Change will do you good

Part One

This module, our first, is structured around McGuire’s Communication-Persuasion Model for health communication. Modules and the broader sections to which they belong parallel McGuire’s “inputs” and “outputs”.   This module emphasizes McGuire’s central input, the Message.

The message is the ‘what’ of communication. Communication messages tend to combine both logical and factual content with emotional or artistic expression. The content is the “light” of communication: It lays out specifically how individuals can improve their health or that of the community or at least avoid or reduce risk. Content can be presented in a variety of forms but has to be adjusted to the cultural and economic context of the audience.

The emotional, artistic and expressive aspects of a message comprise the “heat” of the health communication piece. Messages often employ humor, sympathy or empathy, anger, anxiety or even fear with respect to a specific health issue. Colors, sound and other touches may be added to contribute to a multisensory and more memorable audience experience with the message. A message is a stated or implicit statement that presents a key aspect of communications destination and strategy to the target audience or a segment of the target audience. Messages should derive from key campaign objectives; without such objectives, messages may seem unclear to a target audience.  These campaign objectives represent what the source or ‘sender’ of the message wishes to do: announce, advise, activate or advocate. (Note that messages can manifest more than one or even all of these objectives…but in doing so may risk clarity!).

Brief definitions of these actions are presented below. In practice, many health communication pieces combine two or more of these objectives:

Campaign Objective: Announce

Presentation that direct individuals as to where they can obtain services, buy a product, or (in the case of health fairs) get more information about a specific health issue. They can also direct the individual to watch or read other media which will provide them with additional information and motivation.

Examples:

https://www.prostateconditions.org/outreach-programs/prostate-cancer-screening Or…

http://www.rbcdesign.net/Examples%20of%20Design%20Work%20for%20RBC%20Design%20Studio/styled-4/medical-advertising-marketing-graphic-design.html

Campaign Objective: Advise

Factual statements regarding health behaviors, risk factors, medications, etc. Information objectives are fairly simple knowledge oriented factual statements informing the target audience about the positive aspects of certain behaviors or other actions or their negative impact. Advice takes the form of information that can help address the challenge of presenting new knowledge or can help clarify misperceptions that people may have. Finally, this information may serve as “booster shots”, reinforcing existing knowledge and reminding the target audience of certain issues.

Examples:

https://gettested.cdc.gov/reasons/default.aspx

Campaign Objective: Activate

Motivating or persuading the audience to attend to and act on the advice or other information presented.

Example:

http://osocio.org/message/aids-campaign-takes-a-different-look-at-social-diseases/

Campaign Objective: Advocate

Documentaries and articles, movies, public demonstrations or ads that embrace and promote a social or political point of view.

Examples:

This current one: http://blacklivesmatter.com/

And this one from nearly 50 years ago: https://www.flickr.com/photos/13476480@N07/20510410925/in/photostream/

Campaign Objective: Combined Objectives

Pieces that attempt to achieve two or more of the above objectives.

Examples:

Research Activity #1

Author: Laura Covington, VP, IP Policy

The European Commission recently set out their vision on copyright reform as part of the larger Digital Single Market Strategy. Unfortunately, the Commission appears to be leaning toward the concept of ancillary copyright for press publishers – in other words, a link and snippet tax targeted at news aggregators and search engine providers, such as Yahoo.

At Yahoo, we believe that, if passed, an ancillary copyright tax would represent a step away from competitiveness for Europe. Similar measures have already failed at the national level in Germany and Spain, and the European Parliament previously rejected the proposal. An impressive coalition of voices against a link and snippet tax have emerged, including various tech associations, as well as many European publishers themselves. Small and medium-sized businesses in both publishing and news aggregation would appear to be the most adversely affected.