Development, a word that I keep hearing for almost every day for the past 6 weeks. Everywhere I go, I look for what could be made better, what could be developed. I often find myself asking a question to myself, “is this development?” I’ve also been conscious to what I’m doing as a student of devcom, I often ask myself if my output or the topics I find is development-oriented.
To check if a topic or output is development-oriented, I ask myself:
“Does it address a concern?”
I learned from ate Hanna from BroadCom Soc that it is development oriented if it addresses an issue. Whenever I look for articles online I look for the parts where it addresses the concern of the article, only then will I be able to determine if it is development-oriented. I do this because I learned that, unlike journalism, we are not here just to report what happened or who is involved, we are here to look into the issue itself. Devcom is not just a reporter of an issue, we are part of the solution, an agent of change.
“Does it empower?”
The 4 E’s of DevCom plays a part in development, especially the 1st E, empowerment. Whenever I browse social media, I often find posts about current issues like the price of palay and the lives of the farmers. I see that these farmers are powerless and voiceless despite the big part that they play in this agricultural nation. We must look into what we, development communicators, do and see if what we’re doing is actually amplifying the voice of the voiceless and empowering the powerless.
“Does it feature human development?”
This is the greatest and top question for me when testing if an output is development-oriented. Sadly, you can’t always answer this question when reading articles online. We often find development issues on news articles online and on paper, often now featuring news of poverty alleviation or any type of alleviation. You might ask me, “why this question? Why not ask if it is a development issue?” Simply because devcom is not just about studying development issues, but it is also about learning how we will communicate and produce real development where we touch the lives of people and alleviating them from their low status.
The first two question is sufficient to determine if something is development-oriented, but the top question must be how an article or output feature human development. An article or output that answers “Yes” to all three of these question shows that a development communicator did his/her job well. These questions are separates us from ordinary journalists.
To be able to show all three of these in a single output should be our greatest goal. If we can make an output with all three, then we can say that there is indeed development happening.
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