June Lennie

An Evaluation Capacity-Building Process for Sustainable Community IT Initiatives Empowering and Disempowering Impacts

Participatory evaluation methodologies are considered to produce many positive and empowering impacts. However, given the complex power, knowledge and discursive issues involved and other factors, use of these methodologies can have contradictory effects. This article presents results from the implementation of a process that aimed to build the capacities of people in two Australian rural communities to evaluate their local communication and information technology (C&IT) initiatives. The ‘LEARNERS’ process used participatory action research and participatory evaluation methods, and took an inclusive ‘whole of community’ approach. The process aimed to enhance community development and to facilitate community empowerment, participation and leadership, particularly for women. Rigorous analysis of the impacts of the project found that it was effective in producing various degrees of social, technological, political and psychological empowerment. However, some corresponding disempowering impacts were also identified. The strengths and limitations of this evaluation capacity-building process and the lessons learned are considered.

Evaluating communication for development : a framework for social change

Evaluating Communication for Development presents a comprehensive framework for evaluating communication for development (C4D). This framework combines the latest thinking from a number of fields in new ways. It critiques dominant instrumental, accountability-based approaches to development and evaluation and offers an alternative holistic, participatory, mixed methods approach based on systems and complexity thinking and other key concepts. It maintains a focus on power, gender and other differences and social norms. The authors have designed the framework as a way to focus on achieving sustainable social change and to continually improve and develop C4D initiatives. The benefits and rigour of this approach are supported by examples and case studies from a number of action research and evaluation capacity development projects undertaken by the authors over the past fifteen years. Building on current arguments within the fields of C4D and development, the authors reinforce the case for effective communication being a central and vital component of participatory forms of development, something that needs to be appreciated by decision makers. They also consider ways of increasing the effectiveness of evaluation capacity development from grassroots to management level in the development context, an issue of growing importance to improving the quality, effectiveness and utilisation of monitoring and evaluation studies in this field. The book includes a critical review of the key approaches, methodologies and methods that are considered effective for planning evaluation, assessing the outcomes of C4D, and engaging in continuous learning. This rigorous book is of immense theoretical and practical value to students, scholars, and professionals researching or working in development, communication and media, applied anthropology, and evaluation and program planning.

Constructing and Reconstructing Rural Women in Australia: The Politics of Change, Diversity and Identity

This paper examines the politics of change and the politics of identity evident in the recent history of Australian rural women’s organizations, including the blurring of the categories ‘farm women’ and ‘rural women.’ Drawing on various sources, including our own current research, we identify several different ways in which rural women’s identities are being constructed in feminist scholarship, in rural women’s own (various) discourses and in the mass media. Rural women’s diverse activities and identities are seen to cross boundaries. Contradictions and paradoxes inherent in these constructions and their implications for the politics of gendered social change are discussed. We argue that while a less urban-centred approach to feminist theory is needed, rural women would benefit from a greater understanding of feminism. Online conversations involving rural and urban women are seen as a useful means of developing such new understandings.

Deconstructing gendered power relations in participatory planning: Towards an empowering feminist framework of participation and action

Abstract This article uses a feminist poststructuralist framework to analyse and critique the way in which gendered power relations are produced and enacted in community participation processes through the discourses and ideologies in texts about these processes. I argue that these discourses and ideologies work to limit women’s participation and marginalise or delegitimise the contribution of feminist theories. A preliminary framework for participation is developed, which draws on feminist methodologies, feminist poststructuralism and other feminisms, and emancipatory and action-oriented models of education, planning, and community development. This article aims to inform strategies to address the complex and contradictory issue of gendered power relations in participatory planning processes for sustainable development.

Rural Women’s Empowerment in a Communication Technology Project: Some Contradictory Effects

Abstract This paper presents selected findings from the evaluation of a feminist action research project that aimed to enhance Queensland rural women’s access to interactive communication technologies (ICTs). Project activities aimed to be empowering and inclusive. They included online conversation groups, workshops and audioconferences. A model of women’s empowerment is used that comprises social, technological, political and psychological forms of empowerment. The evaluation results suggest that many participants experienced each of these forms of empowerment. The online group welink (women’s electronic link) was considered particularly important in facilitating women’s empowerment. However, the analysis also indicated various disempowering effects of participating in the project. Case studies of two participants illustrate these contradictory effects. These results suggest that enhancing rural women’s technological empowerment is urgently required, given that use of ICTs is becoming increasingly important to their leadership and participation in community development. Strategies for enhancing rural women’s empowerment are suggested.

BRINGING MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES TO AUSTRALIA'S COMMUNICATION FUTURES: BEYOND THE SUPERHIGHWAY?

A case study is presented of the multi-method and multi-discipline approach to anticipating the social and policy implications of new communication and information technologies (C&IT) being adopted by the Communication Centre at the Queensland University of Technology. This work draws on frameworks which include action research, structurational approaches to technology, coevolutionary systems theory, information economics, feminist and poststructuralist theories, and civilisational and critical approaches to futures studies. The main theoretical perspectives and methodologies we draw on are outlined, together with some of our research findings. Some future scenarios for communication in Australia, beyond the technological optimism of the information superhighway rhetoric, are presented. The often paradoxical relationship between technological change and social change is recognised. We argue that rather than being driven by the entertainment or commercially-oriented applications of the ‘information superhi...