UNESCO’s communication policies as discourse: how change, human development and knowledge relate to communication

Abstract

While the 1970s and 1980s as turbulent decades for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have been well covered by international communication scholars, UNESCO's communication policies during the past decade have received less attention. Examining UNESCO's communication policies as discourse from a social constructivist and post-positivist standpoint, we found that discourses concerning change, human development and knowledge which popped up in the last decade can be regarded as giving a specific interpretation to the discourse on communication. These entwining discourses share a neglect of existing power relations and inequalities. Focusing on the individual, they offer an incomplete answer to structural inequalities and imbalances. As such, a specific interpretation of change, human development and knowledge reinforces the shift of the organization's communication policies which has been consolidated ever since its 1989 New Communication Strategy was adopted. In this process the organization has grown closer to the World Bank's neoliberal (and depoliticizing) approaches.