Communication policy and planning: An integrative approach

TELEMATICS and INFORMATICS

VoL 9, No. 2, pp. 113-122, 1992 Copyright © 1992 Pergamon Press Ltd. Printed in the USA 0736-5853/92 $5.00 + .00

COMMUNICATION POLICY AND PLANNING: AN INTEGRATIVE APPROACH Hamid Mowlana Abstract-Communication has always been a crucial and pervasive part of any developmental program. Today, an emerging area of development study is, in fact, the application of planning and management of information and communication to development efforts. Indeed, the area of communication policy and planning has been one of the growing fields within the international communication and development discipline. This article will examine both the literature and institutional growth within the communication policy and planning field, especially as it may apply to less-industrialized societies. Whereas most of the writings in communication technology in national development is to change the audience's attitudes and behaviors, this paper takes an integrated view of communication policy in recommending a set of socioeconomic and political-cultural elements that are multidimensional and compatible with the diversity of national cultures. INTRODUCTION

While communication policy and planning in the past largely were sectorial and usually dealt with only one dimension o f the development problem (i.e., communication vis-a-vis economic, political, or bureaucratic subjects), in the light o f communication development, we have learned that this now entails a multistage type o f analysis. An attempt is made here to outline an integrated approach toward a unified comprehensive methodology for communication policy and planning with the hope that such a schema might incorporate the elements o f a society's economic, political, and cultural communication institutions. Communication policy and planning in any society or nation are influenced and shaped by real-world factors. Policy-making is the initial phase in which problems are recognized and specific governmental efforts are made to determine directions. The notion o f communication policy and planning, however, as the integrative nature o f developmental projects of all kinds is not well recognized. In general, the need for some control or regulation o f the information- and communications-technology industries is acknowledged. There is, however, little agreement in most nations, on political and philosophical grounds, as to the best approaches to take in any given situation, resulting in policy thIlt is usually fragmented and ineffective or altogether absent. Many less-industrialized nations and regions lack cohesive and coherent communications policy to direct the effective incorporation o f policy and planning into telecommunications as well as communication projects. in many nations, information technology is a powerful resource, one that is not Harold Mowlana is Professor of International Relations and Director of the International CommunicationProgram at the School of International Service,The American University, Washington, D.C. 20016. 113

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depleted with use. Further, this resource aids in the organization and allocation of other resources-economic, political, cultural, and legal. Control over the distribution of these resources positions nations strategically as well as operationally either inside or outside of the flow of international interactions determining power in the global system. Policy-making unavoidably is influenced by extranational forces. More significant than the obvious politico-economic and diplomatic influences is the impact of private corporations on government policy formulation, especially in the areas of technology transfer, know-how, and innovation. Less industrially developed countries, without communication policy and planning infrastructures, for example, are in a weak position to control resource applications that are influenced heavily by private international businesses with agendas differing from their own national development objectives. On the other hand, such countries with high degrees of human and natural resources, through carefully designed national strategies for communication policy and planning, can effect powerful control over the economic, political, cultural, and technological and legal factors influencing development. For example, by setting a national policy mandating 51°70 local ownership of all foreign direct investment in India in compUter-related technologies, India successfully mafntained control over its communication policy and planning process and, at the same time, supported development of its national technological industries. Communication policy and planning, furthermore, is becoming a subfield in its own right with the literature growing in regards to developed and developing countries (Hancock, 1981; Middleton, 1980; Middleton & Hsu, 1974; Rahim, 1976; Rahim & Middleton, 1977). Communication is a crucial and pervasive part of society's lifesupport system, and the opportunities for applying improved communication to both stimulate development and mitigate problems appear substantial. Yet the realm of communication policy, strategy, and planning remains a fairly new area of inquiry. Moreover, questions of effective implementation remain largely unanswered. In short, for the most part, the role of communication as development in the past has not been operationalized and integrated into societal communication plans.

TECHNOLOGICAL AND INSTITUTIONAL STRATEGIES AND APPROACHES

Although we have seen a progression of policy research and a rise in the number of national communication policies during the last decade, writings on communication strategy and planning as they relate to development remain somewhat fragmented, simplistic, bureaucratic, and market-oriented. Upon examination of both the literature and institutions dealing with communication policy and planning, the following different research approaches have been identified: 1. long-range planning with policy goals toward equitable distribution of communication power in a society's future; 2. comprehensive planning examining all aspects of a communication system within the broader socio-political framework of society; 3. development support communication designed to encourage the participation of beneficiaries in a project and to ensure its execution and success; 4. technology transfer and assessment, especially innovations in such areas as satellite communication, cable television, and telecom-computer linkups;

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5. control and regulations and their legal and institutional consequences; 6. normative and goal-oriented approaches in which the information program policy plays an active role in broadening the political and cultural views of the people through alternative and critical programs; 7. information economics, determining the information sector of the economy's contribution to overall economic growth; and 8. an integrated approach toward a unified comprehensive methodology. Traditionally, technological and institutional approaches to communication policy and planning have predominated. In other words, most writings, research, and prescriptions on communication policy and planning focus on those areas that are technologically mediated or institutionally arranged. The two approaches overlap somewhat, despite their general and specific distinctions. Both technological and institutional approaches require that development planners work with existing resources or with those that can be realistically created within financial and time constraints. The availability and assessment of resources naturally become critical components of the planning process and involve identification and evaluation as well as assessment of distribution and potential redistribution or extension of resources. Communication resources available to both approaches can be grouped into three categories: (1) traditional communication and interpersonal interactions, (2) conventional mass media and telecommunication, and (3) high technology and space applications. The technology-mediated focus contends that international telecommunications is vital to progress in the developing countries. It maintains that since the modern world's technical and scientific culture is global, any country that cuts itself off from the electronic flow of knowledge in that global enterprise risks incurring information isolation and economic underdevelopment. The institutionally arranged focus, on the other hand, acknowledges that research and planning in communication and development is indeed a complex task and that the analyst must maintain a broad view of communication as a part of the larger development system, while at the same time focusing on the communication system itself and the relationship of its component parts. The central assumption of the institutional approach, in other words, is that communication planning for development is initiated on the premise that change is needed. Thus, institutional frameworks are intended for the practical use of planners and decision makers. Recently, new contributions in development planning have been significant, among these the application of planning and management to development efforts. It is important here to take note of some of the most recent diagnoses of communication policies and planning as they apply to the developing countries. It increasingly is recognized that there is a need first to link communication development with overall development, through the formulation of national communication policies that reflect demographic imperatives and, secorrd, to develop an endogenous approach to development that simultaneously acknowledges opportunities as well as dangers in the extranational environment. AN INTEGRATIVE APPROACH An integrative approach to communication policy and planning attempts to introduce multidimensional considerations into policy and planning; these include economic,

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political, cultural, technological, and regulatory factors. It can be applied at both macro and micro levels and to a number of information-oriented technologies. Integration is used here in a broad context of societal, national, and community interactions. An integrated approach to the problems of communication policy and planning focuses on the links among society's economic, political, and cultural as well as communications institutions. Thus, communication and development is looked at in a comprehensive, integrative way to determine whether there can be communication policy and planning. In this way, an integrated approach operates in a broader area than those of technologically and institutionally focused frameworks. The need for this conceptual framework stems from the explicit recognition that a communication system, as it relates to developmental process, is a rather complex social system consisting of actions carried out within the context of the internal and external social conditions of the community and society in which it operates. The operation of any one part of this complex system and process, in other words, cannot be fully understood without reference to the way in which the whole itself operateseach part is related to both the formation (production) and distribution (dissemination and use) processes of its messages. An integrative approach sees any communication process, including telecommunications, as divided into two distinct stages of production and distribution. The production stage is further divided into the source or sources that initially feed the streams of information through institutions, groups, individuals, and other channels. This step carries the process of production and creation of messages to a level of analysis that includes the political, economic, and cultural participants that initially provide the information. In the distribution stages, communication policy and planning must consider information flow beyond its exposure stage to the recipients to include consideration of the,process of absorption, internalization, and use of messages in a given population. In short, the comprehensive study of communication and information must include a careful consideration of the factors in four stages of the process: (1) the source; (2) the process of production; (3) the process of distribution; and (4) the process of use. Distribution and use have become the most crucial areas in communication policy and planning because of the development of modern communication technology, the roles played by the nation-state system, and the growing number of transnational actors and national interest groups and individuals. Economic, political, cultural, and technical and legal variables are the principal factors contributing to both macro and micro levels of this process (Mowlana & Wilson, 1990). 1. Economic variables involve communication policymakers and planners in issues of ownership, disposition of income, sources of operations, and allocation of economic resources. One of the most controversial issues surrounding communication policy and planning, including telecommunications, is the nature and formation of ownership. Deregulation and privatization, for example, have raised the question of private and mixed sectors, which are crucial for the countries with short histories of telecommunications infrastructures. 2. Political variables rely heavily on concepts of control, both internal and external to the system. Internal actual controls are specific rules and regulations, such as education, professional qualifications, or hierarchy created and institutionalized formally by the system itself, to which members in a communication system subject themselves. Internal perceived control can include such factors as peergroup pressure or unwritten but understood "rules of the game" that regulate the way members of the system behave within perceived institutional boundaries

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of the unit in which they work. External actual controls include such items as constitutional and legal provisions, direct governmental regulations, censorship in the case of the media, licensing, and other external legal, professional, governmental, or institution factors. External perceived control is comprised of demands and influence exerted by such systems as culture, personality, social structure, and economic and political elites. Political variables, such as regulation, deregulation, "liberalization," and scores of other administrative factors, also provide insight into the complexities of the bureaucratic structure centering around monopoly and change, and into actual and perceived purposes of the development process as part of a large" system in different countries and economies. The bureaucracy of a communication system can be defined as a hierarchy of nonhereditary positions subject to the authority of the executive. Study of the bureaucracy of an institution is a prerequisite to the proper evaluation of its degree of autonomy or even reliability at message-gathering and distributing levels, especially in organizations in which there is extensive dependence upon government. Two important bureaucratic subcategories include monopoly and change. Monopoly refers to the network or the organization as a whole, its subsidiaries, subdivisions, sister organizations, organization chart, and concentration of ownership. Change is the capacity of the system to adapt itself to international and external environments. Factors such as job mobility, degree of turnover, promotional policies, and the movement of information in the system itself are important infrastructural elements that ensure efficient and timely output in the formation and distribution of messages. . Cultural factors involve an understanding of control beyond the macro level to more subtle definitions of actual and perceived rules and regulations both inside and outside the development system. Examples are understood when one considers the questions of control in communication systems, but more precisely in regard to what is termed "perceived control." Perceived control consists of all those unwritten but understood cultural rules and norms that have a bearing on the political, technological, and economic sides of decision making. . Technological factors include media and messages. This variable deals with the technology of the media as well as the number of media units and technologies in the system under analysis and comparison. For example, units per medium in the production stage stands for the number of newspapers for the written press, and for the number of radio and television stations in broadcasting. In short, in the distribution stage this variable should indicate the number of exposures to the message as well as the circulation of the content and the recipients of the message. At the heart of an integrative approach to communication policy and planning is the premise that no-communication system can be viable without incorporation of traditional and indigenous communication channels rooted in culture and society. Increasingly, traditional communication infrastructures are being recognized in many societies as independent systems with an historical continuum, capable of fulfilling the many functions of modern communication systems in addition to their own special functions. Thus, traditional infrastructures and communications institutions are treated as being an adaptable and integrative part of modern technological development, with emphasis given to whatever mixture provides the best grounds for the implementation of developmental objectives.

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THE CASE OF INTERNATIONAL TOURISM POLICY AND PLANNING In terms of the four primary economic, political, cultural, and technological variables, there are many ways to illustrate the issue of communication development and planning in both developing and developed nations. A good example of this is how telecommunications policies and planning usually are handled and analyzed in the context of international tourism. This is to demonstrate the effectiveness of a multidimensional approach to communication policy and planning. Elsewhere, in a study'of the central role of telecommunications technologies in the tourism infrastructure, an international relations perspective was adopted to incorporate as many variables as possible into a framework for policy analysis (See Figure I) (Mowlana & Smith, 1990; Ritchie et al., 1991). Integration and convergence in the area of international tourism are reflected in the recent tourism industry-government dialogue on the development of international electronic travel-marketing strategies and communication policy and planning for the United States. Some Western European countries have established national computerized data banks to provide travel companies and consumers with information about services and prices and, as a result, are realizing enormous marketing advantages over U.S. enterprises. Furthermore, the most advanced of these systems integrate travel reservations and payment information into their electronic marketing data banks as well as the ability to store, retrieve, and sort information about individual consumers and generate mailing lists. In short, increasingly, nation states, such as the United States, are recognizing the political and economic goods embedded in the access to and control of national

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information and capital flows. Internal, i.e., national, control of these "goods" increasingly is in competition with external or international demands for globalization of information technologies. Because power is at stake, nation states are modifying their behaviors in the direction of greater involvement in the internationaI tourism infrastructure centering around telecommunications and transnational financial flows and communication policy and planning. In the face of electronic control of information and capital, increasingly considered national resources, the U.S. and other governments are becoming engaged as partners in a new environment of cross-sector alliances, national and international business coalitions, and other forms of cooperation with participants in the international tourism industry (see Figure 2) (Mowlana & Smith, 1992). Similarly, the need for a multidimensional framework of analysis for contemporary communication policy and planning is reflected in renewed trends toward regionalism in the international system. Here, the variable of bureaucratization becomes a central issue in illuminating the kind of arrangements made by communication policy and planning participants-at both national and regional levels. The U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement and, more recently, the proposals for a U.S.-Mexico-Canada (or North American) Free Trade Agreement and Enterprise for the Americas Initiative tend to follow the path of prior bilateral initiatives in the area of trade in tourism services among these countries and regions. Earlier tourism agreements between the U.S. and the Caribbean or the U.S. and Venezuela, for example, provided policy and planning frameworks upon which political and economic free trade and investment agreements could be structured (Smith, 1991).

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THE CASE OF LESS-INDUSTRIALIZED COUNTRIES

Communication policy approaches, as stated above, have been ingrained over the years within the institutional policies in the industrialized countries as have approaches toward innovation, reindustrialization, and regulations-deregulations. In the lessindustrialized societies, however, these have not been dealt with as autonomous areas of activities due to the lack of infrastructure and lack of institutional memory, and external and internal pressures. As a result, the expansion of communication technologies in general and telecommunications in particular in the less-industrialized countries has tended to be uneven, thus creating a gap between individual, institutional, and national levels (Mowlana, 1986). The common assumption is that there is much the communication media and technologies could do to help the processes of development if the rulers and leaders of nations would only choose to support certain selected technologies as growth industries; however, the choice of which technologies in relationship to their impact on a particular society represents a complex decision-making process. Additionally, often in developing countries, the gap between the communications channels used by the society or nation state and individuals within that society is enormous. The connection of different societies and different countries or systems to different aspects of communication technology is diffuse rather than direct. A given society or a country on both individual and nation-state levels may reflect any combination of traditions of communication systems and technology. Three stages, in particular, of communication development--traditional, conventional mass media, and futuristic informatics-can be found in varying degrees in most societies today. For this reason, a continuum of stages is best depicted as four quadrants (see Figure 3), with a separation between individual and national (or established system) levels on the vertical, individual-system level axis, and between traditional communication, mass media and telecommunications, and informatic and telematic levels on the horizontal communication-infrastructure axis. The most striking polarity between individuals and the national system is generated-in such oil-rich countries as Nigeria, Venezuela, or

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Saudi Arabia, for example--when the national communication policies gravitate toward the direction of high technologies while the individuals remain in the realm of traditional or semitraditional communication and information systems. In other words, three levels of technology-traditional, mass media, and high technologymust be integrated as well as diffused, and done so on individual, institutional, and national levels. The power of industrialized countries lies in the fact that their communication policy and planning, because of their long institutional history, prepare their system for this type of integration. This is in contrast to the process in developing countries, in which a gap is created because the development of one sector, such as the national level, is conducted at the expense of the other institutional or individual sectors. For example, the introduction of personal computers (PCs) in the United States and Europe and the methods used in their rapid diffusion are classic examples of the integrative nature of the marketing techniques used by the multinational and other producers. Within a short span following the introduction of PCs in these areas, a high degree of diffusion of knowledge of and reliance on the systems was achieved, for example, among local and national bureaucracies, office workers, students, bank executives, and military personnel. Indeed, by providing, free of charge, hardware and software as well as time, especially to individuals and educational institutions, the producers and manufacturers of PCs were able to recruit as well as train enough "person power" to make their future market operative and more profitable. The cost of operations and maintenance of the communication hardware is facilitated once the public and institutional wealth of customers is recruited successfully into the system. Thus, in this context, contradictions and polarity gaps in national communication policy and planning become a major social, political, and economic problem. Such a model serves as a conceptual framework for communication policy and planning in which all channels of communication are represented and given equal weight. Abandoning the earlier assumptions that viewed development as necessarily industrial and Western, the traditional end of the continuum is given equal emphasis in realistic acknowledgement of its ongoing importance in most of the world. CONCLUSION Viewing the communication process as an integrated whole challenges the technological determinism that underlined much communication policy and planning of the 1970s. Aspects of this integrated approach have been emphasized by a numbei- of scholars and planners in the 1980s. This view considers the importance of modern technological innovation in terms of developmental objectives and communication needs and the distribution of political, cultural, and economic benefits to society. The process of aligning different societies, countries, or systems with various aspects of communication technology is a diffuse one. In short, from the perspective of an integrated approach, even as the new informatics age is heralded as the latest technological accomplishment, some thoughtful consideration should be given to the ramifications of this achievement to assure that communication policy and planning for the future could benefit a world now inured to the constant assaults of technological revolution. Thus, a given society or country on both individual and national levels may reflect features of any combination of traditions'of communication systems and technology, and some may be stronger and more dominant than others depending on social, cultural, political, and economic conditions. In this regard, this article, although general,

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hopefully can be a guideline for a much broader perspective on communication and policy with application to telecommunications or other communication-oriented projects. Such a remedy demands a fundamental transformation and change in our level of conceptualization toward viewing communication policy and planning as an integrative, holistic process.

REFERENCES Hancock, A. (1980). Communication planning for development: An operational framework. Paris: UNESCO. Middleton, J. (Ed.) (1980). Approaches to communication planning. Paris: UNESCO. Middleton, J., & Hsu, L. Y. (1974). Planning communication for family planning. (A Professional Development Module, 3 vols.) Honolulu: East-West Communication Institute, East-West Center. Mowlana, H. (1986). Global information and world communication: New frontiers in international relations (chapters 1 and 9). New York: Longman, Inc. Mowlana, H., & Smith, G. (1990, December). Tourism, telecommunications, and transnational banking: A framework for policy analysis. Tourism Management: Research, Policies, Practice, 11(4), 315-324. Mowlana, H., & Smith, G. Trends in telecommunications and the tourism industry: Coalitions, regionalism, and international welfare systems. In J. R. Brent Ritchie, D. Hawkins, D. Frechtling, & F. Go, (Eds.), tVorld travel and tourism review: Indicators, trends, and forecasts, 2, No. 1. Wallingford, UK: C.A.B. International (In press). Mowlana, H., & Smith, G. Tourism as international relations: Linkages between telecommunications technologies and transnational banking. In J. R. Brent Ritchie, D. Hawkins, D. Frechtling, & F. Go, (Eds.), The world travel and tourism review: Indicators, trends, and forecasts, Vol. 1, No. I (pp. 215-218). Wallingford, UK: C.A.B. International. Mowlana, H., & Wilson, L. J. (1990). The passing of modernity: Communication and the transformation of society. New York: Longman, Inc. Rahim, S. A. (1976). Communication policy and planning for development: A selected annotated bibliography, Honolulu: East-West Center. Rahim, S. A., & Middleton, J. (Eds.) (1977). Perspectives in communication and development. Honolulu: East-West Center. Smith, G. (1991). Tourism, telecommunications, and transnational banking: A study in international interactions. Ph.D. Diss., Washington, D.C.: School of International Service, The American University.