Evaluating the Impact of Social Media for Social Change

In this presentation delivered at the Wellcome Fourth International Public Engagement Workshop, October 3 2012, Garth Japhet examines Southern African efforts to engage in communication for development and to evaluate those efforts.

Japhet's slides portray and describe:

• Soul City, whose ongoing prime-time multimedia vehicles - television, radio, and print - are under one brand in 10 Southern African countries. Communicating in 25 languages, the focus is on HIV/AIDS and, as a pamphlet and newsletter article included in the presentation show, violence against women/domestic abuse. Also, Soul City engages in community mobilisation; its 7,000 Buddyz Clubs engage over 180,000 children nationally.

  
  Evaluation and impact of Soul City has included qualitative and quantitative research as well as propensity score analysis, which is a method to assess the impact of national coverage communication interventions. In short, the propensity score is the probability of recalling the messages of a campaign as predicted by the regression of recall on a set of all possible determinants of exposure (14 socio-demographic control variables). Analysis has shown consistently positive over many topics over many years, with multimedia synergy often demonstrated.

• Heartlines, which pursues a values-based approach to social and economic development. As expressed in vehicles such as Heartlines' educator's guide, these values include: acceptance, responsibility, forgiveness, perserverance, self-control, honesty, compassion, and selfless love.

  
  With regard to evaluation and impact, Japhet states that Heartlines reaches about 12 million people through conversations about doing the right thing and other approaches/messages.

• forgood, which is an online social network that automatically connects the need that "causes" have for skills, goods, discounts, and money to the people and organisations that might meet them, based on their stated location and interest profiles.

  
  Japhet explains that evaluating forgood would involve the same techniques as other communication for social change initiatives, but it is different because: it is easier to divide exposed from unexposed; there is the possibility of ongoing data tracking; a longitudinal versus horizontal research design can be pursued; and a relationship matrix can be developed.

Click here for the 35-slide PowerPoint presentation in PDF format.