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Mexico XVII - Communication

Communication perspectives - Mexico XVII AIDS Conference
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Communication for Social Change - Lessons from Soul City 4

Author

Esca Scheepers esca@iafrica.com

Summary

Click here to download a Power Point presentation of this report.




"CHANGE" AS A SOCIAL PROCESS





Soul City


  • A South African NGO established in 1992
  • Harnesses the power of mass media to support health and development
  • Reaches over two thirds of the South African population
  • Is used by another 8 African countries



Soul City 4



Multi-media edutainment vehicle

Advocacy campaign (in partnership with NNVAW)

  • Media advocacy
  • Community mobilization
  • Lobbying of Government
  • Connecting people to services - toll free helpline(s)



Extracts - Soul City 4 Evaluation

  • Data from 5 of the 7 evaluation studies
  • Investigation of Soul City's impact across all the "domains" of change
  • Cuts across all the intervention components

  • The powerful synergistic impact of intervention components simultaneously targeting several domains of social change in an integrated manner [domestic violence]
  • Key aspects around impacting on communities through community leaders, structures and processes [AIDS & domestic violence]
  • The importance of impacting on interpersonal communication and subjective social norms [AIDS]



Soul City Multi Media Edutainment Vehicle


Associated with


  • Stimulating dialogue and debate - interpersonally as well as in communities;
  • Shifting perceptions of social norms
  • Increasing support-seeking and support-giving behaviour
  • Participation in public protest against VAW



SC / NNVAW Partnership

Community mobilization

Media advocacy


12% of media coverage nationally on VAW over the intervention period referred to or reported on community action.





Implementation of the Domestic Violence Act - 15 December 1999


"There were pressures...there were pressures from occasions where people held marches and stuff like that."

[SA Police Services]


"...there was a lot of newspaper reports about the Domestic Violence Act...the concerns, it's long overdue"

[Department of Justice]


"You get phone calls every single day from people wanting to know what the hell is going on, why are you delaying the process."

[SA Police Services]



Partnership Evaluation Study.



"I remember last year in class I was talking to my students, I then asked boys if they marry, will they beat their wives. One said ‘yes', they should be beaten. I was really shocked on hearing that. But I then told him that gone are the days where you will beat your wife and nothing happens, these days you go to jail for the rest of you life."

[Urban teacher]


"It [Soul City] says they [women] have their rights. If you undermine their rights you are in trouble; you can even go to jail..."

[Urban male]



Qualitative impact assessment






Change is mediated through community leaders, organizational leaders, service providers



  • As individuals, in leadership positions / in their institutional positions
  • In interaction with their communities, constituencies, patients...
    • Communication
    • Understanding of issues - service delivery
  • Local (organisational) policy and practice

"With me the influence I got from Soul City is that I should not be ashamed any more to talk about sexual matters with the youth, because if I do then I am not a good Shepard. They need guidance from us because most of the time they don't get it from home...so I really got help from Soul City because now I am able to explain things to them that I found difficult before. Because what they have done they have touched topics involving the youths.. now I see there's nothing to it - I just speak to them truthfully and they respect that, and that is thanks to Soul City."

[Urban preacher]


'De-individualisation' of reported impact

  • people define themselves as part of the collective / part of a community
  • perceptions that the collective (norms and behaviour) is changing



"What I have noticed is that the part Soul City played in AIDS awareness is one they [youth] don't forget, because you can hear them when they are talking about it - they will always mention Soul City because there it was discussed thoroughly."

[Urban teachers]


"Before, people were very ashamed to talk about condoms, but since this picture [Soul City] has been playing for a long time, things have changed."

[Urban male]


National Qualitative Impact Assessment



Impact on Social Norms

from National Survey, Sentinel Site Surveys.







from National Survey



"People with HIV/AIDS should be moved away"











from National Survey



Social Comparison * Talking about HIV/AIDS





from National Survey



Importance of perceiving a change in one's reference group's attitudes:


Perception of change in reference group's attitudes,

  • is not necessarily mediated through interpersonal dialogue
  • does not directly translate into positive behaviour
  • associated with reported change in personal attitudes
    • Reciprocal association:

      change in own attitude <--> perception of change in social norm


from Sentinel Sites Survey



Within a 9-month period, reported change in subjective norm and reported change in personal attitude:


  • 32.8% of respondents who had perceived their communities attitudes on whether people with AIDS should be moved away to change negatively, reported a negative change on their own attitudes in this regard, compared to 1.9% who had perceived no change in their communities' attitudes and 1.2% who had perceived a positive change in their communities' attitude (p< 0.001).
  • 38.1% of respondents who perceived their friends' attitudes on whether a man is right in expecting sex without a condom to have changed positively, reported an attitudinal change in the same direction on the same issue, compared to 11.3% of respondents who had perceived no change in their friends attitudes, and 1.4% who had perceived their friends' attitudes to change negatively on this item (p< 0.001).
from Sentinel Sites Survey






Implications for Evaluation approaches with similar objectives






  • Complex design (and cumbersome)
  • Resources-intensive (financial and research capacity)
  • Comprehensive
  • Multi-methodology design and triangulation (to a large degree)
  • But streamline within studies
  • And reduce under-utilized overlap between studies
  • Creative Tension: detail (per theme and per intervention component) vs pragmatically optimal





Click here for Methodology reports and further details.


Placed on the Communication Initiative site September 09 2003
Last Updated September 09 2003

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