Reaction Blog #1

Effective communication is becoming an essential component of all aspects of organizations in this era. It is therefore imperative that communicators are aware of the constraints that may cloud the quest for effective communication and the principles guiding communication. The constraints and principles as articulated by Lundergren and McMakin (2004) in Chapter 4 and Chapter 6 bring about three underlying prerequisite for effective communication of any form. These are; 1) knowledge of the internal environment within which the communicator finds him/herself, 2) knowledge of the external environment within which the communication will be made and 3) planning. I consider these three to be critical success factors in a communication of risk and the main take home message from the text readings. All communication attempts fail or succeed on the basis of these three factors, briefly discussed below.

Knowledge of the internal environment: Each organization or institution exists within a broader policy and legal framework as well as policies internal to the organization. Communicators should therefore know their institution’s mandate, character, requirements, protocols, systems, resources (human, financial) limitations, concerns and issues, roles and responsibilities because these will show as to whether the institutional or organizational environment is conducive and enabling enough to facilitate successful communication to the external audience. The commitment and support of the internal environment (organization leadership and systems) is very important. Knowing and dealing with the internal environment is like ‘testing the waters’ – the systems in place and protocols should be able to guide one as the level of commitment and support to be expected from the entire organization. As Lundergren and McMakin (2004) noted, it is necessary to “first reach the internal audience before reaching out to an external audience” (p. 49).

Any attempts of communication without support from organizational leadership may lead to hostility and conflicts. When the communicator is aware that the internal environment is either hostile or indifferent to communication attempts, an appropriate strategy of lobbying, educating can be adopted in advance. The strategy can endeavor to instill a spirit of shared expectation, common knowledge/understanding and a participatory culture within the organization (Lundergren & McMakin, 2004, p. 50). When the communicator has the support of the internal audience, all other challenges presented by the external audience can easily be dealt with. Knowledge of the internal environment also helps to define one’s communication limits as outlined in Lundergren and McMakin (2004) under principles of process (p. 96). Commitment, support and buy-in by internal audience can smoothen and lighten what otherwise could be difficult. However, this may still remain a challenge when an organization keeps on shifting goal-post more often than not.

Knowledge of external environment: This entails mainly the target audience of communication attempt and the environment within which the audience exist. The key lesson that keeps cropping up in the two chapters revolves around the need to know your audience. To avoid most constraints that may come from the target audience, it is therefore necessary to undertake audience analysis. Audience analysis, when done appropriately should be able to answer a lot of questions needed prior to the communication event such as, “how does the audience view the organization I represent?”, “what are their concerns, fears and priorities?”, “What are their beliefs, customs, traditions, attitudes?” and questions regarding literacy levels, language and diversity. Most communication attempts have failed because they overlooked their audience beliefs and traditions. In Botswana, HIV/AIDS intervention strategies failed because they were introduced without due regard to the behavioural practices and value systems, beliefs and localized social relations of the communities themselves (Ntseane & Preece, n.d.) Synthesis of the Batswana belief system regarding HIV/AIDS was given by Tlou (1996) as follows;

'A pilot study of the older women's existing knowledge and beliefs about AIDS,and of their sexual practices and experience in caring for people with HIV/AIDS was carried out. It found that the older women believed that AIDS is not a new disease but an epidemic of boswagadi, the Tswana term for `a state of widowhood whereby…….the surviving spouse has to undergo ritual cleansing and observe several taboos, the principal being sexual abstinence for one year'. After the year, a traditional doctor can perform the purification rituals and declare that the widow(er) may live as a single person. It is believed that failure to observe these rituals can result in disease and ultimately the death of the widow(er) or any person with whom they have sex. The term boswagadi is also applied to disease resulting from failure to observe the prescribed rituals. (http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FASO%2FASO17_04%2FS0144686X9700653Xa.pdf&code=4f59ed2af2421b6b91f4e05f6aebbcf2)'.

It was after the insights from studies such as these that intervention strategies were focused to dispelling the myths and superstitious beliefs surrounding the disease. This is a typical example whereby communicators did not know their audience. It could have helped if communicators could have initially used mental models approach to determine how the Batswana perceived the risk of HIV/AIDS disease and designed appropriate messages targeted to addressing the gaps and inconsistencies.

Planning: The third important consideration for communicators is planning. With information on the internal and external audience and their environment, the communicator should plan accordingly based on the knowledge available. Planning is captured in Chapter 6 under the principles of process (Lundergren & McMakin, 2004, p. 95). A plan should be able to consider timing of events based on the internal and external environment activities, plans and major events. Chapter 4 notes that constraints emanating from unforeseen delays, protracted approval procedures can derail the communicators’ plans. I take it that these can be minimized by planning that is based on knowledge of the internal and external environment within which communication will be undertaken. For example, if one has done his homework thoroughly knowing the protocols to be satisfied within an institution, planning will be instructed by the protocols in place and the strategies the communicator will put in place within the plan to deal with the situation. Knowing both the internal and external audience helps to time activities, determine the methods and strategies to be employed in each (i.e., inform planning and strategies to be employed). Most plans do not fail because of the constraints outlined in Chapter 4 but are due to poor and uninformed planning. To develop ‘plans and schedules that are both realistic and flexible’ (Lundergren & McMakin, 2004, p. 56) for effective communication of risk, it is necessary to know the organizational requirements, demands, protocols and the target audience activities and plans. Failing to plan has been equated to planning to fail.

For effective communication of risk, the three points noted above are critical and most of the things the communicator will do revolves around these. When adequately done, they will help avoid numerous constraints outlined in Chapter 4 and accommodate the three principles of risk communication presented in Chapter 6. I consider these as pre-requisites to effective communication, without which communication endeavor is bound to fail.

For further consideration:
I agree that the communicator should be prepared to tackle or address peripheral issues or concerns of the audience. But how then does one address a concern that is totally beyond the communicator’s organizational mandate or the political decision making regarding the issue is uncertain? A case in point is found in the following newspaper link article http://www.gov.bw/cgi-bin/news.cgi?d=20040224&i=Islanders_brave_raging_Okavango (BOPA 2004). The real concern of the community here was that government previously made attempts to relocate them because they were living in a small island prone to floods, secondly because the settlement was not formal, i.e., it was illegal and thirdly because they could not be provided with social amenities because the settlement was not gazetted. They therefore thought that if they evacuated the islands due to impending floods, government may take advantage of the situation to deny them coming back to the island. None of the communicators could ascertain as to whether that may happen or not, because it takes a political decision and process. How then do we as communicators deal with an issue where we do not have answers and uncertainty looms?