Best laid plans : cultural entropy and the unraveling of AIDS media campaigns

We see it all the time: organizations strive to persuade the public to change beliefs or behavior through expensive, expansive media campaigns. Designers painstakingly craft clear, resonant, and culturally sensitive messaging that will motivate people to buy a product, support a cause, vote for a candidate, or take active steps to improve their health. But once these campaigns leave the controlled environments of focus groups, advertising agencies, and stakeholder meetings to circulate, the public interprets and distorts the campaigns in ways their designers never intended or dreamed. In __Best Laid Plans,__ Terence E. McDonnell explains why these attempts at mass persuasion often fail so badly. McDonnell argues that these well-designed campaigns are undergoing “cultural entropy”: the process through which the intended meanings and uses of cultural objects fracture into alternative meanings, new practices, failed interactions, and blatant disregard. Using AIDS media campaigns in Accra, Ghana, as its central case study, the book walks readers through best-practice, evidence-based media campaigns that fall totally flat. Female condoms are turned into bracelets, AIDS posters become home decorations, red ribbons fade into pink under the sun—to name a few failures. These damaging cultural misfires are not random. Rather, McDonnell makes the case that these disruptions are patterned, widespread, and inevitable—indicative of a broader process of cultural entropy. Organizations strive to create campaign messages that yield clear, consistent, and resonant interpretations that motivate people to buy their product, support their cause, vote for their candidate, or take active steps to improve or protect their health. However, once these campaigns leave the controlled environments of focus groups, advertising agencies, and stakeholder meetings to circulate through public space, people interpret and use campaigns in ways the designers never intended. Best Laid Plans explains why these instrumental-rational attempts to persuade the public through culture and media often fail. To explain these failures, the book identifies mechanisms that encourage “cultural entropy”: the process through which the intended meanings and uses of cultural objects fracture into alternative meanings, new practices, failed interactions, and blatant disregard. To develop the concept of cultural entropy, the book analyzes HIV/AIDS media campaigns in Accra, Ghana. AIDS organizations in Accra, and throughout the world, seek to control and organize how local communities make sense of the disease. They develop campaigns based on models of “Behavior Change Communication” that purport to use media to change sexual practices. AIDS organizations attempt to control the message by routinizing best practices like evidence-based design, involving opinion leaders in the design process, and getting all organizations behind a single message. Despite their best efforts to persuade the public, campaigns rarely work as intended, disrupted by misinterpretation and misuse. These cultural misfires are not random. Rather, these disruptions are patterned, widespread, and inevitable, indicative of a broader and important-to-understand process of cultural entropy We see it all the time: organisations strive to persuade the public to change beliefs or behaviour through expensive, expansive media campaigns. Designers painstakingly craft clear, resonant, and culturally sensitive messaging that will motivate people to buy a product, support a cause, vote for a candidate, or take active steps to improve their health. But once these campaigns leave the controlled environments of focus groups, advertising agencies, and stakeholder meetings to circulate, the public interprets and distorts the campaigns in ways their designers never intended or dreamed. In this work, Terence E. McDonnell explains why these attempts at mass persuasion often fail so badly Contents......Page 8 List of Abbreviations......Page 10 Introduction......Page 12 1. Cultural Entropy......Page 28 2. The Cultural Topography of Accra......Page 58 3. “Best” Practices......Page 74 4. Imagined Audiences and Cultural Ombudsmen......Page 94 5. Displacement and Decay: Materiality, Space, and Interpretation......Page 131 6. Scare Tactics: Interpreting Images of Death, Illness, and Life......Page 156 Conclusion......Page 200 Methodological Appendix: Social Iconography......Page 218 Acknowledgments......Page 228 Notes......Page 232 References......Page 248 Index......Page 264