7905
Methodology and diplomacy in comparative studies of broadcasting systems
Michael Pilsworth, University of Manchester
In carrying out a major study of the role of broadcasting in national development in eleven[1] less developed countries[2], two issues clearly emerged which might be relevant to comparative research in general, and to comparative research in adult education in particular: the necessary failure of comparative studies to deal adequately with the specific historical and economic factors in any particular country; and the inevitable compromises that are necessary in order to secure entry and egress when dealing with sensitive issues in countries that are not best known for their record on matters of civil rights.
I have chosen to refer to the latter issue as 'diplomacy'[3]. Diplomacy refers to those rarely mentioned but often practised research procedures by which researchers gain access to countries, to ministers, to civil servants and to dissidents; and by which they leave those countries with documents, data and information.
Our problems began at the sampling stage. We had defined 91 countries as 'independent' and 'developing' using UNCTAD data and had stratified them according to a socio-economic scale developed by Ivanovic[4] modified by our own index of mass media development. We then selected one or two countries to represent each group, depending on the size of the group, and immediately encountered our first diplomatic problems: some of the countries we selected were impossible to visit because of strained diplomatic relations. Luckily the project team was based in two countries and that helped overcome most problems.
However, some countries politely refused us admission. Cuba invited us to 'try again next year'. Malaysia simply said 'No', partly, it must be said, because a general election was about to take place. After selecting the countries we wished to visit, three further problems arose: how to establish initial contact; whom to see; and how to present ourselves.
Making a formal application to the King[5], to the Minister of Information, to the Director General of the Broadcasting organisation that is, to start at the top - is one way to begin. This has the advantage of opening doors, but brings with it the dubious advantage of official sponsorship. More so, it has the disadvantage of inviting a once and for all refusal or wearisome and fruitless applications for research visas, as happened to us in the cases of Cuba and Malaysia. The alternative is to risk the sponsorship of an academic colleague or a highly placed alumnus or a professional organisation (as we did in Thailand, Tanzania and Brazil respectively) in the hope that doors will open in deference to these go-betweens. The danger, of course, is that protocol can become upset and revengeful.
We also faced the question of how to present ourselves. As Hund[6] notes, the questions may well be 'Who is sponsoring this project? Whom do you represent? What competencies do you possess which qualify you to carry on the proposed project?' Of courses we were researchers first and foremost, but to some respondents it apparently made a difference that most of the research team had direct experience of broadcasting. They were thus familiar with the 'sub-cultural shorthands and allusions'[7] of the broadcasters. Apart from being researchers, what was our affiliation? Our study was supported by the Ford Foundation under the auspices of the International Institute of Communications. In some countries these auspices were helpful, in others, not.
Everywhere we had to follow a network of relations which led us from broadcasting organisations and the political establishment to ex-members of these establishments: ex-ministers, or disbarred journalists and radical critics. In at least one case we were treated to some genuine revolutionary tracts and entrusted with secrets that we would rather not have known. The obvious problem is how to maintain good relations with the establishment whilst poking around outside it.
The methodology we used, once inside a country, was not so different from that which might be employed in mainstream comparative research in adult education: the gathering of subjective reports from informed and involved observers, cross-checked where possible, and the collection and analysis of the laws, documents and statistics pertaining to the history and development of broadcasting in each country. The former pertain primarily to the goals of the organisation and their transformation with time, with heavy emphasis on the relationships among broadcasting and the other social institutions; the latter pertain primarily to problems of control, financing, manpower, recruitment and training, technological reach (transmission and reception) and content.
Our major method was the informant interview. The problem of recording interview material presented some difficulties. In many cases we would be dealing with politically sensitive areas and we feared that use of a tape recorder would influence what was said to us. We decided to use the tandem interview technique first suggested by Robert Carlson to Herbert Hyman[8] and discussed further by Kincaid and Bright[9]. This method is efficient, in that one person is taking notes while the other is engaging in direct face to face interaction, with the advantage of eye contact and uninterrupted flow of speech.
It is not only that one person can talk while the other records, but that sensitivity to what is going on around one is multiplied thereby. Often, one of us picked up cues that the other missed and smoothed over an awkward moment, or signalled that comportment was being violated (pointing one’s feet in the direction of one’s speech is taboo in Thailand, for example), or recalled a point - from a preceding interview - that was now being called into question. It was also convenient for one of us to introduce the other as an expert in a certain subject, as it arose in conversation, without appearing to be self-laudatory. Our interviewees also seemed impressed - though not overawed - by being called upon by an academic delegation rather than just one person, and sometimes one of us could be detached to examine written material or tour the studios while the other kept the conversation going.
Using these data gathering methods we built up a picture of the institutional development of broadcasting in each country, and of the complex inter-relationships of broadcasting at the macroscopic level of politics, economics, education and culture. At this stage, if resources had been available, we would have gone on to carry out survey research. Such research only makes sense when it takes account of the institutional context in which broadcasting operates. The question to which such survey research would be addressed would include the following, by no means an exhaustive list: Who has access to radio and television receivers? How effective are the media in supporting other developmental activities? Do people expect the mix of entertainment and information characteristic of Western broadcasting, and if so, how does this expectation arise? Are imported programs more attractive than domestic programs, and what happens to the taste for indigenous arts? Indeed, what do people understand of Kojak and Ironside? Do such programs and their commercials motivate mobility aspirations, or do they provide greater satisfaction with life or perhaps even escape? Most important of all, do these responses vary as a function of the content of broadcasting and its linkages with economic and cultural institutions, both domestic and international?
Similarly for the political realm. What kinds of broadcasting contribute to the linkage of centre and periphery? How do different solutions to the problem of a lingua franca affect this relationship? What kinds of broadcasting, in what kinds of political settings, increase the sense of efficacy or mobilisation for broadly-based political participation? All these, we think, depend as much on institutional linkages between broadcasting, development-planning and politics as on the content of the programs.
Even if it be agreed that research on broadcasting and national development must proceed at these two levels, we must reiterate that our study was barely able to scratch the surface at the institutional level and could not afford even to begin at the microscopic level. Indeed, as fate would have it, village level studies have fallen off drastically in this period, partly because of the difficulty of carrying them out in developing countries[10], partly because of second-thoughts about the desirability not to speak of the effectiveness, of modernisation campaigns. In a sense there is a return to the concept of 'powerful mass media'[11]. Just at the time when the microscopic study of effects has all but come to a halt. This makes it easier than ever to attribute major effects to the media, but it should be appreciated that these linkages have never been less solidly based.
Much of the early work on broadcasting and national development assumed a causal connection between modern media and modernisation[12] which is in fact supported by Inkeles and Smith’s[13] international comparative study of the processes of individual modernisation. However, one must not accept uncritically the notion of 'modernisation'. The case of Iran is illustrative of the dangers of equating modernisation with westernisation. It is also illustrative of the dangers of focusing on institutions and formal organisations[14], and on government or establishment statements. Whilst our study of Iran did clearly show the powerful disparity between the cultural aims of the traditionalists and the content of broadcasting[15], we missed two other factors that meant that we did not predict the recent events in that country: firstly, the enormity of the gap between rulers and ruled was not apparent to us because we could not penetrate the radical groups that were articulating the dissenting views of the populace (the mullahs and their followers); secondly, though we were studying broadcasting we failed to attend to other communication networks not controlled by the state, such as xerography, tape cassettes (from the Ayotollah Khomeini in Paris), duplicating and the mosques.
This leads me to my final point, that comparative research such as we carried out, necessarily leaves out-of-account the specific cultural, economic and historical conditions of individual countries. In the search for general tendencies and commonalties, and for differentiating characteristics, the very methods of research that are necessary for such tasks lead one to ignore the factors that really do determine the course of events in individual countries.
The implications of this for comparative research in adult education are clear: how does one research into informal or even non formal education in countries such as Namibia or Libya, Eritrea or Somalia? What would a comparative researcher have made of Paulo Freire’s work in Brazil before Freire himself was made persona non grata? The failure of comparative methodology to take account of revolutionary change, of revolutionary learning, of informal and non formal networks, makes it inevitable that truly significant patterns and tendencies are ignored.
[1]Brazil, Peru, Algeria, Senegal, Nigeria, Tanzania, Cyprus, Iran, Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore
[2] See Katz, Elihu and George Wedell, with Michael