Alexander Flor

Infobox Person
name = Alexander G. Flor

---

caption =
birth_date =
birth_place =
death_date =
death_place =
other_names = Alexander Flor
known_for = contributions to the field of Development Communication
occupation = academic

Alexander G. Flor is a Filipino academic best known as a pioneer of the Los Baños school of development communication, contributing to the field's understanding and application of ethnovideography, distance learning, strategic communication, environmental communication, the collective mind, knowledge management and information and communication technologies for development. Flor is currently the Dean of the UP Open University's [http://hq.upou.edu.ph/deans/ Faculty of Information & Communication Studies.] Citation
last =
first =
author-link =
title = Alexander G. Flor, Ph.D.:Academic, Author, & Consultant on ICT4D and KM4D
date =
year =
url = http://agflor.net/
accessdate = 2008-02-14]

Flor is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.Citation
last = Flor, Alexander, Malcolm Hazelman
first = and Scott MacLean (Principal Investigators)
author-link =
title = Odl for Agricultural Development and Rural Poverty Reduction: A ComparativeAnalysis of Innovation and Best Practice in Asia and the Pacific, p.29
date = August 30, 2006
year =
url = http://www.upou.org/research/povertyreduction.pdf
accessdate = 2008-05-07]

Family

Flor comes from a family of academics. He is a nephew to writer and National Artist Néstor Vicente Madali González. His first cousins, Dr. Jose G. Mariano and Dr. NIM Gonzalez serve as President, University of Asia and the Pacific and Dean, Asian Institute of Journalism Graduate School, respectively. His wife, Dr. Benjamina Gonzalez-Flor is a grand-niece to Dr. Bienvenido Gonzalez, the first post-war president of the University of the Philippines. On both sides of his family, Flor is a third generation Freemason.

Academic career

From 1976 to 2000, Flor Served in the faculty of the College of Development Communication of the University of the Philippines Los Baños. In 2002 he was asked to serve as a Vice Chancellor of the UP Open University, staying on until 2004 when a restructuring of the UPOU led him to become the first Dean of the University's Faculty of Information & Communication Studies, arguably the first Asian institution to operationalize the convergence of communication arts and computer science in its curricular offerings.

Contributions to Development Communication theory

As a theorist, he is credited with the cybernetic definition of development communication rooted in D. Lawrence Kincaid's convergence model of communication; for being one of the earliest proponents of upstream and downstream DevCom interventions; and for proposing development communication as a Fifth Theory of the Press (after the Authoritarian, Libertarian, Social Responsibility and Soviet Communist theories proposed by Siebert et al. in 1956).cite paper
first = Alexander
last = Flor
author = Alexander Flor
authorlink = Alexander Flor
coauthors =
title = Upstream and Downstream Interventions in Environmental Communication
version =
publisher = Institute of Development Communication
date = 1993
url =
format = Monograph
accessdate = ]

Among his notable contributions to the field as an author include "Broadcast Based Distance Learning Systems" (University of the Philippines Press, 1995) and " [http://bookstore.upou.edu.ph/books.php?itemid=3 Introduction to Development Communication] ", which he co-wrote with Ila Virginia C. Ongkiko - the textbook used for development communication students' introductory courses in the Philippines.Citation
last=Ongkiko
first=Ila Virginia
author-link=Ila Virginia C. Ongkiko
last2=Flor
first2=Alexander
author2-link=Alexander Flor
publication-date =2006
date =1998
title =Introduction to Development Communication
edition = Second Printing
volume =
series =
publication-place =Quezon City
publisher =University of the Philippines Open University
isbn =971-560-096-4] A student of Nora Quebral, he began relating development communication to the newly emerging ICTs in the early eighties. Flor differed from his mentor in the sense that he adopted a critical perspective. His dissertation on the "Two Faces of the Information Age" (1986) was indicative of this. Published early in his career were articles on the "Information Wastage Ratio" (Scientometrics,1987) and the "Informatization of Agriculture" ( [http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713684587 Asian Journal of Communication] ,1994.) This, however, changed drastically while serving as Knowledge Management Program Officer of [http://www.searca.org SEAMEO SEARCA] , an intergovernmental organization of the ten Southeast Asian countries which pioneered in the area of agricultural knowledge resources and systems. In 2001, he presented a seminal paper on ICT4D at the Asian Development Forum III in Bangkok. The paper, [http://www.cefe.net/forum/infoalexan.pdf ICT and Poverty the Indisputable Link] , gave five major perspectives on the causes of poverty and how they relate to information and communication. This was followed by an online paper presentation on [http://www.wdf.org/gspc/virtual2001/pdf/FlorPaper.pdf A Global Knowledge Network] (2001) and a paper on [http://www.adbi.org/conf-seminar-papers/2005/03/11/915.captal.network.effect.paper/ Social Capital and the Network Effect] (2004) presented in Bali.

Flor has three books published by SEARCA: [http://www.searca.org/web/knowledge/publications/books/13.html "eDevelopment and Knowledge Management"] (2001); " [http://www.searca.org/web/knowledge/publications/books/11.html Ethnovideography] "(2002); and [http://www.searca.org/web/knowledge/publications/books/16.html "Digital Tools for Process Documentation"] (2002) . While at UPOU he wrote [http://bookstore.upou.edu.ph/books.php?itemid=2"Environmental Communication"] (2004) which he started with the declarative statement, “Environmentalism as we know it today began with environmental communication. The environmental movement was ignited by a spark from a writer’s pen, or more accurately, Rachel Carson’s typewriter.”Citation
last = Flor
first = Alexander
publication-date =2004
date =
title = Environmental Communication
edition = First Printing
volume =
series =
publication-place =Quezon City
publisher =University of the Philippines Open University] Flor is also credited for coining the term “ethnovideography” in 1992 and its conceptualization as a methodology for studying groups or sub-groups using small format video.”Citation
last = Flor
first = Alexander
publication-date =2002
date =
title = Ethnovideography: Video-based Indigenous Knowledge Systems
edition = First Printing
volume =
series =
publication-place =Los Baños, Laguna
publisher =SEAMEO SEARCA
isbn =971-560-069-7] It may be noted that most YouTube documentaries inadvertently use production technique akin to ethnovideography. Additionally, Flor is recognized within the Philippine KM community as having started the Los Baños school of knowledge management, which he describes in his book [http://bookstore.upou.edu.ph/books.php?itemid=22"Development Communication Praxis"] (2007) as “indifferent to corporate values, founded on knowledge science, guided by knowledge economics, and contributory to the Millennium Development Goals.”Citation
last = Flor
first = Alexander
publication-date =2007
date =
title = Development Communication Praxis
edition = First Printing
volume =
series =
publication-place =Quezon City
publisher =University of the Philippines Open University
isbn =978-971-767-200-7] In 1998, while concurrently serving in SEARCA, he introduced knowledge management into the Bachelor of Science in Development Communication curriculum of the University of the Philippines Los Baños.

Development Communication: a cybernetic definition

In 1993, as part of the then Institute of Development Communication's Faculty papers series, Flor wrote a paper on environmental communication that, among other things, proposed a definition of Development Communication expanded from Norbert Weiner's concept of negentropy under cybernetics and general systems theory:

"If information counters entropy and societal breakdown is a type of entropy, then there must be a specific type of information that counters societal entropy. The exchange of such information - be it at the individual, group, or societal level - is called "development communication"."

External links

* [http://www.upou.org/research/research.htm UPOU Faculty Research Papers]
* [http://bookstore.upou.edu.ph/books.php?itemid=22 Development Communication Praxis by AG Flor]
* [http://bookstore.upou.edu.ph/books.php?itemid=2 Environmental Communication by AG Flor]
* [http://bookstore.upou.edu.ph/books.php?itemid=3 Introduction to Development Communication by IVC Ongkiko and AG Flor]
* [http://www.upou.org/books/flor_papers.htm#flor UPOU Page: Downloadable Papers of AG Flor]
* [http://www.searca.org/web/knowledge/publications/books/13.html eDevelopment and Knowledge Management by AG Flor]
* [http://www.searca.org/web/knowledge/publications/books/11.html Digital Tools for Process Documentation by AG Flor]
* [http://www.searca.org/web/knowledge/publications/books/16.html Ethnovideography: Video Based Indigenous Knowledge Systems by AGFlor]
* [http://www.wisard.org/intersard/home/materials/papers/IM.pdf Information Management]
* [http://www.wisard.org/intersard/home/materials/papers/Intro.pdf Intersard]
* [http://www.adbi.org/conf-seminar-papers/2005/03/11/915.captal.network.effect.paper/ Social Capital and the Network Effect by AG Flor]
* [http://www.cefe.net/forum/infoalexan.pdf ICT and Poverty: the Indisputable link by AG Flor]
* [http://www.itmatters.com.ph/columns.php?id=poso_030704 KEN Column]
* [http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2008/jan/07/yehey/images/front.pdf Monitoring and Evaluation of the CyberEd]

References