Abstract
Health promotional campaign as the practice of encouraging people to improve health has increased over the last decades in response to various health problems. This paper highlights strategies used by students to develop persuasive promotional campaign posters regarding the dengue health problem. Communication and media studies students were involved to show the combined results between the knowledge of health communication and the effective use of media in constructing an effective and persuasive health messages. A total of 56 students from two cohorts, i.e. twenty-five master’s students and thirty-one undergraduates were selected. Kurt Lewin’s model of action research was used to set the tasks: campaign objectives, information on dengue, themes/slogans to write the posters either by drawing or designing using a computer. The students were divided into groups where each group was monitored to record, check and evaluate their message writing performances. This study uses the Health Message Review Tool for data analysis which is grounded in the theories of Extended Parallel Process Model and Persuasion Hierarchy Effect. The findings revealed that the participants were able to construct, identify and evaluate major multi modal features in the dengue posters and persuasive elements which included: verbal texts, images, colours, graphic designs, metaphors, 1-sided and 2-sided message, firm conclusion and frames with more effective appeals. It was concluded that similar strategies may well be used in producing other campaign materials such as brochures, pamphlets, and billboards. The linguistic and pedagogic implications are also discussed at the end.
Highlights
Malaysia and Singapore are both engaged in campaigns on numerous health issues such as HIV, Diabetes, Dengue as well as in other parts of the world
The primary objective of this study was to examine the possibility of the combined results between the knowledge of health communication and the use of media in producing effective, compelling and persuasive dengue campaign posters to instill awareness and persuade the target participants
The rationale for using action research is to create opportunities for the practice of health message writing in a classroom setting based on a specific health problem, i.e. dengue
Summary
Malaysia and Singapore are both engaged in campaigns on numerous health issues such as HIV, Diabetes, Dengue as well as in other parts of the world Campaign messages are normally disseminated through posters in general for promotional purposes. Promotion activities focus on creating awareness towards the disease; build a positive attitude and preventive measures to change the current practices that are found ineffective. This ineffectiveness may be due to too much information, minimal visual attractiveness and difficulty in comprehending the message contents. Davis (1987 cited in Evans et al, 2009) claims that a campaign requires comprehensive and coordinated action on a very broad front, sustained over a long period. Communication campaign is an organised communication activity, directed at a population for a period, to achieve a goal (Atkin & Rice, 2012). The promotional campaign, on the other hand, is a series of advertisements using various marketing tools that share similar messages and thoughts to ies.ccsenet.org
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