Voter educators often turn to the most obvious forms of communication: radio, television, newspapers, and printed materials. But even in countries where these are readily available, there are other, sometimes more potent opportunities for mass communication.
Educators should consider media that directly reach people, for the following reasons:
- Voter education demands fast, reliable, legitimate, and cheap methods.
- Voter education requires that people hear messages in their own language and idiom.
- Voter educators often only have one shot to achieve their goal.
Some of the means described here have been tested in other public information campaigns but have received more limited use in voter education. Others are means that require further testing. But as they are considerably cheaper and more flexible than others, they are worth using even as a backdrop and complement to more formal public information campaigns.
This section deals with the following communications options:
- outdoor advertising space
- graffiti
- recorded tape
- blackboards
Outdoor Advertising Space
There is a range of outdoor spaces available for advertising and for communicating short, memorable messages. Large billboards adjacent to national freeways or train lines are already used by commercial advertising, and they are likely to fill up with political party advertising during election campaigns. There are also likely to be advertising spaces, some of them enclosed in glass and even lit at night, along shopping and pedestrian streets and at bus and tram stops and metro stations.
But there are other smaller and more diverse places, limited only by the imagination. In India, the national highways are fringed by farms whose barns and houses have been appropriated for commercial advertising. Sports stadia, the sides of buses and trains, and just about anywhere else where people will gather or the television camera will focus can be used.
Perhaps the most ubiquitous use of outdoor space is the production of stickers for vehicles and walls. More information can be found at Stickers. When these spaces have been identified for commercial use, the best form of access is through an advertising agency, and costs will depend on the prominence of the space.
Graffiti
During election campaigns, political parties make use of billboards and painted signs. With the popularity of graffiti amongst young people, it is possible to make use of the design idiom and the guerrilla tactics of the graffiti writers to spread simple motivational messages quite widely at low cost. In a number of cities in South Africa, local authorities have established graffiti walls and actively encourage artists to paint social messages on these walls. The common use of graffiti during the political uprisings in North Africa (especially in Egypt where the walls and bridges around the Tahrir Square bear political messages to the state and the faces of the martyrs of the revolution) has brought to the fore the importance of this method of alternative communication.
What are some of the characteristics of graffiti?
Messages Appear on Walls Along Commuter Routes.
These are often in relatively inaccessible places where nevertheless large numbers of people can see them. Anyone looking for sites would need to travel the commuter routes, especially those taken by young and poor people. In addition, the sites chosen by graffiti artists also use surprise or bravado to enhance the message by making people wonder, "How could that have been written there?"
Messages are Ephemeral.
Graffiti artists expect that the signs will not last or will be altered in some way. However, city dwellers will know that many of these signs do last. What enhances their attractiveness is the ability to add messages to the original core message over time.
The same rules apply to any outdoor campaign: if it is left unaltered long enough it will become part of the background and lose its impact.
The Graffiti Artist Uses Street Design.
The messages are raw, the colours bold, the language is that of their peers, and the symbols meaningful to the in-group.
Graffiti can be used in two ways: as a gimmick that decorates a wall but actually appeals only to those who put it there, or as a real message aimed at a particular market. To achieve the second, voter educators contact graffiti artists themselves and consider using them to do the productions. In this case, there is the added benefit of establishing another group of people with voter education information.
The caveat, which applies to all of these alternative methods, is that the voter educator will have to negotiate a way to have the messages appear while at the same time not stepping outside the regulatory and legal frameworks. For example, there may be restrictions on "defacing" public property that may involve steep fines if violated. In some societies, this may be more difficult than in others.
Recorded Tape
Freedom of the press once meant that everyone was free to own a printing press. However, in many societies involved in freedom struggles, other tools are more important. Amongst these are video cassette recorders (VCRs), tape recorders and fax machines.
Video and audio tapes can be produced relatively cheaply. In the case of audio tape, even quality studio production is inexpensive; and reproduction of tapes is limited to the cost of the tape cassette itself. In the case of video, professional production is more costly, but reproduction is cheap.
Once reproduced, recorded tape can be used in a variety of settings. Audio tapes have been made available to middle class commuters, those taking communal taxis, those congregating outside clinics, indeed anywhere people have to sit still and are willing to be entertained for ten to twenty minutes.
Audio tape can also be used as a teaching tool for an unskilled trainer. Along side with a wind-up tape recorder messages, audio tape can be carried beyond the electricity grid.
Video can also be used as a teaching tool, though the technical requirements for this is greater. In a number of contexts, roving teams have been able to carry the necessary equipment and set up camp at rural localities and informal settlements to offer a show to the local voters. But this requires substantial logistical support and capital investment.
Getting the video through to schools, community halls, companies with training rooms, and even into churches and private homes provides a faster and cheaper distribution network. Video can require in-person narrators to talk through the concepts over visuals. This means that it is a powerful adjunct to attitude change where Face To Face Interaction is required.
There have been some experiments using video face to face, the way audio is used on commuter buses. This raises the question of what is shown or what is heard. So far and there is only limited data available, it appears that what works best is the creation of a typical TV or radio programme, similar to the in-flight entertainment packages offered on international airlines. A little bit of news, a snatch of music and entertainment, a bit of local gossip can be interspersed with voter education messages. People on buses cannot concentrate for long periods of time and there is a lot of disturbance, unlike a more controlled setting at a theatre or workshop.
While video and audio are the most widely used recording methods, there has been some indication that records or compact discs (CDs) might also have their place. Both are cheap to reproduce if there is access to the expensive production process, and, once again, voters and other institutions have the equipment to broadcast the messages. See Digital and Recorded Materials for further information.
Blackboards and Bulletin Boards
Outside the barrios in Mozambique during the 1980s stood painted blackboards. The paint is cheap and it can go on any smooth wall. Local news and announcements were written on these boards in chalk, also cheap.
A similar mechanism for communication was used in the Philippines by the church. Here it was combined with newsboys, children who could read and could take the messages off the boards and into the barrios directly.
During elections, many institutions can provide such temporary news and bulletin boards. All that is required is a system for preparing the messages and getting them written up on a regular basis.
Imagination Applied To Distribution
The idea behind all these alternative methods is that voter educators must be creative in the production, display, and distribution of messages. Where these can be popularized and decentralized, other dynamics come into play. Suddenly, it is possible for one taxi driver to become excited about a tape and pass it on to his peers. A family with a record of hospitality has a tool that goes into the VCR whenever there are guests. A local church becomes a voter education agent. The local school starts using the board outside, where parents can see it, and want to see it because it has information also about the progress of their children. A gang of youngsters discovers that they can also vote.
There are drawbacks. To do this well, voter educators have to be linked to community networks and they have to plan with people who might not be used to doing this in the way an advertising agency or radio executive might be. However, the rewards are considerable, and the ownership of the election and of the voter education enterprise is immediately expanded as these alternative media are used.
