On Defining and Differentiating
… 1
Introduction
Attempts to defined participatory communication for social change and development
confront a definitional problem. There seem to be many different kinds of, or roles for,
participation. Most participatory communication projects are undertaken on a very local,
community based scale. However, large scale programs are increasingly designed with
participation in mind. Some participatory communication is intensely dialogical and
interpersonal involving the development of mutual bonds of trust and mutual solidarity. While
other participation is mass mediated and may involve democratic discussion but does not rely as
much, if at all, on trust and solidarity. Participatory communication is increasingly employed to
obtain local “buy-in” to programs that aim to solve or ameliorate pressing problems in the short
run. While in other programs participatory communication aims to build local capacity over the
longer run as an end in itself. The outcome of these differences is a kind of rambling debate over
what is participation, with many different definitions of what participation is, and some
passionate disputes over what is “authentic” participation. As one recent observer notes:
“…participatory communication may not be defined easily because it cannot be considered a
unified model of communication” (Gumucio Dagron, 2001, p. 8).
Freire’s important and influential work suggests that participation requires intensely
dialogical interaction aimed at personal transformation. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to
call less intense and less transformative forms of dialog participatory. Community radio is often
highly participatory, but is not Freirean. So too, news media are key to prospects for democratic
participation at village, town, and national levels, but are not at all Freirean. One of the most
widely recognized attributes of participatory communication is that it is two-way. Mass media,
including news media, are not typically two-way, certainly not in the Freirean sense of two-way
Convention