Advertising within the Framework of the Communication for Development: towards a new model of advertising for social change

Abstract

We present in this paper a reflection on advertising within the framework of the action- research of communication for development, a subject that has often been forgotten or covered in a minor way; perhaps being understood only as a necessary tool of social marketing, subject to a “diffusionist” point of view of development programmes in spite of the criticism and the incoming new models. In the context of recent times and future, that inevitably give strength to the label “communication for social change”, the advertising area, understood as a social institution and globally legitimized, has reserved a fundamental role which, given the challenges of improving society and the urgent needs of the new global society, practitioners and researchers need to know and exploit.