Designing messages for development communication : an audience participation based approach.

This very accessible and pragmatic do-it yourself handbook focuses on how to design audience-responsive messages in the Third World it takes the media producer step-by step through an audience research based methodology to bridge the cultural and information distance between senders and receivers.
Bella Mody begins by examining the origins and nature of media use in national development over the last thirty years. Against this introductory background, she reviews current research on media effects. The author presents audience research as a systematic device for the involvement of message receivers in decisions concerning message design, that is, what the message needs to say and how.

Designing Messages for Development Communication presents guidelines for information collection followed by a clear specification of audience research methods for the use of media producers with no research training. It illustrates how to apply the range of methods in specific settings to fine-tune program topics to audience needs and to for mat the message so that it holds the attention of the audience. Once information from the audience has been garnered, the book then guides the production team on how to draw up specifications for the message, on ways of writing up the objectives against which the efficacy of the message will be measured, and on methods of testing early drafts of the message to ensure that the needs of the target audience have been accurately assessed.
In sum, this book will enable media writers, graphic artists, videographers, film makers, development planners and communication planners to, first, listen to the audience to determine which information the audience needs and in what form they can process it most effectively and, then, pretest messages before they are produced in their final form.