DSB poster text

1
DSB poster text

• Ole is faster than Bjarne
• Take your bicycle with you on the commuter train
  free of charge Saturdays and Sundays
• If bikes could speak they would probably agree
  with their owners that it is a really good idea
  that the commuter trains continue their offer of
  letting bikers take their bikes on the trains
  free of charge on Saturdays and Sundays for the
  rest of 1997

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Sender's intended message

• The bicycle poster shows a picture of a nice and
  clean looking young man sitting in the commuter
  train next to his bike with a basket on his lap.
  In the basket we can see part of a book on wild
  mushrooms in other words he is going out to
  gather mushrooms in the forest taking his bike
  on the train.
• (Ud og Se, the DSB monthly magazine, March 1998)

3
One passenger's reading

• This shows a skinhead with a basket full of
  stolen goods ready to testify that Bjarne is
  smarter than Brian. The poster urges passengers
  to look carefully after their bags when
  travelling on the commuter trains, because they
  may meet half-criminal hooligans
• (Ud og Se, March 1998)

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Some issues for the communication research agenda

• Audiences make their own meanings
• Does a text 'have' a meaning?
• Are their wrong readings?
• Can meanings be located?
• Decoding is encoding?
• What are the tools for getting insights about
  audiences?

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Communication as transmission or dialogue?

• Communication cannot be conceptualized as
  transmission. Rather, it must be conceptualized
  in terms of both parties involved in creating
  meanings, by means of dialogue. The sense people
  make of the media messages is never limited to
  what sources intend and is always enriched by the
  realities people bring to bear.
• (Dervin 1989, p. 72)

6
The audience research toolbox

• reception research the qualitative interview
• audience ethnography participant observation
• experimental research the controlled experiment
• audience surveys questionnaire interview
• hybrid designs 'triangulation'

7
Communication researchand the professional
communicator

• Solving a communication problem
• Transmission or dialogue?
• Getting across!
• Being relevant and comprehensible
• Case The TAP WATER project

8
Communication strategy based on

• A range of theories what is a good campaign?
• A range of concepts labelling and making
  distinctions
• A toolbox of methods fieldwork methods for
  building knowledge

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2 fundamental research tools

• Lifeworld analysis of the receiver group
• habits, preferences, tastes, values, etc.
  Exploring relevance
• Pre-testing the communication product
• people's motivation, comprehen-sion,like/dislike,
  etc.
• Exploring sense-making and response

10
Lifeworld analysis

• "To be more specific, we would like to research
  these issues Why do people buy bottled water?
  What are the associations and connotations
  induced by the commercial representations of the
  bottled water industry? What do people know about
  the environmental consequences?"

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Communication as transmission or dialogue?

• Communication cannot be conceptualized as
  transmission. Rather, it must be conceptualized
  in terms of both parties involved in creating
  meanings, by means of dialogue. The sense people
  make of the media messages is never limited to
  what sources intend and is always enriched by the
  realities people bring to bear.
• (Dervin 1989, p. 72)

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Dervin The transmission model

• Audiencing talking TO people
• Campaign messages are truths to be disseminated
  to the audience groups
• the audience as empty bucket
• audiences are objectified
• system categories (truths) are forced on
  people, e.g. through social research based on
  questionnaires.

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'Transmission' in practiceA campaign example

• The annual (since 1990) Danish Week 40 alcohol
  campaign 1999.
• Purpose To create public awareness of the
  negative influence of excessive alcohol
  consumption on life quality.
• To reduce the alcohol consumption of adults to
  below 14 (women) and 21 (men) drinks per week.
• To stimulate people who are alcoholics to accept
  treatment.

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Campaign approach

• Message You hurt those you love when you drink
  too much!
• The mass media magazine ads, TV spots, outdoor
  (posters, buses), editorial coverage.
• Magazine ad Daddy with hangover disappoints
  sons wish for Sunday morning fishing trip (Goals
  1 and 2).
• TV ad Drunk Dad ruins 10 year-old daughters
  birthday party (Goals 1 and 3).
• Campaign cost 4 million kroner (1999).

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Reasons for (partial) failure

• Counter information Press coverage of
  alternative expert knowledge.
• Resentment of big brother surveillance of
  personal affairs.
• Discrepancy between the real alcohol problem and
  the campaigns definition of the problem
• Reliance on the alcoholics self-awareness of
  addiction, and desire for treatment.

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• Dervin
• The improvement of communication campaigns
  requires a fundamental reconceptualization of
  both the nature of audiences and the nature of
  campaigns (p. 69).

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The sense-making approach (dialogic)

• Talking WITH people
• Truth is always relative, contextual,
  constructed, variable over time. Therefore
• Recognition of competing perspectives,
  alternative solutions (e.g. breast cancer
  treatment) perspectives from peoples everyday
  lives, through personal or vicarious experience.

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Sense-making (cont.)

• Interest in how people themselves define their
  problems and goals? Openness to ambivalences and
  contradictions both of motives and solutions.
• Give-and-take
• reciprocity of communication (dialogue) and
  mutual openness to change

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The alcohol campaign Supplementary strategy 1999

• Brochures aimed at health personnel in hospitals
  and social workers in local areas
• You may prefer not to interfere in your
  clients/patients drinking habits but then all
  other efforts will come to nothing.
• Interpersonal situation as basis for raising the
  issue.
• Dialogic openness how do people themselves
  define the situation?

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Dervin's conclusion

• Adopting a communication-as-dialogue approach to
  audience research yields a fundamental change in
  the conception of the audience and the campaign.
  In one sense neither term is any longer
  applicable (p. 76).
• Or a dual approach
• transmission and dialogue?

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Everyday life and the media

• A crucial relationship!
• Case Television and family life
• (Arlen, "Good morning")

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Pairwork questions

• Discuss the mother's last utterance is she
  right?
• How are the different family members using
  television on this morning?
• Does television make an impact?
• What can a TV-advertising campaign producer learn
  from this portrait of morning family life?