Deadline: March 6, 2026

Call for Chapters

Editors: Muhammad Jameel Yusha'u & Lara Martin Lengel

Communication for development has evolved over the last seventy to eighty years with impactful contributions from leading scholars. The impact of their work has reverberated beyond academic circles, shaping policy and practice especially in the global south.

These groundbreaking contributions include the modernization theories of the 1950s and 1960s led by Daniel Lerner, Wilbur Schramm and Everett Rogers whose insights on the stages of modernization, the contribution of mass media to national development, and the diffusion of innovation became guiding principles for engaging with publics for decades.

The work of dependency and other critical theorists, especially in the 1970s, provided an alternative view in communication for development and by extension the international development trajectory. Thinkers like Andre Gunder Frank, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Samir Amin, Walter Rodney, Luis Ramiro Beltrán and Paulo Freire recalibrated the debates by bringing to the fore issues of inequality, internal failure dynamics and the need for communication to address power imbalances.

The 1980s and 1990s introduced a seismic shift in the communication for development discourse by focusing on participatory approaches to communication. The works of Paulo Freire, Paolo Mefalopulos, Jan Servaes, Thomas Tufte, Alfonso Gumucio Dagron,  and Srinivas Melkote among others reshaped the debate particularly on the need for community engagement and sustainable social change.

The adoption of the Millennium Development Goals in the 2000s and the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 as well as the technological revolutions spurred by the internet and the sudden emergence of COVID-19 that rebooted how people communicated had profound impact on communication for development, leading to calls on the United Nations to reconsider the 17 SDGs by adding SDG18—Communications for All, to ensure that the role of communication does not take a back seat in the development process.

While this is going on, the phenomenon of artificial intelligence has emerged as a transformative force. Thisrevolutionary phenomenon is altering how development is implemented at individual, country and continental levels. Artificial intelligence is likely to define the development path in the 21st century with profound impact on all sectors, be it health, education, infrastructure, poverty alleviation, food security, energy access, and climate action. Artificial intelligence presents new promises, yet also presents challenges that may exacerbate inequality. The algorithmic governance of information flows, the concentration of AI capabilities in the global north, and the potential exclusion of marginalized voices from AI-mediated development discourse demand urgent scholarly attention.

This reality calls for rethinking of how communication for development will be implemented in the coming decades. The aim of this book, currently under consideration by the renowned publisher, Wiley-Blackwell, is to examinecommunications for development in light of the rise of artificial intelligence. It aims to revisit previous theories, models and approaches to communications for development and assess their potency or otherwise in the artificial intelligence century. Communication for Development 2.0 intends to be a major scholarly collection and reference work that will shape the communication for development discourse in the AI era. We seek contributions from established and emerging scholars to critically review and propose new approaches to communications for development in light of artificial intelligence and its implications for development practice.

Potential chapter topics comprise but are not limited to the following:

• Diffusion, innovation and artificial intelligence
  
• Participatory communication and artificial intelligence
  
• Communication for development, artificial intelligence and inequality
  
• Communicating national development in the age of artificial intelligence
  
• Development communication and artificial intelligence in the global south
  
• Development communication and artificial intelligence in the global north
  
• Communicating social change in the era of artificial intelligence
  
• Data colonialism, artificial intelligence and communications for development
  
• Artificial intelligence infrastructure and communication for development
  
• Communication for development, language and artificial intelligence
  
• Digital inequality, artificial intelligence and development communication
  
• AI divide and digital dependency
  
• Communicating Sustainable Development Goals in the AI era
  
• AI ethics and communication for development
  
• Algorithmic governance and development communication
  
• AI literacy and capacity building in development contexts
  
• Case studies of AI applications in development communication practice
  

Submission Requirements

Prospective authors should send their abstract submissions to Muhammad Jameel Yusha'u (mjyushau@gmail.com) by 6th March 2026. Abstracts should comprise the following:

• 250 words abstract
  
• Institutional affiliation
  
• Corresponding email address
  
• 200 words author bio
  

All submissions should be in Word document format. Authors whose abstracts have been accepted will be notified by 3rd April 2026. Final chapters should be between 5,000- and 6,000-words and will be due by 12thJune 2026. Co-authored chapters will be considered. Full papers will undergo a rigorous peer review process. Submitted work must be original and not under consideration elsewhere.