Scholar-practitioner collaboration in media-related interventions: A case study of Radio La Benevolencija in Rwanda

Abstract

What methodological, ethical or other issues arise in ‘media development’ projects that are collaborations between practitioners and scholars? This article uses as a case study a project led by Radio La Benevolencija (RLB) that sought to address interethnic conflict in Rwanda through a radio drama programme – a Romeo and Juliet story of a forbidden love between members of two conflicting tribes. The intervention was unique in its attention to theories of communication and psychology in its design and implementation, and in its efforts to bring in academics throughout the course of the project to aid in design and evaluation. The authors, commissioned to conduct an evaluation of RLB’s past ten years of work, analyse the intervention in the context of Rwanda’s history and the organization’s use of theory, research and evaluation in their programmes. The authors find that, based on the RLB experience as well as evidence provided by communication and media research, the RLB model for peacebuilding through the media can be usefully adapted to other contexts, given particular parameters. The article concludes by arguing that the collaboration provides evidence of the fruitful ground that can and should exist between practice, theory and research, while problematizing challenges involved in such collaborations. In context after context, the irresponsible use of media has hardened antagonisms; at times it has nourished wild storms of genocidal activity. Media scholars play a role in investigating these processes of incitement. In this essay, we look at a Rwanda-based case study where uses of media deepened hate with world-shaking consequences and, in the wake of disaster, practitioners, governments, funders and scholars worked together in processes of repair and restoration. It is the aspect of collaboration in the difficult process of healing that attracts us. Our case study is an effort that persisted for a decade (and continues), and one that is distinctive because of its grounding in theory, with a deep set of psychological justifications. We do not enter the debates about the relationship between peacebuilding and transitional justice: whether advancing one, for example, hinders the opportunity for the other (Sriram et al, 2013). The Rwanda intervention we describe here deals more fundamentally with changes in underlying attitudes and how theorizing about that subject influenced practice (and how involvement in practice influenced research). What we do here cannot be exhaustive, but we hope it sparks further discussion about these interrelationships.