Audience Analysis (Chapter 8)

From the previous readings in this book, we all know that understanding the audience is the key to effective risk communication. Chapter 8 emphasizes this point by discussing the levels of analysis, audience characteristics, sources of analysis data, and how to incorporate that data into the communication effort. The chapter has several excellent tables that provide additional information to help communicators go from what questions to ask of the audience, to transforming the answers into messages. The chapter concludes with an audience analysis checklist that communicators should follow when planning this crucial stage in the campaign process.

Audience analysis begins with the purpose and objective of the risk communication campaign. Determining if you are conducting care, consensus, or crisis communication will provide a basic idea of the audience analysis questions that need to be answered.

Audience analysis can fall into three levels:
Baseline – basic information about audience’s literacy level, preferred methods of communication and hostility toward the communicating organization. This level is usually needed for any risk communication campaign, but it may be all that is necessary in a crisis situation.
Midline – includes the baseline information plus demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural factors (i.e. age, gender, income, occupations, etc.). Care communication usually requires this level of analysis.
Comprehensive – includes both the baseline and midline information then expands to include psychological factors (i.e. motivations and mental models). Comprehensive audience analysis is necessary when the purpose of care or consensus communication is to change behavior.

The book mentions the EPA’s guide for conducting audience analysis: Community Culture and the Environment: A Guide to Understanding a Sense of Place (EPA, 2002). This document is available in pdf form by clicking here. This is a useful tool for organizations that need a model to begin conducting audience analysis.

Conducting an audience analysis can be very difficult, time-consuming and expensive. Direct methods of analysis (i.e. interviewing audience members, conducting focus groups, etc.) are always preferred to indirect methods (i.e. using existing sources of information).

In situations where collecting information from the targeted communities would be extremely difficult or impossible, the authors suggest using a surrogate audience. This surrogate audience is easier to access, but seems representative of the audience attempting to be reached. I think using this technique could potentially create problems. In order to utilize a surrogate audience, certain assumptions would need to be made about the target audience. If these assumptions are wrong, the collected data could be useless. Other forms of indirect analysis would be more accurate such as using census data, community development organizations, local media advertising profiles, or information from market polls such as Gallup or Harris. What are the best methods to conduct audience analyses? What other factors should be considered?

My final issue is whether audience analysis and follow-up evaluation are given enough importance in the planning stages of a risk communication campaign. It seems that these two elements need to be emphasized when planning a budget and scheduling the campaign. What other steps need to implemented in the beginning stages of a campaign to guarantee its success?