A Pragmatic Analysis of Christian Handbills and Posters
Chapter One
Objective of the study
General Objective
This paper is designed as a pragmatic analysis the effectiveness of church’s posters in creating awareness and promoting behavior change. In other words, the general objective of the study is to investigate if message is clearly communicated in a way the target audience perceives.
Specific Objective
More specifically the study attempts to see the following objectives:
- To draw attention to use visual images in religious promotion both to aid in creating awareness and in promoting behavior change.
- To asses knowledge, attitude and perception of members in relation to visual images
- To assess the poster designing process undertaken by churches: whether the pre and post-production process involves the target audience or not.
- To identify gaps and draw lessons in relation to religious posters designing process.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Since this paper is to draw attention to effective message transmission through the use of posters to aid in creating awareness and behavior change, the issue will be investigated in relation to communication as a process and communication as meaning generation to emphasize on effective message transmission.
The Communication Process
This section starts by including “The communication process” with the intention of enabling target groups and partners to carry out effective two-way communication, in the implementation of religious communication. Communication is a very wideterm and different scholars seek to define its effectiveness. Mody (1991, 41), in speaking about communication said, “When we talk about achieving communication, we are using the word to refer to an outcome or end-effect”. The aim of communication as an outcome is ‘to make common’ to share.
Communication is achieved then when the sender and the receiver hold meaning in common. That is when the meaning the sender wanted to share is identical to the meaning the audience receives.
The degree of communication achieved is a function of the relevance of the topic to a particular audience and the appropriateness of the treatment, presentation/form of the information Mody (1991, 42).
Exposing people to a lot of information does not necessarily result in communication. As expressed by Krishnan (2004), People need to receive the message in a way parallel to the perceptual range of their minds and become a vital part of their thinking and judgmental processes. For Krishan, an effective communication is when there is relevance between the messages and the needs of the given individuals. In supporting this notion, Wilson (1999) states that message that does not recognize the given individual’s (receiver’s) needs, status, knowledge, and language skills can interfere to effective communication. Lack of sensitivity to receiver may result in breakdown to communication.
Misleading messages puzzle the receiver. According to Bowers (1981) a communicator commits the worst crime when he/she communicates inappropriate message, since it confuses the receivers and destroys their credibility of the communication. Thus, a communicator to conform acceptance and validity from the side of the intended audiences may do some rapid action research. (Bowers,1981)
People started to be involved in active participation in order to shape their societies. There has been transfer from the top-down approach of communication to a more participatory approach. Primarily, projects started and planned by professionals without discussing with the grassroots. Religious publicizers have also been such professionals. They have begun different religious campaigns without discussing with target audiences. Posters and other religious promotions have implemented the top-down approach. Parker (1994) states “the predominant method for the production of church publicizers materials incorporates a somewhat top-down approach where religious professionals, in collaboration with media professionals develop media products” (Parker, 1994, 64). Religious professionals set the agenda without the consent of the people for whom the messages were intended.
CHAPTER THREE
METHODOLOGY
The study area
Abuja is the capital city of Nigeria located in the centre of the country within the Capital Territory (FCT). It is a planned city and was built mainly in the 1980s, replacing the country’s most populous city of Lagos as the capital on 12 December 1991. Abuja’s geography is defined by Aso Rock, a 400-metre (1,300 ft) monolith left by water erosion. The Presidential Complex, National Assembly, Supreme Court and much of the city extend to the south of the rock. Zuma Rock, a 792-metre (2,598 ft) monolith, lies just north of the city on the road to Kaduna State. There are however 21 churches in Abuja (googlemap,2017).
Data Sources and Instruments
The study is based on primary data .The instruments employed for data collection are in-depth interview and questionnaire through which variables that tap important domains believed to be important predictors of the event of interest are gathered.
Study Design
The aim of this research is to examine the effectiveness of churches poster in creating awareness and in promoting behavior change. For this study, both qualitative and quantitative approaches are used .By employing quantitative data analysis; simple statistics like frequency distribution is used. Percentages are rounded. Qualitative research examines the complex occurrence experienced by the participants by observing people’s action in a natural setting (Wiersma, 1995).Wiersma further explains that “qualitative research usually gathers observations, interviews, field data records, questionnaires, transcripts, and so on”. The central method in qualitative research is simply talking and listening to people (Adler and Adler, 1994).
Qualitative information is gathered from the sampled individuals from the study population. Such design provides an analysis of message effectiveness using the visual aids. Thereby a more valid assessment of perception will be gained. Besides, since the samples are the community and religious workers, this approach could help to address the possible impact of the various religious related messages and information campaigns currently being conducted as part of the community awareness program.
CHAPTER FOUR
DATA ANALYSIS, PRESENTATION OF RESULTS DISCUSSIONS
Analyses and Interpretation of Data
The researcher’s main research question is to examine repondents’s response towards Christian Hanbill and posters. Based on this, this chapter deals with the analysis and interpretation of the questionnaire and interview obtained from respondents. The questions are arranged following the steps in communication process: source, message, channel, receiver and feedback. The researcher, in order to tackle questions that would supposedly be helpful concerning effectiveness of message implemented these steps. The data collected through the interview is also analyzed and interpreted together with the questionnaires.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Having gone through the analysis of the information obtained through questionnaire and in-depth interview, the researcher has come up with the following findings.
Summary
Visual images are considered effective in transmitting messages. Among the visual images, posters and billboards play a great role in promoting religious related messages. These tools are found to be useful for people who are not well read and for young people who mostly prefer visual than text. Message transmitted visually is useful for society where reading culture is not commonly practiced.
The main objective of the study is to assess the effectiveness of Christian Hanbill and posters in transmitting religious message to the intended respondents. In other words, it is intended to see clarity of message transmitted through Christian Hanbill and posters. To this effect this study is initiated with the following specific objectives:
- To draw attention to use visual images in religious promotion both to aid in creating awareness and to promote behavior change.
- To Asses knowledge, attitude and perception of respondents in relation to visual images.
- To assess the nature of poster designing process undertaken by church: whether the designing process is participatory or not.
- To identify gaps and draw lessons in relation to religious posters designing process
The appropriate sample size is determined and the required samples are selected by simple random sampling technique. Purposive sampling technique is employed to gather information from churchcommunication officers..
The data source for this study being primary, the instruments applied for data collections are questionnaire (for the target respondents), in-depth interviews along. The data is analyzed using a computer program called SPSS.
In summary, the findings of this study suggest the following points:
The findings in this study show unsuccessful message transmission through Christian Hanbill and posters. According to the results obtained, it appears that there occurs misunderstanding between message transmitted and respondents’s perception due to inappropriate presentation of the billboards.
Therefore, one of the major issues explored in this study is inadequate designing of visual images with out participation of the target respondents in planning, producing, management and evaluation of the message. Message designers /communication planners are found to be the only decision makers in message designing .The un participatory /top-down nature of communication plays a great role in hindering the respondents from being involved in designing process of the messages that is intended to address them.
According to the results of the study, the majority of the respondents find the messages ambiguous .It is observed that most of the respondents are not provoked by the message. The reason seems to be that the message is neither strong enough and the images are not striking. Hence they fail to create awareness let alone be promoters of behavior change, whereas, the importance of the issue raised through the billboards is found to be true by the majority. Churches are doing well in raising the societal issues that is timely. Hence raising only the societal problem but not transmitting messages to create solution is found to be of no avail. Groups with lower publicityal level percentages show less interest in obtaining information through these visual images. On the other hand, those with high publicityal level who have access to TV set regard the visual images as support material. This result of the study proves the visual materials fail to transmit messages effectively and the majority does not seem to develop the culture of being informed through visual images.
Further more, communication planners’ treatment to the design is found to have an impact on the respondents. From most communication planners it is found out the messages are not pre-tested and evaluation and monitoring conducted by them is poor-seemingly. These poor attentions results in top-down information flow on the part of message designers of the posters. As a result respondents are made to consume the message which in turn creates room for lack of interest and being refrained from noticing the billboards.
Conclusion
Based on the findings of the study, it can be concluded that Christian Hanbill and posters are unlikely to be prepared in a way respondents understand them. On the other hand, it seems like church’s communication planners rarely involve target respondents in the message designing process and are not likely to follow up after the message is produced and distributed. This result of the study, therefore, proves unsuccessful communication flow through Christian Hanbill and posters.
To sum up the study made to explore Christian Hanbill and posters and perception level of respondents on visual image may be included as follows:
- Communication planners seem to have influence on message designing.
- The respondents fails to find the message clear.
From the present study therefore, it is possible to predict that not involving target groups in designing message and not assessing the perception level of respondents by communication planners has more effect in failure of message effectiveness. Respondents especially those from low literacy level are disadvantaged from being informed.
Recommendations
Based on the findings made the following recommendations are forwarded by the researcher as possible solution for the problems being investigated.
- Pre-testing, monitoring and evaluation create understanding of message among target respondents and save the company/organization from spending high amount of money.
- Respondents participation in any development work increases confidence in the ability of the target respondents to understand the messages. Communication planners need to make use of visual images where the respondents participate in designing their own message.
- Captions and images need to create coherence and the pictures just because they are of famous people should not be presented on posters. They should have some relation with the message they transmit.
- Posters should be posted in a strategic and open place where they can be seen by greater number of people.
- Visual images should be familiarized among the community since they are good way of transmitting message.
- In order to create visually literate environment, message designers/communication planners should aim at respondents perception behavior and come up with message that is provocative. To this goal message designers should practice various ways of motivating respondents. They have to encourage people who don’t have access to broadcast media to take part in message designing process and to know more about these visual aids.
- Designers also have to repeatedly urge the community to get feedback from the posters/to know their feeling by encouraging focus group discussion that help them to develop confidence, while designing the next posters and also encourage them to tell what should be included and what should no be included. Further research should investigate the influence of visual images on low literate part of the community.
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