the world. This study also indicates that, while acknowledging the negative information about development that the general public is exposed to, communication experts mainly credit the media for this information, and don’t recognize how the development sector influences media content. The study also reveals that the communicators’ pessimism about the world is likely connected with a disillusionment with the sector and their work. Development communicators are key actors in the global development sector because of their role in constructing the way the sector is presented to the global public. This research directly contributes to understanding their role as mediators of global perceptions, a process with significant moral and political implications.

Health communication campaigns in developing countries can take many different forms and make use of a wide range of communication tools. One of these tools are multimedia resources such as videos. Initiatives like the Scientific Animations Without Borders (SAWBO) or the Global Health Media Project (GHMP) have been created for the only purpose of developing videos adapted to different cultures and languages in order to tackle a variety of health issues relevant to developing countries. The present study pretends to focus on the use of such videos for water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) behavior in the context of cholera epidemic which hit Haiti in late 2010. By using comparative research procedures, three videos have been selected for content analysis from three different institutions: SAWBO, GHMP, and UNESCO Haiti. The results from this analysis served as guidelines for further survey analysis carried out through field questionnaires to a sample of the video’s target audience, that is, Haitian children aged from about 10 to 13 years old. The purpose of the study was to understand and compare the impact and effectiveness of these resources in transmitting disease prevention practices to the target audience. The results indicate that the videos usually coincided in the issues to inform about cholera, but differed in most of the features portrayed within the issues. Moreover, responses to the questionnaires reflected that the messages portrayed were only retained by an average half of the participants, with more or less success depending on the topic.

In the 2019 National Survey for Wales, 81% of respondents stated that they felt they couldnot influence decisions in their local area and only 14% said they were consulted about howpublic funds were spent (National Survey, 2019). Participatory budgeting (PB) offers atangible way to improve these figures, providing transparency about public spending andgiving power to local people to influence decisions. It also has the potential to encouragemore cohesive communities to develop, which in light of the UK’s recent departure from theEU could become increasingly important going forwards.Public discussion about the possibility of introducing PB in Wales has been taking place forover a decade, but the initiative is yet to be widely adopted. In order for PB to reach itspotential as a mechanism for social change, it is vital that the community are activelyinvolved in the process. To explore this idea, the focus of the research will be on therelationship between policymakers, civil society and citizens in Wales, and how aparticipatory approach could be used to improve communication amongst these actors andstrengthen relationships. This is a qualitative study that draws from various theories ofparticipation and relies on data from in-depth interviews with professionals and practitionersinvolved in PB in Wales.

AbstractThe importance of technological progress is hard to downplay, and it becomes even moreobvious in the times of the crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has been changing the normalflow of everyday life: a lot of countries have closed their borders, unnecessary travel isreduced to minimum, online grocery shopping breaks any possible records, we live withthe feeling of uncertainty what tomorrow may bring...But despite all that, life is goingon. Work processes have not stopped, on the opposite, “home office” has become the newnormal; universities still provide knowledge to students thanks to distance learning. Allkinds of technological tools help us keep different processes running – we areexperiencing a rapid turn to a more digital and sustainable future.Long before the coronavirus and its effect on the mankind in general, the Communicationfor Development programme at Malmö University (Malmö, Sweden) has demonstratedan example of the use of information and communication technologies in practice. Theprogramme has been running for almost 20 years already (September, 2020, marks its20th anniversary), and its distance learning format has been one of the main attractivefactors for students with other commitments, such as family, job, voluntary work, etc.More than that, an innovative and interdisciplinary nature of the programme has made itpossible for people from all around the world, with different backgrounds and lifeschedules, participate in it.On the one hand, it looks like ICT and new media have created a perfect ground for thestudying process. But on the other hand, probably it is quite early to be too optimisticabout it.This paper tries to look deeper into the role that the pedagogical approaches,communication, media and digital channels play for the ComDev students and alumni.The current work also aims at investigating the impact of ComDev on their alumni’s pathsand practical use of the acquired theoretical knowledge in the field of social change.Survey research in the form of an online questionnaire and semi structured interviews areused as a quali-quantitative methodological approach in the body of the paper.I would like to carry out this study as action research for optimization of the learningprocess and finding more efficient ways of promoting social change, that could be helpfulin the future for ComDev.

Ever since the 1960s, Sweden has heavily invested in international development cooperation, with a target of devoting 1% of the GNI to the matter. For at least as long, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) has had as part of its mission to inform the Swedish public about global development. This mission has been executed mainly through distribution of funds to civil society organisations (CSOs) who have used them for different communication activities.  At the end of 2022, the new right-wing government of Sweden decided to abandon the 1% target and reduce Sida’s funding for communication about development in Sweden by almost 90%. In this thesis, I investigate what concerns this raises among the CSOs. Data was collected through a questionnaire and interviews with CSO representatives.  The data show that the CSOs raise concerns for the government’s decision leading to less knowledge and interest among Swedes about development issues, which they argue will in turn lead to less support for state spending on international development, a weaker civil society, less transparency and accountability and by extension threaten democracy.

This thesis examines the perception of the city of Johannesburg through a participatory theatre pilot project titled “Breaths of Joburg”. It looks at how different stakeholders, such as the performance director, professional and student actors, as well as the writers who inspired the texts used as a basis for the theatre, the live audience as well as the social media audience perceived Johannesburg and whether their perceptions changed after experiencing the play. The texts were inspired by the writers’ desire for social change in the city of Johannesburg, however, this change was not perceived by the other stakeholders. As the play, which was initially intended for an adult audience, had to be adapted to a predominantly child audience due to the need for change of location, this influenced the storytelling and language used in the play. Arguably, this change contributed to the lack of perception change within the stakeholders. All stakeholders who were Johannesburg residents developed strong positive emotions for their city throughout the production of the play and the performances thereof due to their perception of authenticity and their pre-existing knowledge of the city. Their perceptions of the city, however, remained the same while live audience members who came from outside of Johannesburg did not perceive the city in the same way and reported a feeling of hesitation. Humorous and educational content within the play aided the performance director to transform the city of Johannesburg into a space for experiences and gathering meaning. While social media aided in promoting the play to a highly relevant pre-defined audience in and around Johannesburg, it did not actively aid in influencing the perceptions of its social media audience beyond measured metrics such as “likes” and “shares” on Facebook and Instagram.

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The purpose of the study is to (1)analyze the level of intercultural sensitivity ofUnited Nations Volunteer (UNV) volunteers in terms of interpersonal communication ina multicultural working environment; (2) explore how UNV volunteers interact andcommunicate in a multicultural environment at community level by developing acognitive structure to understand differences in culture and; (3) identify the level of intercultural sensitivity of the UNV volunteers.This study is intended to make a contribution to the research on Communicationfor Development from the perspective of Intercultural Communication, particularly byusing the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) as a framework to analyze the Intercultural experiences of a number of UNV volunteers.The qualitative survey was conducted with selected UNV volunteers includingnational, international and former UNV volunteers from February 15, 2008 for 4 weeks. A total of 48 UNV volunteers from 26 countries, serving in 24 countries, participated in the survey. The methodology of content analysis was applied to analyze their intercultural sensitivity and communication skills.The results show that UNV volunteers experience a wide range of interculturalsituations, including: language and relativity of experience, non-verbal behaviour, communication styles, monochronic and polychronic time, values and assumptions.Whereas some UNV volunteers seem to be at the ethnocentric stage, the majority ofrespondents are at the ethnorelative stages, which include the acceptance and adaptationstages of DMIS.In order to improve cultural sensitivity, intercultural trainings are provided toselected UNV volunteers at headquarters in Bonn. This study points to the need for theUNV programme to design and implement structured training in intercultural sensitivity for all UNV volunteers. These trainings should not be given only at Headquarters, but in every Country Office or Support Unit as part of a mainstreamed procedure for both national and international UNV volunteers.Building the capacity of intercultural communication and intercultural sensitivityof UNV volunteers will lead to optimal outcomes in their work through improvedcommunication with colleagues, counterparts and local partners. Intercultural sensitivityis a critical aspect of communication for development. Intercultural sensitivity creates the two-way communication systems that allow communities to speak out, and byfinding their voice, communities begin to realize ownership of the development agendaenshrined in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).