Impact and Learning

Research does not automatically generate knowledge - rethinking product and process

2013-02-25T16:25:00.000Z

By Catherine Fisher

The overwhelming conclusion I have drawn from my involvement as a contributor to the IDS Bulletin, New Roles for Communication in Development?, is the need for research communication to place a greater focus on process rather than product. I draw this insight from both the process (what I've learned from being involved) and the product itself (what I've learned from some of the great articles in the Bulletin). I'm not arguing that there is no role for product, far from it, but that there is value in re-examining the relationship between the two.

Product v Process? Baking Czech bread
Image credit: Chmee2 (Own work) CC-BY 3.0

Overall I would argue that articles in the Bulletin collectively encouraged us to challenge our assumptions around three related areas:

What is research?
What is knowledge?
How does change happen?

And to explore links between these areas: how does research generate knowledge, whose knowledge produces the research, how does research or even knowledge lead to change? All speak to a greater focus on process. I explore a couple of examples below.

Research changes those involved

Patta Scott Villier's article, This research does not influence policy, explores how participation in a research process brought change for both the researchers and the ‘researchees’, even if the resulting output didn't shape high level policy processes So the process generated more change than the product. But maybe the product (or its story as described in Patta's article) will inspire someone somewhere else to undergo a similar process, that might itself generate change...

Research doesn’t necessarily build knowledge

In our article, Kirsty, Louise and I explore the factors that shape whether actors engage with research and are willing and able to draw on research. In doing so, we challenge ideas that research, even if it is shared at the right time and packaged in the right way, will somehow automatically generate “knowledge” in target audiences. Research does not automatically generate knowledge. This happens through a process of sense-making in which the “knower” is an active participant not a passive recipient, who may deliberately or inadvertently choose to reject the intended message of the product. As Penelope Beynon’s et al's article illustrated, even carefully constructed outputs such as a policy brief, often seen as the silver bullet of research communication, can lead to the creation of different knowledge than was intended.

Growing importance of “process architects”

One implication of this greater focus on process is a greater role for intermediaries, knowledge brokers or innovation brokers within the broad spectrum of research communication. The focus on process over product helps us to see a greater role for these actors which is not just about turning research outputs into attractive products but about seeing research and research-based products as part of the processes of knowledge creation and change, and supporting the design of these processes. These processes will often draw on products from multiple sources, current or historical, local or from far away. Often these processes themselves produce products which then go on to inform other processes. This speaks to some of the points I make in the Introduction, Is Development Research Communication Coming of Age? (PDF).

The value and opportunity for exposing the process behind the product

One final reflection is that I doubt anyone will learn as much from the papers that appear in the journal as I have learned from writing them. The process of writing a paper with a colleague forced us both to reexamine our assumptions and beliefs. An early version of our paper included a box outlining the differences in position about research and knowledge, and how it contributes to change that attempted to share some of the discussions we had Yet journal articles require a compelling single narrative, an authoritative position and do not allow for divergence and discussion. They also have a strict word count. So this was dropped. While journal articles play an important role in communicating ideas and indeed validating the rigour of those ideas, particularly those from more formal research processes, perhaps there is also space – particularly in the social sciences for us to be more open in our workings, less authoritative in our positions. New media such as blogs like this, or even tweets enable “work in progress/emerging thinking” type products to be shared more widely that can trigger thinking and knowledge generation processes for others.

I hope that both this blog series and the Bulletin itself has prompted you to think and re-examine your ideas as it has done for me.

Catherine Fisher contributed to the Introduction in the IDS Bulletin, entitled Is Development Research Coming of Age? (PDF) and to the Bulletin article entitled Stimulating Demand for Research Evidence: what role for capacity building?. Catherine is International Capacity Building Co-ordinator at Amnesty International. She was formally Capacity Support Coordinator with the Impact and Learning Team at IDS.

More blogs on the IDS Bulletin New Roles for Communication in Development?

Evolution of new roles: from researcher, to activist, to knowledge intermediary (By Simon Batchelor)
How researchers can learn to stop worrying and love communicators (By Nicholas Benequista)
Trying to get research into use? Start by making users an integral part of the research design process (By Abby Mulhall)
Supply and demand in evidence-informed policy - in pictures! (By Kirsty Newman)
Three things that stop development organisations being agents of change (By Liz Carlile)
Why researchers should consider a new model for engagement (By Ajoy Datta)
An interview with Blane Harvey, co-editor of New Roles for Communication in Development?
Redefining the researcher, and the research (By Zachary Patterson)
Challenges in communicating co-constructed knowledge to influence policy (By Fran Seballos)
How are the roles of researchers and research communicators changing? (By Tessa Lewin)

Evolution of new roles: from researcher, to activist, to knowledge intermediary

2012-12-20T14:01:00.001Z

By Simon Batchelor

The IDS Bulletin that this series of blogs is associated with was titled New Roles for Communication in Development? My own article, Changing the Financial Landscape of Africa... was about a ten year journey for a small group of researchers and certainly over the decade (gosh that’s a long time!) our own roles evolved and changed.

Researcher: In the article I start with some basic research. Commissioned through a competitive bid, we started researching how people were using mobile phones in Africa (and Asia). This led to an insight about exchanging airtime, where people in three different countries (even in 2001) had worked out that they could do a sort of money transfer using mobile phones and airtime.

Lobbyist/Activist: It is at this point that our role begins to change. We started to move beyond our research responsibilities (as stated on the research proposal) and evolve into ‘research communicators’, even becoming advocates and lobbyists. The article goes on to describe how conversations occurred with donors, private sector, senior government, central banks – presenting the idea of mobile phone money transfer (and the evidence that there was demand within Africa) and trying to get interest and buy-in to the idea.

Knowledge Intermediary: Moving on a year or so our role evolves further. From lobbying about an idea, we begin to get involved with the details of implementing that idea - legislation, policy environments and private sector development. Alongside this detail work, we also get involved with creating discussion space for the emerging players. We start brokering meetings between people, undertaking social network analysis to identify who should talk to who, creating international conferences to create the space for donors, private sector, and legislators to come together, and for bankers and telecommunication to find each other in a new digital converging space. We were (as Blane et al say in their introduction to the Bulletin (PDF)) “seeking to strengthen the linkages and flows of information between disciplines, areas of practice or sources of knowledge” So from being a researcher investigating how communities use mobile phones we seem to have evolved into knowledge intermediaries.

From researcher, to research communicator, to lobbyist, to knowledge intermediary.   Interesting.

Recently I was working on Theories of Change and Impact pathways for the CGIAR centres, and their proposals really raised the question – where do the responsibilities of a researcher finish? Do researchers have a duty to change the world, or do they produce their findings and leave it at that? Do they have a duty to communicate their findings to those who might use them? Do they have a duty to follow through and make sure that their research does more than sit on a shelf? What are the boundaries of their and our responsibility?

As a final thought can I just add that the paper is constructed around a framework for policy influence first proposed by David Steven (PDF). Steven talks about changing the framing of a discourse and creating spaces for dialogue within his five point frame. I wrote the ‘story’ of the article as a narrative before finding the Steven framework; and then when I found it I realised that the story fits his framing. I don’t know if all research to policy activism can be mapped onto his frame but I was amazed at how closely he captured our journey – I recommend it.

Simon Batchelor wrote the Bulletin article Changing the Financial Landscape of Africa: An Unusual Story of Evidence-informed Innovation, Intentional Policy Influence and Private Sector Engagement.
Simon is managing director at Gamos Ltd, and formally interim manager of the Impact and Learning Team at IDS.

More blogs on the IDS Bulletin New Roles for Communication in Development?

How researchers can learn to stop worrying and love communicators (By Nicholas Benequista)
Trying to get research into use? Start by making users an integral part of the research design process (By Abby Mulhall)
Supply and demand in evidence-informed policy - in pictures! (By Kirsty Newman)
Three things that stop development organisations being agents of change (By Liz Carlile)
Why researchers should consider a new model for engagement (By Ajoy Datta)
An interview with Blane Harvey, co-editor of New Roles for Communication in Development?
Redefining the researcher, and the research (By Zachary Patterson)
Challenges in communicating co-constructed knowledge to influence policy (By Fran Seballos)
How are the roles of researchers and research communicators changing? (By Tessa Lewin)

How researchers can learn to stop worrying and love communicators

2012-12-13T10:36:00.000Z

By Nicholas Benequista

Let’s be frank. Researchers don’t really like us research communicators.

They have good reason not to like us, but this doesn’t necessarily need to be so. To explain why, however, I have to go back thirty years or so.

The Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability (www.drc-citizenship.org) taught us a lot about how researchers connect with political and social actors in distinct ways. Understanding of how individual researchers and their institutions view themselves as agents of change is a good way to begin thinking about a communication strategy, rather than the other way around. Image credit: N.Benequista

When it was finally acknowledged that policy-makers mostly ignore research, Nathan Caplan postulated the "two communities theory" to explain this shocking phenomenon. He said that there was a "culture gap" between researchers and policy-makers demarcated by their different values, language, professional practices and institutional contexts.

In a sense, those of us who work in research communication are supposed to be the bridges between these two communities, but if you look critically at the literature on research communication, you’ll see that we’ve recreated that culture gap.

On the one side, various academic disciplines - including communication studies, political science and cultural theory - continue to examine research communication for insights into the relationship between knowledge and social change.

This body of mid-range theory, however, has often ignored the politics of the research field, including the increasing pressure imposed on "applied" areas such as development studies or health to deliver "influence." Consequently, these theories are blind to how research communication transforms researchers personally and to how the mainstreaming of research communication is actually a political force. Researchers resent political communicators because we represent an effort change the way they work, and we have to be willing to accept that we have sometimes (though not always) done so for the worse.

On the other side of this divide are the practice-minded guidebooks and handbooks for research communication. These certainly draw on the theory. Some guidebook authors are simultaneously publishing on the topic of research communication in peer-reviewed journals. The majority of them, however, are penned by the agencies - such as the UK Department for International Development or US Agency for International Development - who are mandating that the research they fund shows results. They tend to be bureaucratic and procedural, with long checklists and only the most cursory mention of theory. In my experience, when these “lessons” are delivered to researchers in this format, they are often met with either complete disinterest or with bristling contempt.

And here’s the irony. They are meant to close the culture gap, but they recreate it, because they make no attempt to understand researchers.

The biggest practical challenge of good research communication is a political challenge
Policy network maps and policy briefs are indeed useful skills that need to be learned, but the biggest practical challenge of good research communication is a political challenge of connecting researchers with other actors. The "two communities" theory was later dismissed as it was revealed that many researchers actually inhabit both communities quite well. Indeed, we (Joanna Wheeler and I) would add that researchers occupy an array of different communities - sometimes including high-level policy-makers and other times including local activist groups. But there are, nonetheless, still serious challenges to getting researchers to embrace research communication. This first challenge owes to the very diversity just mentioned. Many are not connected to high-level policy-makers, though perhaps highly influential in other ways: as teachers or as intellectual advisors for social movements. The current best practice for research communication almost completely ignores this diversity.

The second challenge is perhaps even more serious and brings us to the main point, which is the need to approach research communication as part and parcel of the research process. You might call it praxis, or you might just call it integration. Researchers may already be deeply involved in actions to promote political or social change on their own accord, but research communication asks them to do so within the constraints of their professional field. Deep social theory is necessary for understanding the important theoretical questions about knowledge and change raised by research communication, but the practice of research communication poses new professional demands on researchers that must be reconciled with methodological practices and the politics of research.

In other words, research communication isn’t really different from research. This is especially important in development, since it is not the 'ivory tower' that other academic disciplines would aspire to be. This is partly what we’re trying to work towards in our contribution to the IDS Bulletin on New Roles for Research Communication?

So researchers, please stop worrying about the oversimplifications of the policy briefing, and let’s instead think about how we can finally bridge that culture gap.

Nicholas Benequista co-authored the IDS Bulletin article Cartographers, Conciliators and Catalysts: Understanding the Communicative Roles of Researchers with Joanna Wheeler. He is currently carrying out an action research project in Kenya to test the possibilities offered by new communication technologies for journalists. You can follow Nicholas on Twitter at @benequista.

More blogs on the IDS Bulletin New Roles for Communication in Development?

Trying to get research into use? Start by making users an integral part of the research design process (By Abby Mulhall)
Supply and demand in evidence-informed policy - in pictures! (By Kirsty Newman)
Three things that stop development organisations being agents of change (By Liz Carlile)
Why researchers should consider a new model for engagement (By Ajoy Datta)
An interview with Blane Harvey, co-editor of New Roles for Communication in Development?
Redefining the researcher, and the research (By Zachary Patterson)
Challenges in communicating co-constructed knowledge to influence policy (By Fran Seballos)
How are the roles of researchers and research communicators changing? (By Tessa Lewin)

Forget asking if policymakers understand evidence – do we understand policy?

2012-12-10T18:03:00.000Z

By Emilie Wilson

I am setting aside my role as editor for this blog for a minute to share some reflections on a recent workshop I attended. It was called Beyond Communication: exploring approaches to research uptake; and was organised by the UK Collaborative on Development Sciences (UKCDS) and UK Department for International Development (DFID).

Is “Research uptake” more jargon, or a different way of understanding communication?

The first time I came across the expression “research uptake” was in 2010, when the new UK coalition government was voted in, and a marketing and communication “freeze” across all UK departments was implemented.

I was new to my Communications job at the time, and would have been inclined to agree with my colleague Jeff Knezovich’s observation that “The term was specifically designed to obfuscate its purpose—ironic, given that the whole point was to help clarify and communicate research findings. This obfuscation was a result of a change of government in the UK, and a “communications” witch-hunt from the Conservative-led coalition, branding such activities as “wasteful Labour spending” in a time of austerity”

However, a quick Google search reveals that “research uptake” was around pre-2010 and a number of different sectors have used the term when grappling with the issue ‘how on earth do you get people to do something with the research?’. In health, for example in this paper “Fostering implementation of health services research findings into practice: a consolidated framework for advancing implementation science"; or in political economy, for example The Politics of Trade (these examples were thrown up by the ‘quick Google search’ so I’m not holding them up as exemplary merely indicative).

At the workshop, Kirsty Newman – Research Uptake Manager at DFID (and contributor to this blog) – described Research Uptake as “allowing us to take a holistic view” of this issue – here is a reproduction of the sketch I drew in my note-book to capture her description:

The assumption being that previously communicating research findings had focussed on ‘dissemination’ or ‘diffusion’ – i.e. supply; and that research uptake was shifting the focus to ‘demand’ – either ‘what do they want’ or ‘can we persuade them to want what we have’ Or more eloquently described by Jeff as “stimulating an enabling environment among end users of research to commission and find appropriate information to support their own policy processes”. Most people who work in marketing and communications will already be pretty familiar with the focus on stimulating demand, and I’m sure would be only too pleased share their wealth of research on this area!

Evidence-based policy – one way to reduce poverty

It seems we are still living in an Age of Reason (at least in the northern hemisphere), believing strongly that research validated by expert peers and based on tried and tested methodological approaches has something to offer to people in power. The offer is that research can demonstrate what works or doesn’t work, and it is not supposed to be tainted by money, politics or tribal affiliation – it’s a global public good, a credible source of authority. The assumption is that decisions based on this objective knowledge source will be of the greatest possible benefit, and not privilege a minority or prop up a flawed system.

So, should the ‘demand’ box in my diagram be renamed “creating demand” – i.e. the process is still supply-driven. Evidence (derived from research) – like vitamins, for example – is good for you (and your policymaking) and we need to develop increasingly sophisticated ways for people to engage with it. But do we know much about the demand other than through dialogue which merely engages our ‘end users’ with our research products and processes? Evidence literacy has been used as a term to describe the ability of policymakers and practitioners to understand and apply research evidence, but have we stopped to ask ourselves about our own literacy?

The Kirsty Newman policymaking quiz (PowerPoint)

Kirsty Newman did just that during the workshop, when she put the shoe on the other foot, and asked those present at the workshop some simple questions mostly about the UK policy environment. Such as – what are the three principle functions of the UK parliament? How would you define a “civil servant”? (this was a multiple choice one). I’m ashamed to say that, even with a degree which includes a minor in politics, I only got 4/7 questions correct. And most people present scored less!

It may have been that people in the room would have been more familiar with other policy environments (and not specifically the UK's), but Kirsty's quiz did well to make the point: do you know the language of the people you are trying to communicate with?

Which is why I think we should consider sticking with the term “communication”, describing a two-way process (from the Latin verb to share) rather than “uptake”, implying a one-way process.

Emilie Wilson is Communications Officer at the Institute of Development Studies, and editor of the Impact and Learning blog.

Trying to get research into use? Start by making users an integral part of the research design process

2012-12-06T11:22:00.000Z

By Abby Mulhall

I was recently chatting to Barbara Adolph, a Principal Researcher at IIED, about 'how to get research into use' and we touched on the way that research is commissioned and designed. This led us to talk about our days at the International Centre for development-oriented Research in Agriculture (ICRA), a wonderful organisation that has at its heart the concept of soft systems thinking to design and deliver client-oriented research and development programmes.

What's compelling about ICRA's approach is that it promotes the integration of stakeholder concerns, knowledge, action and learning around a theme of mutual interest. It is about defining the problem with the research users, whoever they were - not just farmers, but researchers, entrepreneurs, journalists, environmentalists - whoever is part of the 'innovation system' that affects research uptake and use.

Defining the research agenda: power and participation

A common thread running through many discussions and debates about research communication (or uptake or use or the many other seemingly interchangeable terms used to define the process of making research available, accessible, useful and useable) is power and participation. While the communication part of research use is essential, there are many other actors, processes and systems that affect the ultimate use of research. Not to mention its availability and accessibility.

Power relations and participation in the research itself, or more importantly in the initial definition of the problem and research design cannot be ignored. There are many examples of research programmes testing more innovative ways of communicating research and some that move further, by using communication as the process for achieving social change (see Nicholas Benequista's and Joanna Wheeler's article in this Bulletin; Jethro Petitt et al in Development in Practice or Sally Theobold et al in Health Research Policy and Systems).

But I think there is a need to re-think how we design development research:

Who is it really for?
Who should determine the agenda?
Who should quality assure the results (where the intended users are quite often the poor)?

Liz Carlile's blog in this series touched on a similar point - that we supply knowledge and information on our terms in response to a global conversation rather than local demand. Too often the design of the research programme is done in isolation of the different intended users of the research. They tend to be brought in once the funder has approved the design. Too often researchers have to respond to the policies and processes set by the funder, with little or no time to really reflect, learn and engage in the process of defining the research problem and identifying a solution.

Of course there are exceptions and one of the best examples I know about is CNRS, a Bangladeshi NGO that has worked extensively on natural resources management. Its strength is in inclusive participation and giving voice to a wide range of stakeholders who also have a say in the research agenda. The concept of Citizen Jury, an approach being used to democratise agricultural research, is another excellent example.

Towards innovation systems thinking

DFID's Research into Use programme is an example of why we need to plan for uptake. Initially designed to get promising technologies from DFID's renewable natural resources programme into use, its learning in developing processes for doing this is extremely valuable.The process is partly about 'knowledge brokering', which is currently very topical and increasingly valued as an essential part of the system (see Catherine Fisher's Spectrum of Intermediary and Brokering functions in the Bulletin's introduction (PDF).

RIU goes a step further and tests an innovation systems approach (see Putting Research into Use: Lessons from contested visions of innovations) - recognising a need for a broader range of brokering tasks to support coordinated action in networks that are connected to innovation, policy and development processes.

In the Bulletin, Klerkx et al write 'research uptake is important, and knowledge brokering is an essential function, but should be accompanied by or integrated within the function of innovation brokering, which more broadly focuses on rearranging all technical, social and institutional relationships needed for innovation and change.Such a broad focus can contribute to creating an enabling environment for effective policy formulation and implementation, development and innovation'. I am a fan of the innovations systems approach to research uptake - though some would question how it addresses power and participation.

On this very topical issue of research communication, uptake and brokering - a new call for abstracts has just been launched - Driving Research Uptake through research brokering.

Abby Mulhall is Research Uptake Manager at the UK Department for International Development (DFID). We are grateful for her contribution to the Bulletin as a peer reviewer. This blog represents the author's views - not those of DFID.

More blogs on the IDS Bulletin New Roles for Communication in Development?

Supply and demand in evidence-informed policy - in pictures! (By Kirsty Newman)

Three things that stop development organisations being agents of change (By Liz Carlile)

Why researchers should consider a new model for engagement (By Ajoy Datta)

An interview with Blane Harvey, co-editor of New Roles for Communication in Development?

Redefining the researcher, and the research (By Zachary Patterson)

Challenges in communicating co-constructed knowledge to influence policy (By Fran Seballos)

How are the roles of researchers and research communicators changing? (By Tessa Lewin)

Supply and demand in evidence-informed policy – in pictures!

2012-11-30T16:24:00.003Z

By Kirsty Newman

I have talked before about supply and demand in evidence-informed policy but I decided to revisit the topic with some sophisticated visual aids. I am aware that using the using the model of supply/demand has been criticised as over-simplifying the topic – but I still think it is a useful way to think about the connections between research evidence and policy/practice (plus, to be honest, I am fairly simple!).

You can distinguish between supply and demand by considering ‘what is the starting point?’. If you are starting with the research (whether its a single piece of research or a body of research on a given topic) and considering how it may achieve policy influence, you are on the supply side…

In contrast, those on the demand side, typically start with a decision (or a decision-making process) and consider how research can feed into this decision…

This distinction may seem obvious, but I think it is often missed. What this means in practice is an explosion of approaches to evidence-informed policy/practice which attempt to push more and more evidence out there in expectation that more supply will lead to a better world…

One problem with this is that if your supply approaches focus on just one research project – or one side of a debate – they risk going against evidence-informed policy…

Some supply approaches do aim to increase access to a range of research and to synthesise and communicate where the weight of evidence lies. However, even these approaches are destined to fail if there is not a corresponding increase in demand…

I think we should continue to support supply-side activities but I think we also need to get better at supporting the demand. So what would this look like in practice?

For me the two components of demand are the motivation (whether intrinsic or extrinsic) and the capacity (i.e. the knowledge, skills, attitudes, structures, systems etc) to use research. In other words, you need to want to use research and you need to be able to do so.

Motivation can be improved by enhancing the organisational culture of evidence use – but also by putting systems in place which mandate and/or reward evidence use…

Achieving this in practice needs the support of senior decision makers within a policy making institution. So for example the UK Department for International Development has transformed the incentives to use research evidence since Prof Chris Whitty came in as the Chief Scientific Advisor and Head of Research.

But incentives on their own are not enough. There also needs to be capacity and it needs to exist at multiple levels; at an organisational level, there needs to be structural capacity such as adequate internet bandwidth, access to relevant academic journals etc etc. At an individual level, those involved in the policy making process need to be ‘evidence-literate’ – i.e. they need to know whaat research evidence is, where they can find it, how they can appraise it, how to draw lessons from evidence for policy decisions etc etc…

Achieving this may require a new recruitment strategy – selecting people for employment who already have a good understanding of research evidence. But continuing professional development courses can also be used to ‘upskill’ existing staff.

Anyway, the above is basically a pictural summary of this paper in the IDS bulletin so if you would like to read about the same topic in more academic terms (and without the pictures!) please do check it out. Its not open access I’m afraid so if you want a copy please tweet me @kirstyevidence or leave a comment below.

Hope you liked the pictures!

Kirsty Newman co-authored the Bulletin article entitled "Stimulating Demand for Research Evidence: what role for capacity-building?" Many thanks to Kirsty for allowing us to republish this blog, which was originally published on her own blog, KirstyEvidence. You can also follow Kirsty on Twitter.

More blogs on the IDS Bulletin New Roles for Communication in Development?

Three things that stop development organisations being agents of change (By Liz Carlile)

Why researchers should consider a new model for engagement (By Ajoy Datta)

An interview with Blane Harvey, co-editor of New Roles for Communication in Development?

Redefining the researcher, and the research (By Zachary Patterson)

Challenges in communicating co-constructed knowledge to influence policy (By Fran Seballos)

How are the roles of researchers and research communicators changing? (By Tessa Lewin)

Comparing research and oranges II: do communities want oranges or flowers?

2012-11-28T17:43:00.004Z

By Simon Batchelor

In her blog, Comparing research and oranges: what can we learn from value chain analysis?, my colleague Elise Wach asks whether “producing research first and then deciding how to communicate it afterwards the same as growing an orange and then deciding how and where it will be sold?” She went on to speculate whether value chain analysis can add something to our own analyses of how to strengthen the knowledge value chain.

Her piece reminded me of a video we used at a team retreats, entitled Whose Reality Counts. Produced by Praxis, based in India, it also caused us to wonder about the comparison with research production, and the processes of setting a research agenda.

In case you don’t have the time to watch the 7 minute video (but please do – it's so well done!) here's a quick synopsis:

A senior office-based person sits and has a bright idea: giving flowers to a poor community. The idea is passed down the decision-making chain to farmers in the poor community, who, initially pleased, begin to plant flowers.

However, still sat in his office, the official continues to pass flowers down the line, and we see the farmer becoming frustrated with too many flowers and not enough diversity of food, which is what the community really wants. The community cannot make their voices heard, until the official goes to the community himself expecting to see grateful villagers and a thousand flowers. That’s not what he finds on his arrival, and it's only after listening the villagers and their needs that he gains an understanding what they really need - their reality as described by them.

For me, the parallels are obvious. Research conducted in isolation from the realities in the field may produce insights, and these initial insights may even be appreciated by the community. However, communities have priorities and there needs to be a feedback loop to find out what those priorities are and whether our research needs to be redirected.

As Elise says in her blog “When is audience research necessary, and when does the ‘if we build it, they will come’ assumption apply? Where is the line between research communication and advocacy? How can we create demand and to what extent should we do so?”

So, whose responsibility is it to set the research agenda?

In a recent review of plans from leading research centres, we had to ask ‘where are the boundaries for a researcher’. If the research centres are intending to change the world in some way (their stated intention) then there needs to be engagement with the outside world during the research.

We ended up noting two type of engagement:

‘A need to engage with a representative sample of the end users to ensure that new hybrids or practices fit the ‘real world’ farming systems’.
And ‘there are the actors at the boundary of the research who might take the research forward. At some point, research that has led to successful product development will need to go to scale’.

Isolated research may change the world slightly, but may also rapidly become too many flowers when the community needs food. However you frame it – as Value chains with Customer feedback and monitoring market demand, or as participatory development with consultation and ‘mainstreaming the voices of the poor’, research that changes the world is going to require tight feedback loops and a view that is much wider than an agenda set by sitting in an office.

Three things that stop development organisations being agents of change

2012-11-22T11:50:00.000Z

By Liz Carlile

Last week in Nairobi I met up with partners Julius Mwanga and Busiinge Amooti from the Kabarole Research and Resource Centre (KRC) in Uganda. We talked about how to get robust, relevant research evidence into the hands of farmers. KRC believes in “putting the people first”. This means taking quality research that focuses on their communities’ needs and interpreting it in ways that give farmers quick answers to their pressing questions. The dialogue is fast, so demand for information about best practices grows.

While distinct, this chimes with the “triple loop” approach to climate change communication and social learning that we — IDS, IIED and friends — are exploring with CCAFS, the Climate Change and Agricultural Food Security research programme of the CGIAR. We have been thinking about ways the CGIAR centres could help bring hard science and local knowledge together to provide better solutions at the community level.

‘Development communications’, ‘research communications’ and all the related communications family has a well-established theory, and we continue to have new learning. But in my experience, what challenges many development organisations from being true agents of change is not so much about understanding the theory. It is about three other things:

1. We focus on delivery not change For 50 years, development organisations have striven to give assistance, solve problems and provide answers through research and action. But we have focused on the collective challenge and not on individual end users. This orientation is at odds with the way effective organisations mobilise, change or drive consumer demand. We can learn from business here and reorient our organisations to listen for answers, take risks, be flexible, make quick decisions and change course. Our incentive structures, our need for consensus, and demands for over-meticulous accountability hamper fast action and therefore learning “on the job” or together. Our strategic objectives focus on implementation and delivery, but not on change.

2. We talk more than we listen – and on our terms Even if we increasingly hear what our partners and stakeholders need, our approaches are still based on supplying knowledge and information on our terms— and in response to a global conversation rather than local demand. Kirsty Newman’s recent blog pushes us to explore this supply and demand in building research agendas. But even if we build a research agenda based on people’s needs, its power remains with the researcher and their team, who decide when and how to share findings.

3. Underinvestment means underachievement We have yet to convince donors to support the communication skills and time required to get development information and research into use – whether by the policy community or local communities. To get this right – to really understand how change happens and predict potential tipping points – we need to invest. It is ironic that while great communication campaigns are applauded for their success, the praise rarely translates into money that development organisations can earmark for communication. We are trapped in a vicious cycle of underinvestment and therefore continued underachievement.

Two organisations we met in Nairobi share traits that illustrate how to combat these challenges. They know how to tell stories, and they listen hard to what users need or care about. Their audiences are all-important.

Well Told Story (WTS) produces Shujaaz a multi-media campaign targeted at Kenyan youth.

Its director, Rob Burnett, reminded us he was in the business of making change – not just communicating messages. WTS spends up to a fifth of its budget and a considerable proportion of its time talking with its audience and monitoring change against tightly defined and agreed indicators. How often do development organisations like ours work out the detail of the change we need and then decide the communications strategy required? Too often we must submit proposals for funding well in advance of that becoming a detailed reality.

The Mediae Trust has also spent years influencing behaviour through targeted multi-media communications, with a strong emphasis on local radio and TV. Most of us in the development and communications know and respect its TV show, Makutano Junction. Indeed my Ugandan colleagues were delighted to meet the trust’s founder, David Campbell, as the show is now also a favourite in Uganda. The trust’s success is based on understanding its audience’s needs and providing support on issues that represent a daily challenge.

The change we need But few development organisations are structured to prioritise and listen to our audiences and respond to their needs quickly. Our funding structures and targets rarely allow that. We tend to work on global challenges that we believe have local realities, rather than taking learning from local priorities to inform global agendas.

At Rio+20, many of us questioned the status quo. Our work with CCAFS shows how. Our studies show that unless all partners in a shared learning process see change, the result is disempowerment and paralysis. We need to be agents in our own change processes rather than just talking about what others should do. I worry that we can end up theorising for too long when real change is in the practice.

Liz Carlile is Director of Communications at the Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and co-authored the IDS Bulletin article, Understanding context in learning-centre approaches to climate change communication.

More blogs on the IDS Bulletin New Roles for Communication in Development?

Why researchers should consider a new model for engagement (By Ajoy Datta)

An interview with Blane Harvey, co-editor of New Roles for Communication in Development?

Redefining the researcher, and the research (By Zachary Patterson)

Challenges in communicating co-constructed knowledge to influence policy (By Fran Seballos)

How are the roles of researchers and research communicators changing? (By Tessa Lewin)

Open Access? Make It So

2012-11-20T14:39:00.002Z

Lin Kristensen [CC-BY-2.0]
via Wikimedia Commons

By Alison Norwood

There’s an episode in Star Trek where Captain Picard has a copy of a printed book, opened reverently, under a glass case. In his future, printed books are rare. And therefore precious.

In our own real-world future printed books will probably be equally as rare, but whatever physical way a book manifests itself – on paper or an electronic screen – it is the content which is the most precious component.

Which is why, say the advocates of Open Access, content should always be available to everyone, everywhere, for good or evil. Immediate access
to online material can enhance more quickly the progress of medical science (for instance), with the concomitant risk of research work being
copied unacknowledged or passed-off as someone else’s.

DFID’s announcement, earlier this year, that their funded projects must be Open Access (OA) by 2014 has focused the minds of those previously pondering OA practicalities.

What do we want? – Open Access! – When do we want it? – Now!

It could be really simple.

To post articles into an institutional repository, such as IDS’ OpenDocs, satisfies the immediate need to get research online and available. But to also publish in a respected academic journal – whether an established ‘print’ one or a newer platform specifically created for OA – is a more considered process.

To transition from the known peer review quality-control channels to new models should be straightforward and would be essential to ensure citations – keep the peer review system in place so that the submitted article version to a journal is the most rigorous that it can be and then, at that point, focus on the most prestigious or most far-reaching OA vehicle, dependant on the author’s priorities.

And their funding. Currently, we are still in a financially-driven publishing industry, so if the reader is no longer expected to pay for their books and journals, then the author has to pay to publish instead. How they source that funding is the current dilemma, ideally with publication written into research outputs from the start of a project. Even the most basic forms of OA publishing will need time and funds for the quality-control basics covering the services of copy-editors, designers and the lack of royalties.

The rise in numbers of OA academic journals over recent years proves the appetite for spreading research as widely as possible. The era of communication and accountability is upon us, with academic writing moving beyond a few elite bookshelves. Subsidising academic books for research has gone on for years, with some authors more evangelical and practical about this than others; now there seems general widespread willingness for author- or institutional-subsidy, or at least the theory of it. Worldwide economic recession conditions, and emphasis from funders for successful outcomes to research projects, concentrates attention on the kind of content that will in future be published from scant financing to spread across all social science disciplines.

Some OA advocates suggest moving away from ‘traditional’ publisher journal models to an in-house approach, but it should be remembered that the basic advantage that an established big-name publishing house brings to the deal is their marketing reach. Without that, if an article sits in OpenDocs and there are no resources to advertise it, who will know it is there?

Debates around OA will continue no doubt, but the move towards it seems inexorable, and a challenge that everyone concerned with publishing academic research is going to have to find their own best solutions.

Does "everything online" make for accessible research?

The OA ideology is sound – research freely available to all at one click – but at this time we need to consider carefully the transition from old ‘profit’ models to new ‘altruistic’ ones at a realistic level. It should for instance be remembered that as much as developing countries have mobile phone access and/or limited internet access, it may still be more feasible for a while longer to keep producing those precious printed copies for that particular market. Not as museum pieces in glass cages, but continuing as a useful resource.

This is a time of big shake-up for the publishing world, but it will be resolved, and perhaps in the future we may look back and wonder what all the fuss was about.

Alison Norwood is Production Editor in the Central Communications team at the Institute of Development Studies

Why researchers should consider a new model for engagement

2012-11-14T15:55:00.001Z

Hurricane Sandy from space Accessed from www.wikimedia.org

By Ajoy Datta

As George Monbiot argues in the Guardian, there are several ways in which the impact of the recent hurricane Sandy is likely to have been exacerbated by man-made climate change.

Although there’s little doubt that our climate is changing, understanding precisely how and what we do to prepare for it is far from straightforward.

It might at first seem a matter for environmental and meteorological scientists (PDF).

But experts need to be engaged from areas such as food security and agriculture, natural resource management, ecosystems and biodiversity, infrastructure and human health. Expertise is also required to help map out adaptation options, including disaster risk reduction (DRR) measures to manage hydro-meteorological risks, such as dykes and dams to mitigate flooding, or to assess the feasibility of introducing different crop varieties.

However, discussions shouldn’t be limited to scientists and other experts. Communities have for centuries developed their own ways of coping with climactic variability and extreme weather events. Often, non-governmental organisations, community groups and social movements are better at self-organising and working coherently and quickly towards a common goal than government authorities. This may be because these smaller, local organisations and groups often have a stronger understanding of local context and are more likely to take ownership over solutions.

Resonating with findings from a recent report by David Booth (who argues that governance challenges in Africa are not fundamentally about one set of people getting another set of people to behave better but about both sets of people finding ways to act collectively in their own best interests), in my article for the IDS Bulletin, entitled Deliberation, Dialogue and Debate: why researchers need to engage with others to address complex issues, I have argued that traditional linear approaches to communicating research to policymakers are inadequate. Researchers now share the field of knowledge production and communication with many others. Where appropriate, those who view their role in relation to policy should be prepared to engage with stakeholders affected by policy issues and expose their findings to review and discussion.

If researchers aim to engage in dialogue through structured processes, experience has shown that careful planning is required to clarify intentions, select who to engage with, when to engage, and how best to do so.

Skilled intermediaries can be adept at facilitating engagement processes by, for instance, providing information to participants, developing their capacities, and thus making efforts to redress power asymmetries. But in doing so, some researchers will need to alter their own mind-sets. This may mean working in inter-, multi- and/or trans-disciplinary research teams, admitting to being part of a value-based system, and disempowering themselves in relation to other stakeholders such as members of the public.

And research institutions need to provide researchers with the right incentives to engage effectively, enable them to contribute to policy and political processes and develop realistic expectations as to what they can collectively achieve.

Ajoy Datta is a Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and wrote the IDS Bulletin article Deliberation, Dialogue and Debate: why researchers need to engage with others to address complex issues (PDF).

More blogs on the IDS Bulletin New Roles for Communication in Development?

An interview with Blane Harvey, co-editor of New Roles for Communication in Development?

Redefining the researcher, and the research (By Zachary Patterson)

Challenges in communicating co-constructed knowledge to influence policy (By Fran Seballos)

How are the roles of researchers and research communicators changing? (By Tessa Lewin)

Open for Development... what are the implications for research communication?

2012-11-12T13:36:00.006Z

By Alan Stanley

The EADI Information Management Working Group (EADI IMWG for short!) is a long-standing working group whose annual meeting has been a regular event in the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) calendar for well over 20 years. This year’s meeting was held in the beautiful surroundings of the University of Antwerp and hosted by the impressive Institute of Development Policy and Management (IOB).

The topic was “Open for Development” and explored how the linked movements of Open Access, Open Data and Open Content are relevant to our work and how to make the best use of these innovations in the development context in which we work - that is knowledge-brokering and research communication.

Open Access has been a recurring theme for the group over the years but there have been significant developments in the last 18 months. A high profile global boycott of academic publisher Elsevier and the publication of the Finch report in the UK have caused unprecedented debate on Open Access issues in the broader academic community. Similarly DFID’s new Open and Enhanced Access Policy has forced many in the development community to sit up and take notice.

At the same time new technical innovations and increasing access to the internet have led to growing interest in the potential application of Open Data and Open Content (Open Educational Resources) for sharing knowledge and learning in international development.

A key question for the development community to address is to understand:

Who is driving these innovations?
Do they really reflect the needs of research producers and consumers in developing countries?
Or could they actually be adding to existing information inequalities across the digital divide?

To help answer this IDS was pleased to be able to support the attendance of Eve Gray from the Scholarly Communication in Africa programme at the University of Cape Town to give the opening keynote presentation “Open Access is 2012 –a developing country perspective”.

Eve highlighted some startling inequalities and the dominance of what she called the “English-speaking global North” in the current academic publishing models and, more pervasively, the indicators and rankings used to assess research quality, and ultimately, academic performance. This is exemplified by this map World Map of Science Research Publication 2001 (SASI, 2006), published on WorldMapper - Eve's comment being that this has not changed significantly in the last few years.

She also highlighted some notable success stories in Open Access publishing models such as peer-reviewed open access journal, Plos One, and Brazil's Scientific Electronic Library Online, SciELO.

But fundamentally Eve was calling for a move from “Open Access” to “Open Research” which embraces the emerging Open Data movement and broader changes in how research is conducted and communicated. She presented a vision for the future where we focus less on journal publishing and move to less competitive and more collaborative models. The case for these becomes more apparent if we look beyond the divisive Impact Factor to measure the reach and influence of research based on "alternative metrics" (altmetrics).

Alan Stanley is Senior Thematic Convenor with IDS Knowledge Services.

Altmetrics is something we are looking into here at IDS...What are your experiences of using altmetrics to measure reach and influence?

Listen to an interview with Blane Harvey, one of the editors of New Roles for Communication in Development?

2012-11-07T16:36:00.000Z

In this interview, Blane Harvey, one of the editors for the IDS Bulletin New Role for Communication in Development? discusses three key thematic areas under discussion in the Bulletin:

Context and the political economy of knowledge
Networks, partnerships and knowledge-sharing
Role of new and emerging technologies

Blane Harvey: New IDS Bulletin 'New Roles for Communication in Development?' from Research to Action on Vimeo. Read the Introduction to the Bulletin (PDF), by Blane Harvey, Tessa Lewin and Catherine Fisher.

More blogs on the IDS Bulletin New Roles for Communication in Development?

Redefining the researcher, and the research (By Zachary Patterson)

Challenges in communicating co-constructed knowledge to influence policy (By Fran Seballos)

How are the roles of researchers and research communicators changing? (By Tessa Lewin)

Redefining the Researcher, and the Research

2012-11-01T12:16:00.001Z

By Zachary Patterson

Tessa Lewin and I wrote an article entitled “Approaches to Development Research Communication” for the recent IDS Bulletin on New Roles for Communication in Development? We looked at the evolution of development research communications alongside the evolution of different development paradigms. The article points to a scattered and shifting communication field, which draws from a diverse range of development paradigms often in a way that is both incoherent and contradictory. Alongside the plurality of communication approaches, innovations in technology have contributed to changes in how researchers and practitioners both access and communicate research. However, despite the growth in platforms that allow open access to information, we remain limited by what many regard as anachronistic power structures.

Slide from Tessa Lewin's presentation at the Institute of Development Studies. The whole presentation can be viewed at: http://www.slideshare.net/idsuk/evidence-influence-agency-what-new-roles-for-communication-in-development-research

New technologies are transforming the field of development research communication and this process raises new ethical dilemmas. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the tensions around intellectual property. There is an inherent tension between the academic system, which relies on sole authorship and a profitable publication model, and the idea of development research serving the communal, public good. Much development research is practice and policy-based, further augmenting these complications. While development research positions itself as a public good that strives to be altruistic and value-free, the power dynamics of capital continue to disrupt the public availability of its findings. The current tug-of-war occurring within the arena of academic publishing can offer a useful lens to unmask and illuminate broader dynamics within the field.

Are new technologies helping Open Access campaigning gather momentum?

A confrontation over the access to academic research has played out in the UK over the past few months, as academics continue to heavily criticize the publishers of scientific journals. Scientific and medical academic journals, that publish work largely funded by taxpayers, have charged UK universities around £200m annually for access in recent years. Supporters of what has become known as the ‘academic spring’ have argued that the findings of publicly-funded research should be made openly available to academic institutions and the general public, for whatever purpose. Since the initial arguments of those involved in the ‘academic spring’, more than 12,000 academic researchers have signed a boycott of the Dutch publisher Elsevier, in an attempt to broaden the campaign against the pro-market model of academic research and publication. The campaign has since influenced the UK government to approve a plan to make all publicly funded scientific research immediately available for anyone to read. Meanwhile, the public availability of many academic publications that could aid the effectiveness and efficiency of development approaches and outcomes remains limited.

Paul Mason, Newsnight's economics editor, has argued that our current political landscape is shaped by a combination of innovations in contemporary communication technologies, shifts in global demographics, and the public realization of the power of networks over hierarchies. In particular, technological developments have helped to consolidate local citizen awareness and action, while placing researchers in positions where they are doing more than collecting and sharing knowledge. However, while the new age of research communication technology has opened the way for unprecedented availability and distribution of knowledge, and the blurring of divisions between academic, professional, and amateur researchers, the availability of development research remains varied. Access to academic and scientific development research through ICTs and informative virtual spaces continues to be surrounded by conflict and tension in terms of ownership (or privatization) and openness.

In article earlier this year for the London Review of Books, Slavoj Žižek suggests that the current communications and virtual space tug-of-war between global citizens and government and private interests began with an attempt by the powerful to ‘privatize general intellect’. He warns that because the academic research and publication model is rooted in the capitalist market, there is a strong pull to continue the privatization of research – including that which serves the 'public good'. While the academic system struggles to survive in an increasingly market-driven environment, new communications approaches are creating more layered and complex options for accessing and sharing knowledge. Despite the hopes that we may have for information and communication technologies in development research communications, it is not yet clear how this current chapter of opportunities and challenges will play out.

Interested in reading more around this topic? Try..
The Internet and Democratic Citizenship by Stephen Coleman and Jay G. Blulmer
Radical media: rebellious communication and social movements by John D.H. Downing

With many thanks to Tessa Lewin for her support in the writing of this blog post.

More blogs on the IDS Bulletin New Roles for Communication in Development?

Challenges in communicating co-constructed knowledge to influence policy (By Fran Seballos)

How are the roles of researchers and research communicators changing? (By Tessa Lewin)

Eve Gray talks about why Open Access is crucial for research from the global South

2012-10-29T16:02:00.003Z

By Emilie Wilson

We were delighted to welcome Eve Gray to IDS on two occasions this year - in person in September; and virtually, as a panel speaker at an IDS seminar live-streamed during Open Access week (22-28 October), entitled "Open Access: are southern voices being stifled?"

On the first occasion, I jumped on to the opportunity to be able to talk to Eve, and catch some of her thoughts on camera... watch the video below

Read more about the African Commons Project

Follow Eve Gray's blog

Challenges in communicating co-constructed knowledge to influence policy

2012-10-24T10:54:00.000+01:00

By Fran Seballos

Fran Seballos is Partnership Officer at the Institute of Development Studies. She served as moderator and discussant in the recent IDS Seminar on New roles for communication in development research which coincided with launch of the IDS Bulletin on the same topic. She shares her thoughts on how this seminar has influenced her thinking in this role.

I have spent the past few months getting to grips with the idea of "partnering for knowledge co-construction" - specifically for generating knowledge that can influence policy. The emphasis on influence led me to an exploration of ways in which co-constructed knowledge is adapted for and communicated to specific (and sometimes imagined) audiences. For me, what emerged from the seminar on Communications for Development (and from reading the Bulletin!) was a re-framing of development communication as an inherent and ongoing part of the research process - which fits quite neatly with the idea of co-constructing knowledge.

What do I mean by co-construction knowledge?

My understanding of co-construction is as a 'social learning process premised on interaction between diverse actors and rooted in human relationships'. Partnering is an essential part of co-construction and ultimately the continuous communication of ideas, experiences and knowledge between partners and other collaborators is the basis of a ‘learning-to-know’ process.

But the notion of co-construction for policy influencing reveals some of the tensions described in the Bulletin – around legitimacy of knowledge, where expertise lies, and to whom (and how) it should be made relevant or ‘serviceable’. One of the primary risks of taking a co-construction approach to generating knowledge for policy influencing is that a traditional reduction of knowledge into a set of implications for policy (Abstracted Adaptation) means that much of the back-stage learning becomes invisible (See Nowotny, 2007).

It also exposes the process to a set of parameters handed down from the policy sphere about what counts as evidence. This creates an immediate tension of accountability in the communication process between - on the one hand - the demand for a policy-relevant output that must have salience and legitimacy for its pre-determined target audience, and, on the other, the need to be accountable to the knowledge holders participating in the process, meeting their needs and expectations.

From a partnerships perspective - where all partners’ goals and objectives should be recognised in a common process - co-construction should provide opportunity for those engaged to benefit their own social change and knowledge development agenda. Therefore communicating knowledge must be explicitly designed into the process in ways that are sensitive to the needs and knowledges of those engaged in it, and in ways that support the intended knowledge users to engage with and learn from the different framings inherent in a co-construction process.

Where co-construction can be aligned with communication for development, what implications does this have for partnerships?

A partnership needs to share its expectations on why it is conducting the research or co-constructing knowledge; which spaces it hopes to influence; where they would like to see change happen; and who the critical actors are that can support or enable change: these may be diverse.

Secondly they need to understand which partner has the skills to communicate in which space and with which actor; what methodology is appropriate and relevant to whom; and how they intend to maximise the opportunities for communication and/or engagement throughout the process.

Thirdly they need to consider how a process of co-construction enables learning and knowledge development for those they intend to engage in the process. This means thinking about which methods of communicating knowledge can: support the intended knowledge exchange and co-construction processes; and support participants to communicate with their specific networks

Finally, by conceiving of co-construction as a communication process, partners can draw on a much larger method box - not only to enable, capture and share learning in multiple ways but also to introduce innovation into a co-construction process

Ref: NOWOTNY, H. 2007. How Many Policy Rooms are There? : Evidence-Based and Other Kinds of Science Policies. Science Technology & Human Values, 32, 479-490.

Fran Seballos is Partnerships Officer at the Institute of Development Studies.

More blogs on the IDS Bulletin New Roles for Communication in Development?

How are the roles of researchers and research communicators changing? Forthcoming blog series

2012-10-17T15:29:00.002+01:00

By Tessa Lewin

What does validity mean in an environment where bloggers and journalists are often viewed as more credible, useful or accessible sources than researchers? How are the roles of researchers and research communicators changing? This landscape has been undergoing a significant shift in recent years.

The emergence of new technologies has been accompanied by other shifts in the politics and business of development knowledge: the understanding of what constitutes ‘expert knowledge’, a growing emphasis on process over product in research, and new understandings of what drives social change and policy influence.

With the rise of participatory and co-constructed communications have come suggestions that the rigour and ‘hard evidence’ needed to influence policy has been neglected. As some have turned back to grassroots forms of communication such as community radio, they face ambivalence from others struggling to see what is new or innovative about such ‘archaic’ approaches.

Alongside colleagues Blane Harvey and Susie Page, I have written for and edited the latest edition of the IDS Bulletin journal, entitled
New Roles for Communication in Development?.

We wanted to explore these interesting changes by drawing on the experiences of practitioners, theorists and community intermediaries from a wide range of disciplines.

We came from a range of disciplines and experiences ourselves - I'm Communications Manager for the Pathways of Women's Empowerment research programme, Blane is a Research Fellow in the Climate Change team at IDS and worked recently been working on Climate Airwaves, a community radio project, whereas Susie Page was manager for the Impact and Learning team, focused on 'how communicating research brings about change'.

The Bulletin's articles reflect the overlaps and disconnects within different fields (particularly on how new technologies, approaches and configurations of research communication are influencing the practice of development) and sit, at various points, in tension or consensus with one another. They reflect the unresolved nature of the politics and practice of research communication – and begin to map a complex picture of this arena.

We outline our thinking on this in more detail in the Bulletin's Introduction: Is development research communication coming of age? (PDF)

Over the next few months we will be inviting the contributors to this Bulletin to write a series of blog pieces, outlining and reflecting on their articles in the Bulletin.

Watch this space….

Tessa Lewin is Research Office in the Participation, Power and Social Change research team at the Institute of Development Studies. She's also Communications Manager for the Pathways of Women's Empowerment research programme consortium.

Read the full blog series..

Comparing research and oranges: what can we learn from value chain analysis?

2012-10-12T17:33:00.000+01:00

By Elise Wach

A conversation with a colleague the other day about how we would communicate our research findings for a nutrition initiative struck me as remarkably similar to the conversations I held under orange trees in eastern Uganda about market research and value chain analysis a few years ago.

In Uganda, the government was promoting the cultivation of certain fruit trees based on studies that had shown which varieties were agriculturally viable. Farmers transitioned their plots from cassava to orange trees on the assumption that there would be a market for their oranges once their trees started fruiting several years down the line.

Obviously, to us value chain analysts, this was crazy – it was necessary to do some market research first to find out where there were opportunities for these fruits in the national, regional, or international markets, and then grow and prepare the right crops accordingly.

What can we learn by applying value chain concepts to our research?
Image: statesymbolsusa.org

Our thinking was shaped by the countless instances of NGOs and donors promoting the production of something (whether oranges, soaps, water pumps, etc.) without doing their homework to find out if anyone might purchase them and under what conditions: whether there was an opportunity in the market for the product (e.g. will people buy the oranges to eat, or would a juicing company be interested in them?), whether product could be improved to better meet consumer needs and preferences (e.g. are Naval oranges preferred over Valencia for juicing? What about for eating?), whether demand could be stimulated (e.g. can we promote orange juice as a healthy breakfast option to increase consumption?), etc. Without doing this research first, there is a significant risk that the oranges that farmers produce will not bring them the returns they hoped for.

So I wondered, is producing research first and then deciding how to communicate it afterwards the same as growing an orange and then deciding how and where it will be sold?

We invest a substantial amount of time and resources into producing our research and for most of us, having our research reach other people is our primary concern.

What does the value chain for research look like?

Our product, or ‘oranges’ are our research studies. Our ‘market analysis’ is our ‘audience research’. Our ‘marketing approach’ is our ‘research uptake strategy’. Our ‘value chain analysis’ is the research we do about ‘evidence into policy’ or ‘knowledge into action’.

We work to strengthen the knowledge value chain. We build demand for our products through increasing the demand for research and evidence. We alter our products to our consumer needs through producing 3-page policy briefs for some and Working Papers for others. And we create or strengthen bridges between our producers and consumers (e.g. individuals such as knowledge intermediaries / knowledge brokers or systems such as the policy support unit that IFPRI is supporting within the Ministry of Agriculture in Bangladesh). We understand that policy decisions are complex, just as markets have long been recognised as being complex (the outputs from value chain analysis, when done well, never look like actual chains, just as a theory of change never fits into log frame boxes).

Obviously, there are differences between research and oranges. The shelf-life of research is clearly longer than the shelf-life of oranges, and research can be dusted off time and time again and used in a variety of ways, many of which we’re unable to anticipate. But much of the impact of our research does rest on the timely communication of our findings. While Andy Sumner’s research on the bottom billion will certainly facilitate a better historical understanding of poverty, I will venture to guess that he also hopes that this information will shape development policy so as to better tackle this issue.

We do face many similar issues as our business-minded colleagues. When is audience research necessary, and when does the ‘if we build it, they will come’ assumption apply? Where is the line between research communication and advocacy? How can we create demand and to what extent should we do so? Do our ‘consumers’ have balanced information about the products available or did they only have access to the one that we produced (Catherine Fisher wrote an excellent blog about policy influence vs evidence informed policy)? How much do we let the market dictate what we produce and how we produce it?

Are there opportunities to apply lessons from our colleagues working in markets and value chains to our work on ‘evidence informed decision making’? Should we be comparing research and oranges?

Elise Wach is a Consultant Evaluation & Learning Advisor with the Impact and Learning Team, at the Institute of Development Studies

Information ecosystems of policy actors - new Working Paper

2012-10-04T16:45:00.000+01:00

By Simon Batchelor

In this blog, I have previously discussed some longer term research we are conducting around how policymakers understand, access and use information. For example, Early headlines from research on policymakers and ICTS: persistent and curious enquirers (with smartphones) or Digital information on the move: the rise of the Tablet.

I'm pleased to now be able to share with you a new working paper, entitled Information Ecosystems of Policy Actors - Reviewing the Landscape, which presents interim findings and analysis so far.

The full data set will include respondents from Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Nepal, Kenya and Bangladesh. The interim findings report on face-to-face structured interviews with 368 policy actors in the first 4 countries – Ethiopia, Ghana, Nepal and India.

Why did we conduct this research?
Well, information ecosystems are changing the world over. This is true for policy actors in every country in the world. Even those actors in countries with poor connectivity are experiencing dramatic changes in the way they, as decision-makers, access technology and use it. In the working paper, we use the term 'policy actors' to encompass all those involved in significant decision-making – including those linking policy and practice, and those engaged with civil society and private sector policies as well as government.

So what have we found? Standing at 80 pages, the working paper is not a light read! However, it does is confirm with evidence what many of us knew intuitively. That is, 'policy actors' as part of society's elite do have access to the latest information technology. This includes ipads, tablets PCs, and smartphones. I think we were a little surprised at first, but the sample of policy actors as a whole have a very similar profile of technology access to the average UK or USA household.

This was important to us. Here at IDS, we are working on various knowledge-based and knowledge mobilisation programmes. Our study was intended to provide a current view of how policy actors engaged with information systems, and where knowledge intermediaries (people and organisations who mediate between researchers and decision-makers) could best add value.

Implications for knowledge intermediary
Early adopters of the newer forms of ICT are changing their behaviour and searching for information in new ways. Knowledge intermediaries need to adapt their mechanisms and pathways to ensure they contend for these emerging patterns of behaviour. About 40 per cent of policy actors are already using smartphones, so the development of mobile apps which assist research communications would seem appropriate.

Indeed, looking to the future, there were in general positive attitudes towards new ICT services, reinforced by positive social referents. With very few limiting control factors, there is a positive intention to use new ICT services such a social media, video online, instant messaging, smartphone apps. Given their hard-ware, it is likely that policy actors will be increasingly using the new ICT services in the coming year. See the graphic below:

Graph from IDS Working Paper: Information Ecosystems of Policy Actors - Reviewing the Landscape

There is often an assumption in knowledge intermediary work that senior policy actors may not be searching for information directly themselves, and that they are simply 'presented' with information. While this may remain the case in the poorer and/or more formally organised countries, it is less so in the mid-range countries. The implication is that where connectivity is improving, policy actors will look for information themselves. They will spend a significant amount of time looking for information, and they will be 'persistent and curious'.

An implication of this is to work on ensuring visibility when it comes to Internet search engines like Google. Where knowledge intermediaries intend to use the internet to communicate and disseminate summaries of research and evidence, it is important to ensure that they can be seen through these search engines, especially Google. While ranking across all search engines is important, the data confirms the current dominance of Google. In terms of existing websites that specialise in development information there was a reasonable awareness across the respondents. There is room for improvement.

Finally the findings also offer an insight into 'traditional media' (radio, TV and print). Policy actors do engage with the traditional media and while we have seen that they currently have very negative perceptions of the media‟s performance, nevertheless a significant proportion of them are engaging with the media day by day. There is therefore a role for the knowledge intermediary to assist the 'translation' of research and evidence into the media.

These are only the headlines – have a look at the working paper. We invite further feedback to this working paper and comments that might be assist and direct us in the full analysis.

Laying the foundations of a knowledge sharing network

2012-09-26T16:30:00.001+01:00

By Catherine Fisher

AfricaAdapt is a knowledge sharing network on climate change adaptation in Africa. My colleague Blane Harvey and I recently published a paper that shares insights from its first phase of operation. Entitled “Behind the Scenes at a ClimateChange Knowledge Sharing Network: IDS Insights from Phase One of AfricaAdapt”, it explores the dynamics of design and implementation of a knowledge sharing network in a distributed partnership, from the perspective of the former lead partner.

The paper identifies insights across a range of areas, from governance and managing financial resources to capacity building and learning that we hope will be useful to others thinking of setting up a similar knoweldge sharing network. Here I focus on one theme that emerged around building mutual understandings and the importance of inception and set up meetings. I also share a few practical ideas that didn't make it into the paper.

Importance of exploring and constructing meaning

One theme that emerged in that paper is the importance of establishing understandings that will underpin effective collaboration at the beginning of partnerships. This includes exploring more theoretical understandings about concepts (such as knowledge) as well as practical understandings about planning and communication. We argue that time spent on exploring understandings is important for a range of reasons, not least to help prevent the lead organisation dominating the construction of meaning within the partnership.

Using inception phases to explore understanding

Inception and set-up phases and meetings provide the opportunity to explore understandings, harnessing differences in opinion and perspective to best effect. However inception and set-up meetings are generally very action-orientated and focus on identifying what is to be done by whom. The insights in the working paper point to the importance of also exploring why and how activities are undertaken as part of creating a knowledge sharing network.

Practical suggestions for inception meetings

The table below provides a few suggestions of questions to explore before (or at the beginning of a process) establishing a knowledge sharing network, and ideas of processes that could be used to explore them. I have used some of these approaches but not all and this should not be taken as “best” or even “good” practice. Instead I hope it will be food for thought about ways of addressing some of the issues raised in the paper.

Hope you enjoy the full paper and, if you are planning to set up a knowledge sharing network in partnership, that the following ideas are useful input to any inception or set up meetings.

Questions to explore	Suggestions on process
How do we understand key concepts?	Explore understandings of key concepts by individually completing the phrase “Knowledge is…” (repeating for other concepts eg “knowledge sharing is...”, “communicationis...”, “participation is..."). First by writing it down then moving around to compare with others. Reflect together as a group on similarities and differences.
What’s the purpose of this network?	Revisit the purpose and logic of the network exploring questions such as: What is the problem this network is seeking to address? Who are the stakeholders? What will be different for them if this is a success? Outcome based planning tools such as Outcome Mapping or Theory of Change approaches could help.
What are our motivations and expectations?	Facilitate a discussion that asks participants to share: What I hope to gain from involvement What my organisation hopes to gain What I/my organisation expects to contribute What I/my organisation expects others to contribute
What’s the organisational context in which we will deliver this?	Use creative ways such as metaphor or pictures to explore organisational culture and values (e.g. if my organisation was a machine/animal/season/colour it would be..). Draw organagrams (from memory) of each organisation, including people outside the organisation that might affect the network. Compare with each other
How will we actually deliver this?	Explore what each organisation thinks they will be contributing on an ongoing basis and how they will do it. For example describe “A day in the life of a KSO”
How will we make decisions?	Explore scenarios of different decisions from big decisions such as adopting a new partner to small such as adding an item to a website/newsletter. Who would be involved?
How will we work together?	Identify what existing experience partners already have of working in partnership. One approach could be sharing stories about highs or lows of partnership working. What kinds of partnership do they have, how is this similar or different, what works and what doesn’t? Consider generating principles and strategies for working together, including communication methods and etiquette.
What do we expect of the lead partner?	Explore what power does the lead organisation have vis a vis the other organisations? How can this be balanced? What responsibilities does it have?
What do we do if things go wrong?	Build scenarios of what could go wrong. Explore different ideas of “wrong” then discuss how it could be addressed. Relate to principles for working together.
How will we learn in this process?	Explore what approaches to learning and professional development each organisation has. Look at simple models for learning such as “experiential learning cycle” and see how they can apply to the partnership. Think about how to learn before and during the process looking at methods such as After Action Reviews, peer assists etc
How will we monitor and evaluate our work?	Discuss understandings of M&E (which are often very different), partners’ experience of it, and what they expect to contribute.

Catherine Fisher was Capacity Support Coordinator for the Impact and Learning Team at IDS. She left IDS at the end of September 2012 to join Amnesty International as their new International Capacity Building Co-ordinator

As good as gold? How and why to publish open access research

2012-09-12T10:29:00.000+01:00

By Rachel Playforth

The scholarly publishing revolution that has been steadily building for the past decade may now have reached a tipping point - the UK Government has pledged that all publicly funded research will be open access by 2014; the World Bank, UNESCO and many other major international organisations and funding bodies are backing open access; and a new set of recommendations updating the original Budapest Open Access Initiative is due out this year. But the corresponding media interest in open access hasn’t necessarily increased understanding – we’re all talking about it but do we really know what it is, what it’s for, or how to do it?

What is open access?

Image from: http://openreflections.wordpress.com/

The free and irrevocable availability of research outputs on the public internet, permitting any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full text of these outputs, without financial, legal, or technical barriers.

What is not open access?
Content that requires registration or is offered free for a limited period only. Formats that prevent downloading, saving, printing or copying. Arguably, content where text mining or indexing by web crawling tools is prevented.

Why open access?
Because removing access barriers will enrich and accelerate research. Because scholars in poorer institutions and poorer countries shouldn’t be excluded. Because publishers shouldn’t make huge profits from research, peer-reviewing and editing work done by academics for free. Because we shouldn’t have to pay twice for publicly funded (and potentially vital) research, once through our taxes and once through subscriptions and fees paid to commercial publishers of scholarly journals.

Why else open access?
Because many funding bodies, including the Wellcome Trust, RCUK and DFID, require it as a condition of funding. Even if you are half-hearted about the ideology, you may have to embrace the reality.

Gold or green?
There are two routes available to researchers who want (or need) to make their work open access, known as ‘gold’ and ‘green’. The costs of publishing in peer-reviewed journals are currently met by the reader (probably via their library), though subscription charges and pay-per-view fees.

Gold open access shifts the cost to the author, who pays (probably via their research funding or their institution) to publish in an open access journal. This was the approach most strongly recommended by the recent Finch report on expanding access to published research findings, and is the ultimate goal of the UK government. Based on the idea that full gold OA will eliminate the ‘paying twice’ problem with subscription journals, it’s been estimated that it could lead to whole system savings of around £80 million per year.

The other route is known as green open access, represented by research repositories. The majority of commercial scholarly publishers allow some form of ‘self-archiving’ in subject or institutional repositories, usually but not always with an embargo period to protect their revenues for the first few months after publication. If all journals were open access, there would of course be no need for embargo periods, and arguably, no need for repositories. (The Finch report sees their role shifting more towards preserving/sharing research data and grey literature). But in the current transition period where the subscription model coexists with the OA model, repositories are working successfully with both.

Repositories also offer advantages to researchers and institutions beyond open access policy compliance:

Impact: research shows that open access articles tend to be more cited than comparable material behind paywalls
Discoverability: the protocols used by repository software are international and interoperable to facilitate data exchange and reuse, and the metadata standards mean the content is quickly indexed by Google and repository indexes.
Preservation: the repository can store copies of research for posterity in a way that is independent of the original format (which may become obsolete).
Reputation: a repository provides both an accurate record of, and shop window for, an institution’s (and an individual researcher’s) intellectual output.
Flexibility: repositories can contain all forms of work including peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, working papers, presentations, images, audio, and data.

But what about my intellectual property?

True open access is compatible with protecting copyright and intellectual property – the one restriction on reuse is that the work should be properly attributed. There are various Creative Commons licences that can help make this explicit. An author who retains their copyright and makes their work open access has more control over that work than if they had transferred the copyright or given exclusive rights to a publisher, as is standard in many publishing contracts.

And my impact?

Many researchers worry about diluting the impact and credibility of their research by taking the open access route. The number of established open access journals is currently too small to rival the impact factors of the major subscription offerings, it’s true, but this will change as open access is mandated more widely. As for repositories, self-archiving a copy of your article does not necessarily have an adverse effect on citations of the published version. It will certainly increase the number of times it is read, and many repositories provide a DOI and specify that the published version should be cited.

More information
Find open access repositories on OpenDoar
Find open access journals on DOAJ
Check journal self-archiving policies on SherpaRomeo

Rachel Playforth is Repository Coordinator at the British Library for Development Studies, based at IDS. To find out more about the IDS Repository, hosted by OpenDocs, contact Rachel.

Can a policy brief be an effective tool for policy influence?

2012-08-28T14:57:00.007+01:00

By Catherine Fisher

Popular wisdom suggests that busy policy makers don’t want to read dense academic journal articles or books. Instead they want something short that summarises findings into accessible language and draws out the main implications. Consequently, policy briefs; short jargon-free summaries of research findings, have become an increasingly popular tool for researchers trying to achieve policy influence. So popular that a in a recent discussion on the Knowledge Brokers Forum, Nasreen Jesani, commented "there is policy brief fever…. People feel like it is the silver bullet and so there is an upsurge of policy brief creation."

Yet, anyone who has tried to produce one will know that policy briefs can be time consuming and expensive to create and disseminate, and study by IDRC Think Tank Initiative (pdf) raised questions about their popularity with policy makers

So how effective are policy briefs at influencing beliefs and prompting people to act differently?

Penelope Beynon from the Impact and Learning Team joined forces with others at IDS, 3ie,and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) to try to find out. The team used a randomised control design to explore three research questions:

Do policy briefs influence readers?
Does the presence of an op-ed type commentary within the brief lead to more or less influence?
Does it matter if the commentary is assigned to a well known name in the field?

And it is this last question where IDS Director Lawrence Haddad bravely stepped in to test what has described as “the Haddad effect”. Did having his name onthe commentary make a difference?

Full details of the study findings and methodology

Download summary of study findings (PDF)

Download full report (PDF)

Key findings

Funnily enough, the study did not find that policy briefs are a "silver bullet". However, the findings are striking and have implications for how communication experts design policy briefs and how we evaluate research communication. The study found that:

The policy brief was more effective in creating 'evidence-accurate' beliefs amongst those with no prior opinion than among those who already held an opinion

Messengers matter when it comes to readers' intended actions: the authority (Haddad) effect influenced likelihood of taking certain actions but not on beliefs

Gender and self-perceived levels of influence affect people’s intention to act after reading the policy brief : women were less likely to report that they would act differently after reading the brief.

The report offers some recommendations for those creating policy briefs. In particular they recommend including opinion and authority features as they may help to ensure briefs are shared and passed on. They also suggest that the startling difference in response to the brief between men and women in the study should be investigated further.

The authors have acknowledged the methodological limitations of the study, not least that a policy brief is rarely consulted in isolation. However this study is a contribution towards understanding the effectiveness of different approaches to communicating research.

It is important for those involved in trying to strengthen the connections between research and policy to think about the tools they are using and the change that they are trying to effect. As research uptake becomes increasingly important we need to invest more in understanding what works and how we can meaningfully test that.

This study is a contribution to that important debate, let us know what you think.

Comments on this study:
Is there a "Haddad" effect? Results from a randomised controlled trial Lawrence Haddad
Should think tanks write policy briefs? What an RCT can tell us Jeff Knezovitch
Summary of e-discussion on policy briefs and information needs of decision-makers Yaso Kunaratnam on KBF

Do policymakers in the South text more than talk?

2012-07-18T17:01:00.001+01:00

By Simon Batchelor

In a news story today on the BBC website, the headline reads “Texting overtakes talking in UK, says Ofcom study”. The article states that “While 58% of people communicated via texts on a daily basis in 2011, only 47% made a daily mobile call, [according to the UK's] communications industry regulator [Ofcom].”

As readers of this blog will know, we have been conducting our own study in 6 countries on the information ecosystem* of policy actors. You can find our previous blogs, here and here.

While we asked participants in the study about what ICT technology they owned, how frequently they used the Internet, how they searched for information, and so on, we did not ask them specifically about their preferred form of mobile phone use (texting or talking). However, the Ofcom report which prompted the BBC news story, focuses on much more than texting – in fact, it covers very similar set of questions to our own study (indeed we used the Pew US studies to help shape our own study).

For example, UK Ofcom report states that “39% of (UK) adults now own a smartphone, a 12% increase on 2010.” How does this compare with policy actors in the South? The graph below shows that of our sample of 100 actors in each country, a similar proportion have at least one smartphone. In fact some people have more than one, since cross network calls are often expensive enough that it makes it worth carrying two phones to keep call costs down. This is particularly true of say Ghana, where several respondents had 2 or 3 smartphones.

The UK report also states that “Tablet ownership is also on the rise, with 11% owning such a device, up from 2% last year.” Interestingly as this blog showed, Tablet ownership among policy actors is at an equivalent level – currently at about 15% (from the updated data set). We concluded in that blog that this ownership of technology suggests that information intermediaries seeking to get evidence in front of policy actors in order to inform their decisions, should indeed be using these channels.

The Ofcom report also offers detail on internet behaviour of UK households – contrasting the behaviour of 16 to 24 year olds with others. Of course, in our study we didn’t have many 16–24 year olds as we were interviewing those in leadership and management positions. However we did note that the younger respondents tended to do more with their smartphones and tablets than older respondents – with the exception of where older respondents let their children play with their phones. Where this occurred, the older respondents themselves had as good a knowledge of the more tricky smartphone activities such as downloading an app, or uploading a video, as the younger respondents.

And finally the Ofcom report states that “Two thirds of internet users have accessed Facebook.”. From our preliminary data almost 70% of our respondents have accessed internet communities. Keeping in mind that actually there are alternative social networks to Facebook on the world scene (hard to believe!), this again shows an equivalent figure. What is much more surprising from our data is that nearly 60% of those who have smartphones have accessed social networks from their phones. Unfortunately, the Ofcom report doesn’t say how people access their social network.

Conclusion? As we have previously noted in our work, the respondents to our survey show that technology use among policy actors in the South pretty much mirrors the average household in USA (Pew Internet and American Life Project research). With this Ofcom report on UK behaviour, we can see that our research findings also appear to mirror technology use in the UK.

If this is so, (and this is where I am speculating) then perhaps it is reasonable to assume that the details of how people surf might also be true? For instance, Ofcom report that “With two-thirds of internet users on Facebook, it generates almost a quarter of all referred traffic to YouTube (23.7%), in contrast to Google’s 32.3%. Facebook also refers traffic to other popular websites: BBC (11.2%), eBay (6.7%), Twitter (3.8%), and Wikipedia (3.6%).” If policy actors are members of social networking sites, then perhaps Facebook is driving them to sites as much as their own searching of Google. If this is the case, then it becomes all the more important that social networks are used by knowledge intermediaries to bring evidence to the attention of policy actors.

When policy actors engage with the internet, what do they actually do?

2012-07-03T10:06:00.000+01:00

By Simon Batchelor

Ever wondered what those serious men and women who describe themselves as involved in policymaking actually use the internet for?

From our study of 360 policy actors across 4 countries, Ehtiopia, Nepal, India and Ghana, the graph below shows the percentage of the whole sample undertaking certain actions on the internet.

Unsurprisingly, almost all policy actors engage with the internet for emails. As you can see from the graph, over 80% download official forms, obtain information from public authorities’ websites and read or download newspapers or online news. A majority undertake the remaining options Instant Messaging, internet communities, video and audio podcasts, uploading self-created content and seeking health-related information. Just under half have telephoned over the internet.

Yet, when you compare these responses, coming from a wide variety of actors in the global South, some of whom have quite poor connectivity, to that pioneer of internet engagement, the USA, you find that their internet use is almost same as that of the average American household! According to recent Pew Research Center on households in the USA, 92% read email, or use a search engine, 76% read online news and 65% use social networking. Only 24% of USA households have used Voice of Internet (PDF link) – so in this case the policy actors are ahead in their use than the average US household.

Are differences still about connectivity?

There are of course differences across the countries not captured by the above graph. We would expect the use of the internet to relate to the connectivity of the country, and to some extent this is what we see in our findings. According to the 2011 ICT Development Index (IDI) (PDF), undertaken by the International Telecommunication Union, Ethiopia ranks 150th, Nepal 134th, Ghana 120th and India 116th - out of a total of 154 countries covered by the index. (We also speculated that connectivity in the South of India was better than the North, and divided our sample accordingly.)

In the graph above we see that telephoning over internet (VOIP), which demands good connectivity, follows our understanding of the connectivity of the countries surveyed. Ethiopia with its poor connectivity makes telephoning a difficult option even for those on the best connectivity the country can provide. Whereas in South India it has now become common across most respondents to use the internet for telephoning (80%).

Data around obtaining information from public authorities’ websites also follows levels of connectivity at the country level, with the exception of Ethiopia. The unusual high use seems to be explained from other data as being about ‘formality’ and need to know official government positions.

However, not all behaviours are best explained by connectivity. When we consider instant messaging and uploading video – which other data suggests are emergent behaviours more dependent on early adoption – there is no significant difference between countries. Whereas for the use of emails, while there is some difference between countries, the overwhelming uptake makes such differences of no practical meaning.

Finally just considering early adopters; unsurprisingly early adopters have a higher use on Telephoning over the Internet, video calls (via webcam), entertainment, videos or audio podcasts and ‘uploading self-created content to be shared’. We didn’t dare ask these senior policy actors what entertainment they were accessing!

So why should we be interested in this?

We often talk as though policy actors are a unique species, that because they are such important people, they behave in a unique way. To me the data suggests they are human as the rest of us when it comes to communication and information-seeking behaviours. They use the internet in much the same way as the average UK and USA household uses it. And there is a spread of use, in the same way we see a spread of use among US households. Some have invested in new technologies (see my earlier post on the adoption of Tablet PCs) and some of them are early adopters, just as some households are early adopters. Policy actors seem to demonstrate a spread of human interest in the new communication tools in much the same way as a population with wealth and access might show.

When I first came to IDS I wondered whether ‘policy actors’ in countries of poor connectivity would ever push the Facebook button on a webpage or use instant chat for a helpdesk. I thought that perhaps some of our efforts using the latest communications technologies were a little too North-centric, and that policy actors in the South might be left cold.

However, our research suggests otherwise. My scepticism has been duly quashed.

Philosopher-craftsmen: interesting times for research communications professionals

2012-05-30T17:56:00.001+01:00

Plato, the Greek philosopher

By Emilie Wilson

Two exciting new publications have landed on my desk today :
(1) Knowledge, policy and power in international development: a practical guide and the latest edition of the IDS Bulletin,
(2) Action research for development and social change.

Knowledge, policy and power in international development: a practical guide, not a definitive model

The first, a book by researchers at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), aims to be a "practical guide to understanding how knowledge, policy and power interact to promote or prevent change". However, the authors are quick to put in a disclaimer:

"...we acknowledge that, although some models provide useful analyses of some aspects of the interface between knowledge and policy, it is impossible to construct a single one size-fits-all template for understanding such a complex set of relationships".

That is not to say the authors aren’t aiming high: "this book seeks to provide:

a state-of-the-art overview of current thinking about knowledge, policy and power in international development
present empirical case studies that provide concrete examples of how these issues play out in reality
offer practical guidance on the implications of this knowledge base”

I’m looking forward to getting stuck in, and am particularly intrigued by their “Questions this section will help you to answer” approach to structuring some of the content. I’m also looking out for references to work by IDS Knowledge Services around knowledge intermediation (well, of course I am!).

Action research for development and social change

The second, edited by Danny Burns, who heads up the Participation, Power and Social Change team at IDS, is the latest edition of the IDS Bulletin.

IDS Bulletins come in a variety of shapes and sizes – some very theoretical, others with more practical examples. This one appears to provide a nice balance of both, and has a stellar cast of leading lights at IDS on action research and participatory approaches.

Again, there is a disclaimer "we have not sought to draw firm conclusions or a single 'theory of practice'" but then a helpful identification of recurrent themes around which to hang your reflections as you read along: power and complex power relations, learning, and action.

Both these works, I think demonstrate what an exciting time it is to be working in the realm of research uptake, weaving analysis into practice, and giving us communications professionals space to reflect on the impact of our work.

I’m not a development practitioner, I’m a communications professional...

In my early days at IDS, when I had more enthusiasm than experience, I remember a conversation with a colleague in which I referred to us as “development practitioners” and she responded “I am not a development practitioner, I am a librarian”. She’s quite right, in many ways – a librarian with a whole heap of experience in international development.

I guess that description could apply to me too: a communications professional experienced in international development. Just as others are engineers, agronomists, doctors, project managers...experienced in international development.

That is, we should not forget, while we muse on power, complexity and social change, that we are also master craftsmen. Our understanding of communication, our craft, is based on an understanding of human behaviour. While it needs to be nuanced by peoples culture, worldview, literacy, all manner of contextual factors - we remain craftsmen who understand what to look for and how to build it in different contexts. It provides us with a lens through which to see the world.

Hopefully, with my bedside reading all set up now for the next month, the theory (and practical guidance) will percolate into my communications practice and I can aspire (grossly paraphrasing Plato) to being a ‘philosopher-communicator’...(albeit with less beard!)

Reflections on the K* summit: beyond K-Star-wars?

2012-05-17T18:06:00.002+01:00

By Catherine Fisher

It was only a matter of time before someone made the KStarWars joke at the K* Conference that took place at the end of April in Canada. I’m only sorry it wasn’t me!

However, the K* Conference was notable not for its battles, but for the sense of commonality that emerged among the participants and for the momentum for future action it generated.

The K* summit aimed to connect practitioners working across the knowledge-policy-practice interfaces to advance K* theory and practice. Its aim was to span the different sectors and contexts and different terms under which this kind of work is undertaken, for example Knowledge Mobilisation (KMb), Knowledge Sharing (KS), Knowledge Transfer and Translation (KTT). Hence K*: an umbrella term that attempts to bypass terminology discussions.

This blog post provides links to some of the great reporting from the event, acknowledges some of the critiques that the event raised and points to the next steps for K*.

K* about process not outcome (blog link)

The opening presentation highlighted how K* is about supporting processes of exchange and engagement between knowledge-policy-practice interfaces not the achievement of particular outcomes. It was great to hear this point made by John Lavis, who has something of a guru status in K* in health. Other important points were about learning about context and what that means, not just saying its important!

K* about shining a light on multiple sources of knowledge (video link)

Another great metaphor courtesy of Charles Dhewa. The importance of multiple knowledges, knowledge hierarchies and the role of K* actors in helping to facilitate interactions between those knowledges was a recurring theme. E.g. see video by Laurens Klerxx talking about multiple knowledges and innovation brokers.

Transnational comparison of K* practices (video link)

As David Phipps explains in this video, participants from Canada, Ghana and Argentina were able to find considerable commonalities in their work with communities. This transnational comparison may be familiar to those of us who work in international development but it was a first for many of the Canadian participants who are doing really interesting work, for example, in government ministries or communities. I think this points to a strength of the K* movement in connecting people that might not otherwise talk.

Exploring the range of K* work and how the different pieces of K* work fit together (video link)

The conference illustrated the range and scope of K* work. For example, Jacquie Brown, National Implementation Research Network who works helping communities to implement science, has learnt how this piece fits within the broader scope of K*. For me, this seeing how different kinds of K* roles are played and how they intersect is important.

In this video, I share some of my reflections at the time: brokering in the Canadian context including an examples of brokering at the point of research commissioning: power dynamics in brokering; and the way that informing role of knowledge brokering is getting a “bum rap” compared to more relational knowledge brokering work. I also get distracted by bangs, crashes and the emergence of breakfast!

Critiques and the importance of engaging with them

The conference has generated some robust critiques. For example, Enrique Mendizabal sparked a discussion on his blog, On Think Tanks with a range of critiques including whether knowledge brokers are required, how knowledge is shared, and a critique of elitist professionalisation of this field. Scroll to the bottom of his blog post to read the responses, including mine. Meanwhile, Jap Pels argued that the nature of the debate at K* was pretty basic knowledge-sharing stuff.

I think both of these critiques raise interesting points but I think they constitute arguments For K*, not against it. K* recognises that the knowledge work is changing and proliferating, that there is considerable experience and understanding that is not shared across the different spaces in which the role is played. It aims to bring together bodies of expertise (for example that which Jaap Pels points to) to raise the game of all practitioners. It will hopefully provide spaces for debates and engagement with the kinds of critiques that Enrique raises.

So what next for K*?

The conference generated a range of areas for further collaborative action, and plans for taking the K* initiative goes from here.

Areas for further collaborative action included:

Understanding impact: a group agreed to share the tools data collection tools they are already using, I’ll be participating in this group, building on work of Knowledge Brokers Forum
K* in developing countries: a predominantly African group explored the particular dimensions of K* work in their contexts generating a number of action points

A group of participants gathered on Saturday to work out what next for K* as a whole. Consolidation of the K* Green Paper is considered an important next step – co-organiser Louise Shaxson will be leading this work. There are ideas of developing a more formalised network, which will be led by UNU-INWEH in the first instance.

UNU, who have led this process so far, remain committed and aim to get the support of the UNU governance. The World Bank has already provided financial support. Support from such international bodies is important as it will embed the international nature of this initiative, it is not without its risks!

So to borrow again from StarWars, the force is, for now, with K*. The scale and ambition of the initiative together with some indications of funding and high profile support suggest it has a future. However it faces both practical and fundamental challenges.

Practical challenges include maintaining ownership and momentum on behalf of the largely volunteer force taking it forward for now, identifying its niche and building connections around such a fragmented field of practice.

More fundamental challenges lie in ensuring that it really can generate value that will improve knowledge-policy-practice interfaces, rather than providing a talking shop for elitist actors.

Catherine Fisher is a member of the K* Conference International Advisory Committee.