Building on a broad understanding of television as a dominant social and cultural force in our societies, development planners attempt to use this tool in their strategic interventions. Early development communication scholars encouraged the introduction of television systems as a symbol of modernity. As many countries began to gain their political sovereignty following World War II, national politicians used development assistance to build media systems, seen as a way to disseminate national development agendas. Television and other media systems were assumed to help foster empathy among individuals as a precursor to democratic participation and economic entrepreneurship. The underlying model of media effects advocated in this approach assumed that television would help diffuse information to a receptive audience.

One of the earliest examples of television used in development communication comes from the NASA-India Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE). Indian and U.S. space agencies coordinated satellite television service to more than 2,000 villages in the mid-1970s. Television programming on these channels was designed to address a number of development concerns, such as family planning, agriculture, education, national integration, and health.

Television continues to be frequently used in social marketing and entertainment education strategies, to dominant models of development communication practice. In the first approach, public service commercials are created to disseminate information to targeted audiences. The marketing orientation is differentiated from advertising in its emphasis on audience behavior change rather than exposure to the mediated message. Advertisements produced by nonprofit organizations, promoting topics such as family planning, nutrition, and vaccinations, fit the social marketing model.

Entertainment education programs differ from social marketing campaigns in that they incorporate socially beneficial messages into longer narratives rather than rely on short segments between other programs. Entertainment education projects attempt to appeal to audiences interested in fictional programs while offering strategic messages designed to challenge knowledge, attitudes, or behaviors. Indian television, for example, devoted a serial, Hum Log, to addressing family issues, such as limiting fertility and promoting gender equity.

Many of these development interventions are designed to diffuse information to targeted audiences. The hierarchical nature of this dominant diffusion model has been critiqued on both ethical and efficacy grounds. These critiques inspired the growth of a participatory approach to the development communication based on the principle that communities should share in the definition and resolution of social problems rather than be mere receptacles of information determined by external development agencies. 

How participation actually becomes interpreted and development projects can vary greatly. Development institutions interested in creating efficient and effective projects understand participation as formative research or needs assessments. Social marketing projects, for example, involve extensive interviews and conversations with intended beneficiaries in project planning stages. A television advertisement would be created only after beneficiaries have been consulted in their understanding of the problem and possible solutions and in the reactions to types of messages, sources, visuals, and other aspects of the campaign. These types of interventions utilize participation as a means towards an end, defined by the institution itself.

Other development institutions concerned with the ethical aspects of participation are more likely to conceive a participation as an end in itself regardless of project outcomes. Community members are encouraged to define their own social problems and to engage actively in their resolution. Some projects, for example, teach video production skills so that local participants can create their own mediated texts, building on what came to be known as the “Fogo Process” after Canadian development strategies implemented it in the mid-1980s.

 Another form of development communication engages media as a site for resistance against dominant power structures and ideologies. Social movement organizations may actively use television channels to mobilize supporters, gain public support, counter dominant ideas, and offer alternative frames. Media advocacy strategies target television news, along with other channels, to draw attention to particular issues. In an early example, a media advocacy campaign contrasted actual with toy guns, with little discernible difference between them, producing compelling visuals that were then used in television news stories.

Across many different approaches to development communication, television is a popular medium. This channel may be a particularly effective means of reaching audiences for whom televisions are affordable. in areas where access to television is limited, however, any benefits accrued through television campaigns remain with the elite. Current enthusiasm regarding interactive and computer-integrated television formats must again be subject to this concern with access. Given that fewer than one quarter of the world's population have access to computer technologies, television's interactive potential remains a privileged resource.

Traditional evaluations of development communication projects assess  a hierarchy of effects, charting exposure to the disseminated message, knowledge gained, attitudes formed, and behavior changed. With adequate political and economic support, along with appropriate theoretical understanding of the issues and communities engaged, development communication projects have the potential to contribute to social change. The first step requires that the targeted audiences  have access to the information. This does not necessarily require that televisions be individually owned but that people have some place to watch them, even in a community setting. Some campaigns specifically target knowledge, such as teaching modes of HIV transmission, whereas others focus on attitudes, such as reinforcing more equitable gender roles. Others build on knowledge and attitudes to encourage behavior change, such as the cessation of smoking, boiling water, or using condoms. Although changing behavior occurs considerably less frequently in response to communication campaigns than contributing to knowledge  or reinforcing attitudes, this level of success is possible particularly when communities identify  with the concern addressed and have the appropriate means suggested for the problem’s resolution.  Evaluations on the effects of these communication campaigns demonstrate that limited success can occur if social and cultural circumstances warrant the campaign and if political and economic resources adequately support it.

In addition to considering the possible manifest and latent consequences of interventions, communication for development needs To be understood within political and economic processes and structures. As a discourse, development communicates the agenda of a powerful few, with the ability to define problems and create knowledge  toward the resolution. development intervention allocates resources and articulates ideologies across cultural and political boundaries within a global sphere. It is important to question how television works to facilitate or constrain development communication.