Abstract Author: Henri-Count Evans The Mass Media and reporting sustainability development.

Re-articulating the discourse(s) on communication for sustainable innovation in Zimbabwe; Sustainable Communication through a new praxis: Promises and expectations.

This paper explores the role of the media in sustainable innovation. Communication for sustainable innovation is a new paradigm that is directed towards sustainable social innovation.Communication for sustainable innovation is not the same as communication for development. It is a re-assignment of the role the media plays in societies whose economic, political and social activities lead to an unsustainable future.Communication for sustainable social innovation is the planned strategic use of communication processes and products to support effective policy-making, public participation and project implementation geared towards environmental sustainability (OECD, GTZ 2000). The papers point of departure is that the media are central to sustainable social innovation as primary sources of public information and also as agents of representation and social change. There is need for an approach that integrates both the horizontal and vertical models of communication. Vertical models of communication (sender media receiver) and related centrally planned development strategies alone are incapable of solving problems. Horizontal models of communication (communicator dialogue communicator) alone are limited as well. Here, problem- and practice-related information is generated through local or regional community processes and used as inputs for existing media networks horizontally and vertically, both bottom up to inform central decision-makers and top-down to inform community groups in different places (Suker 1980). From such considerations, an integrated approach of community communication for sustainable innovation may be useful which could pragmatically overcome deficiencies of both, purely vertical and purely horizontal models while building on their strengths.As the people participate in this process as planners, producers and performers, the media become informing, educating and entertaining tools, not an exercise in persuasion or power. In such a process, the entry points for communication interventions should be sought in the communities learning methods, cultural expressions and media forms (Oepen 1995: 49.)