The thesis has taken another turn…
My overall goal is to facilitate face to face communication between small scale food producers and local consumers. Critical to this effort is the fact that face-to-face communication is an alternating process. The people involved in the communication alternate between speaker and listener (I know, elemental stuff here).
In order to facilitate this type of communication, the ease of communication between both parties must be met.
Therefore, a simple website where a farmer can list produce available for sale only reflects half of the communication equation. What about the visitor to this sort of site? How can he or she participate?
Also, besides looking at the communication strategy, I have also looked at the premise of my goal of facilitating face-to-face communication; the issues impeding face-to-face communication.
So, what impedes communication? The answer: a lot of things. The list of barriers are as follows:
Time
Distance
Location
Language
Socio / Cultural
Availability
Desire to communicate
Openness of pathways for communication
etc.
The first step in defining my project will be to evaluate the current status of face-to-face communication between farmers and consumers, find the problems, and design a project to overcome these issues.
