1.0 Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
After the second world war, developed countries came to the realization that the backwardness of the third world is a drag on their own development and they decided to initiate interventions in these countries with a view to bringing development to them. Interventions targeted the economic growth of these countries with the success of the developed countries as the model aspiration. Development was thought to be triggered by and was pursued through the diffusion of modern technologies, planned in the national capitals under the guidance and direction of experts. “Often, the people in the villages who are the ‘objects' of these plans would first learn that ‘development' was on the way when strangers from the city turned-up, frequently unannounced, to survey land or look at project sites” (Yoon, 1996: 37).
Building on the American scholar Daniel Lerner's influential 1958 study of communication and development in the Middle East and Wilbur Schramm's 1964 study on the role of media for national development, communication researchers assumed that the introduction of media and certain types of educational, political, and economic information into a social system could transform individuals and societies from traditional to modern.
The term ”ždevelopment communication? was first used in the Philippines in the 1970s by Professor Nora Quebral to “designate the processes for transmitting and communicating new knowledge related to rural environments” (Bessette, 2004: 14). It eventually came to cover all those seeking to help improve the living conditions of the disadvantaged people.
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