Planning Tools

The Listener-Learner Paradigm

Compare carefully the characteristics of these two columns:

Listener-Learner paradigm

Audience-as-receiver paradigm
  • Listener-learners are participants
  • Audience is uninvolved
  • Community is a catalyst for change
  • Audience is an object to change
  • Listen to the community
  • Listen to us
  • We get information from the community (interactivity)
  • We get information to the community (top-down)
  • Focus is on transformation: empowering, enabling and mobilising communities by helping Listener-learners learn
  • Focus is on transmission: reaching and influencing an audience in a cost-efficient way
  • Communication seen as a process ("We collaborate together over time")
  • Communication seen as an event ("We ‘shoot’ them with an info-bullet")