Contribution of community radios in rural areas development case study of Habwa Ijambo? program aired at RC Huye

2.2.8. Radio influence

Mass media plays a crucial role in forming and reflecting public opinion, connecting the world to individuals and reproducing the self-image of society. The mass media still play a major role in the social learning process and have influence on how individuals acquire new ideas, attitudes, and change orientation in society. (DeFluer and Ball-Rokeach,1988).

Bernard Lamizet et Ahmed Silem (1997:190) define radio as «an exchange of radio communication in which the emission(sounds, musics, words,...) are oriented directly to be received by the listeners . In general this media help immediate action to the receiver in times of giving responses to the message he get.» By this, Radio is a strong means of information to the mass. It facilitates the exchanges between the sender and the receiver, authorities and people.

Briefly Radio plays a big role especially in African societies and particularly to Rwandan society characterized by the culture of oral. Briefly, Radio is completely a mean of promoting freedom of expression.

Current study presents a more complex interaction between the media and society, with the media on generating information from a network of relations and influences and with the individual interpretations and evaluations of the information provided. It is through the persuasiveness of media such as television, radio and print media that messages reach their target audiences. These have been influential media as they have been largely responsible for structuring people's daily lives and routines. ( Mc Luhan Marshall and Fiore Quentin,1964).

The media have a strong social and cultural impact upon society and this is affirmed upon their ability to reach a wide audience with a strong and influential message. The phrase «the medium is the message» explain how the distribution of a message can often be more important than content of the message itself.

2.2.9. Role of Mass Media in Modernization7(*)

The role of the mass media in development was accorded a central position in the modernization paradigm [modernization was defined as the process by which «individuals change from a traditional way of life to a more complex, technologically advanced, and rapidly changing style of life» Rogers 1969: 48). Thus diffusion of innovations studies documented the impact of communication [(interpersonal and mass media) on the change from a traditional to a modern way of life]; For example, Wilbur Schramm(1964) reiterated that the modernization of industrial or agricultural sectors in developing nations required the mobilization of human resources. Education and mass media, then were vested with crucial responsibility in the process of mobilization of human resource. He noted: `the task of the mass media of information and the «new media» of education is to speed and ease the long, slow social transformation required for economic development, and, in particular, to speed and smooth the task of mobilizing human resources behind the national effort (Schramm 1964: 27).'

Some scholars went further to state that the major problem in developing countries was not a shortage of natural resources but the underdevelopment of human resources. Thus, education and mass media had the enormous task of building human capital. The powerful role of mass media in modernization was cleary implied in Lerner's and Rao's research and many other studies in the 1950s and 16960s. These studies complemented the postulates of the dominant paradigm of development. Mass media were the vehicles for transferring new ideas and models from the West to the Third World and from urban areas to the rural countryside.

In the real sense, community radio plays a pivotal role in making the masses aware about their basic rights and duties. Not only limited to solving problems which a common man faces in his day-to-day life, community radio provides a strong platform from where he can freely disseminate his ideas among his community members in the best possible manner.

* ⁷ S.R. Melkote and H.L. Steeves in Communication for Development in the Third World, Theory and Practice for Empowerment