Riitta Koivisto - Rikoksentorjuntaneuvosto

Communication Aiming at
Social Cohesion
> New direction (Wallack et al)
> Instead of influencing the behavior of individuals
support to social cohesion, participation skills and
develpoing of networks
> Risk behavior and social cohesion connented to
each other – thus the responsibility for the occurred
cultural shift cannot be laid (only) on the individuals
> Low efficiency of informative campaigns
> Do people need more information to cope in
a more risky environment or rather
participation skills and other types of social
`capitali` to help to reduce the risk level?
Hierarchy of Message
Impacts
> In the form of campaign even such advertising which is related to
everyday life - a la a well-known person explaining about his
accident etc, - hearing such advertising on the radio still remains
aloof.
> (---) He stopped the fast drivers and he had got that pack of photoes
with pictures of those madmen killed or traffic accidents and dead
people scattered around the field or smashed and stuck. He made
those violators of traffic rules to look through the pack of photoes.
He had been standing beside them and his feed-back was that the
violators were pretty depressed seeing all that and that the message
got through to them.
> I do know that I tend to overspeed and I have my internal control not
to exeed over a certain level. After being stopped and paying the
penalty that level has become considerably lower.
Context of a Media Campaign
>Media is an ambivalent environment.
>Different messages are circulating
>Carriers`of media campaign messages
>analytical, utilitarian stories
>Movies, video films
>human interest, the yellow press
> Different messages get mixed in the
heads of listeners, spectators
Strategic Choices
> Informative
> Message, ready-made system, media as means of
delivering information
> Techniques from marketing are taken over to
disseminate information
> Presumes positive or neutral attitudes in target
group(s)
> Surpassing psychological barriers, creating
new behavior patterns
> The content and form of the message has been
fixed in the `marketing` key
> The conflict (tension) is mainly between the
hedonistic & short term orientated and the
responsible & long term orientated
Directing Individual
Behavior Through Media
> How to decode messages delivered in the form of
advertising in comparison to other `traditional`ways?
> Do risk topics through a campaign become “lighter”?
> How should stories, heroes, images used in campaigns
relate to the ones used in conventional media?
> Which kind of approach – analytic or normative – should
be more reasonable to choose?
Different Expectations
towards Different Media
Channels
> The ‘traditional’ massmedia is expected to set
down certain norms
> The idea that the Press should frighten young people more
against drug addiction is supported, the propaganda of this topic
in films is encouraged:
>“…it `s just like a side topic, it`s about the same as
someone somewhere in the background passes behind the
main character. In those films a certain life- style is
depicted, drugs belong to it.”
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