Communication for Human Development: seeking social transformation

Abstract

Communication is one of the “conditions of possibility” of Human Development. The folds of the infocommunicational map, that is linking us today, define a share space between mainstream media (mass society) and social media (digital society). An intricate space which is also weaved by associated citizenship or individuals who are constructing the right to communication. On this map, development has been located from several and different places or spheres of sense: Postindustrial Society (Bell), Informational and Network Society (Castells), Techno-sciences Society (Virilio), Advanced Technology Society (Negroponte), Information Society (OCDE), or Digital Society of Knowledge (European Union). All of them have constituted topographies of development, and consequently, of knowledge, information and communication. These four decades of theoretical contributions to the map of communication in development show the pertinence of reopening the debate about democratization of information (Mcbride) and the people’s right to communicate (Hamelink) because we are in the same place as we were in the seventies: behind the impermeability of a technological transfer order that consolidates (and maintains) similar asymmetries and structural differences.