Flagship Course • Free Forever
Media for Development: Communicating Impact
Ethics, Evidence & Stories That Create Change
From exploitative imagery to participatory media. A rigorous exploration of how development stories get told, who tells them, and what happens when we get honest about what works, what fails, and why it matters. Deep focus on Indian models that have set global standards in the broader South Asia development landscape.
Ethical Frameworks
Indian Case Studies
Data Journalism
Interactive Lexicon
Why Study Media for Development?
Development organizations collectively spend billions communicating their work, yet much of this communication reinforces the very power imbalances development seeks to address. This course examines why, and what it looks like when organizations choose a different path.
Media in development is not marketing. It is an accountability mechanism, a tool for shifting power, and often the only way communities can make their experiences visible to decision-makers. When we treat it as a communications function rather than a programmatic one—disconnected from monitoring and evaluation—we miss its most important applications.
Beyond the Cause
Move past the cause-impact gap. Learn why development communication overwhelmingly focuses on problems, what it costs, and how organizations like ASER and GiveDirectly have used data-driven approaches to chart a different course.
Ethics of Representation
From consent and dignity to the politics of who tells whose story. Rigorous frameworks—informed by gender and power analysis—for navigating the ethical minefield of development imagery, storytelling, and failure reporting.
Indian Models
Deep dives into PARI, Khabar Lahariya, and Video Volunteers: three Indian organizations that have fundamentally reimagined who produces media, for whom, and to what end. See also our Data Visualization course for how data journalism tools complement narrative approaches.
"The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete." — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie