Community media, and in its broadest sense (what I call community-focused communications), is an alternative approach to mass communication and public relations-style media engagement. Community media provides independent, community-owned, and community managed platforms, offering an alternative to public and commercial media. These alternative and independent forms of media seek to bypass the commercialisation of media, and are open to the public to create and share material that they make for themselves, and which are aligned with the values of their communities, thereby maintaining a democratic approach and ethos.
Community media contributes to people’s empowerment, counters discrimination and prejudice, and allows for the elevation of the needs and matters of concern of specific communities. By fostering participation, community media, including community radio and newspapers, contribute to the strengthening of civic attitudes that allows citizens to be active co-producers in the media production process. Accordingly, community media and community-focused communications serve as a platform for diverse voices, grassroots participation, and the provision of an alternative political voice, offering a more inclusive and participatory approach to media engagement.
Additionally, rather than assuming that there are only a limited number of standardised ways to engage with people through the media, such as through communication and advertising techniques, brand management and public relations, community-focused communications can offer several benefits over mass-media communication techniques, which otherwise dominates the media world. These include:
- Targeted Approach: Community-focused communications allows organisations to tailor their communication messages to resonate with specific groups of people, defined by their social character, cultural heritage, the place they live and interact, as well as their social experiences, personal identities, and histories. This leads to a more sustainable engagement with people over time, with an increased sense of relevance to the needs of the people who are being served and engaged with.
- Building Stronger Citizen Relationships: Community-focused communication messages have the power to shape stronger civic relationships by showing that organisations providing the services that people depend on and use. There is great benefit in understand and valuing the people that organisations work with as equal partners. Good community communicators must be willing to include people directly in the process of service development, and not just target them with messages in the hope they may respond positively.
- Enhanced Retention: Targeted community communication plays a crucial role in enhancing citizen commitment to achieving change in – and across – different communities. By fostering trust and integrity in the communications process. In the process, this means countering prejudice and misinformation, and supporting the aim of overcoming social, economic, and educational disparities that have held many communities back in the past.
- Improved Engagement: By adopting a targeted approach, organisations can engage with their communities on a more profound level, addressing specific points of social concern that may result in people being overlooked and ignored in the mainstream process of communication. While eighty percent of the population are well covered by mainstream communication practices, we should never ignore the twenty percent who are often overlooked and ignored.
- Two-Way Communication: Community-focused communications are founded on two-way and multidirectional communication principles, with participation and interaction between members of communities, acting as citizens, who are prepared to act as advocates for themselves, the communities that support them, and any causes that are relevant.
By developing an intercultural and integrated model of community communication, it’s possible for public services organisations, business, and social service providers, to respond to the social sentiments of different groups of people more effectively. Mass communication techniques primarily focus on raising brand awareness on a large scale, with extended advertising reach seen as a priority. These mass-communication techniques, however, do not offer the same level of adapted engagement and relationship building as community-focused communications.
Challenges
Some common challenges organisations face when measuring the success of community-focused communications processes include:
- Long-Term Focus: Community communication requires a long-term approach, focusing on reputation building and citizen experience, which may conflict with short-term campaign targets and a desire to only manage the public persona of an organisation.
- High Commitment: Community communicators need to invest time in building and supporting community infrastructure, listening to those members of a community who are easily overlooked, and constantly communicating with the people in these communities, which demands a high level of commitment and attention.
- Lack of Established Metrics: There are no industry-established community communication metrics that can quantitatively measure the impact of community engagement, making it challenging to track the success of such initiatives.
- Qualitative Nature of Measurement: Much of the value in community communication is tracked through qualitative study and observation, making it difficult to quantify the impact of community communication through traditional quantitative metrics.
- Unique Skill Set Required: Community-based communication requires a unique skill set and is in direct opposition to traditional performance-driven communication, making it challenging to create highly targeted messaging and track the impact of communities.
- Relinquishing Control: Community-building requires communicators to relinquish control to their subjects and respondents, instead turning them into advocates and co-producers, which can be challenging as advocates may not always align with an organisation’s ideas or point of view.
To address these challenges, organisations should adopt an iterative approach to measuring the impact of community communication, focusing on building strong relationships, and invest in understanding and consistently creating communication and traditions that help solidify relationships within the community.
Measuring Engagement
Organisations can measure the success of community-focused communication campaigns by tracking various metrics. Some of the key metrics to measure the success of community communication process include:
- Category Conversations: Track the increase in category conversations the pre-campaign period to measure the impact of the campaign on increasing conversations related to a specific issue category.
- Share of Voice: This metric breaks down the percentage distribution of conversations across all issues in a specific category, providing insights into how often an issue is discussed, challenged or made reference to.
- Issue Mentions and Association: Tracking how often an issue is mentioned during a period of engagement, versus the pre-engagement period, and measuring issue association, can help gauge the impact of the engagement on issue awareness and perception.
- User-Generated Content: Monitoring the creation of user-generated content around the issue can indicate the level of engagement and advocacy within the community.
- Customer Loyalty and Retention: Metrics such as churn and retention rates, as well as average interaction value, can help measure community engagement, and the impact of the community on driving change, tolerance, and awareness of critical and contentious issues.
- Community Growth: Tracking metrics like weekly or monthly active users can showcase community growth over time.
- Value of Community-Generated Content: Calculating the value of community-generated content, such as the number of pieces of content created, can provide insights into the impact of user-generated content on issue awareness and engagement.
By measuring these indicators, community-focused organisations can gain valuable insights into the impact of their communication campaigns. They will be able to determine where they are weak or effective on different issues, how sentiment to those issues varies, how engagement and participation in the life of the community is manifested, and how informed decisions about the lived-experiences of people in their communities can optimise any potential strategies for future engagement.
Mistakes
Some common mistakes organisations make when measuring the success or challenges of community-focused communication processes include:
- Underestimating the Power of Data: Organisations often underestimate the importance of tracking data and measuring results regarding their communication strategies, including community-focused initiatives.
- Lack of Authenticity: In community communication, a lack of authenticity and genuine relationships with the target community can hinder the success of the process of communication, as can a misunderstanding of the communication principle itself.
- Focusing on Short-Term Gains: Community communication requires a long-term approach, and organisations may make the mistake of focusing on short-term sales or immediate results, which can undermine the effectiveness of any strategy.
- Neglecting to Measure Qualitative Impact: Many organisations struggle to measure the qualitative impact of community communication, as much of the value is tracked through qualitative study and observation, making it challenging to quantify the success of such initiatives.
- Ignoring Unique Skill Set Requirements: Community-based communication requires a unique skill set and is in direct opposition to many traditional performance communication approaches, making it difficult to track the impact of communities and create highly targeted messaging.
To avoid these mistakes, organisations should prioritise tracking and measuring data, focus on building authentic relationships, and understand that community communication requires a long-term, qualitative approach that may not yield immediate, quantifiable results.
Ensuring Success
To ensure that their community-focused communication campaigns are authentic and genuine, organisations can consider the following tips:
- Focus on Providing Value and Educating: Authentic communication focuses on providing value first and educating the members of specific communities, rather than always trying to sell them products or services, or to gain popularity. This approach helps in building trust and authenticity.
- Feature Your Subject-Matter Experts: People trust people, not just brands and products. Featuring the subject-matter experts from within the community can help build trust and legitimacy within and between each group of people when they come together as a community.
- Have a Story with a Human Touch: Communication is about telling stories with a human touch, connecting with people on a deeper level through storytelling. This can help in projecting the heart of the issue and what is being dealt with, challenged or affirmed.
- Voice Empowerment: Consistently supporting members of a community to articulate their voice is critical for community management. This ensures that the community is identifiable to its members and helps in building character and validity.
- Gather As Much Feedback As Possible: Understanding how citizens, neighbours and associates discuss the community they are part of, is a rich way to find information and touchpoints for a communication strategy that will resonate with the people most in need in a legitimate way.
By following these tips, organisations can foster legitimacy and genuineness in their community-focused communication processes, leading to stronger relationships and increased community identification.
Social Challenges
Some challenges organisations may face when implementing a community media approach include:
- Authoritarian Rule: In some regions, media development and community engagement may be hindered by authoritarian rule, limiting freedom of expression and access to media.
- Media Rights Under Pressure: The obstruction of freedom of expression and access to media can put media rights under pressure, making it challenging to establish and maintain independent community media.
- Sound Financing: Ensuring the economic sustainability of community media outlets can be a major challenge, especially for smaller, local media outlets that may rely on support from media development funds.
- Audience Research and Evaluation Methodology: Community media initiatives may face challenges in conducting comprehensive audience research and implementing rigorous evaluation methodologies to measure the impact of their programs.
- Implementation Gap: There may be a gap between the need for sound analysis of the media environment and the actual implementation of projects, hindering the effectiveness of community media initiatives.
- Lack of Support and Recognition: Media development organisations and community media initiatives may not always receive the necessary support and recognition, particularly in regions where independent media is not welcomed by the authorities.
Addressing these challenges requires a multi-faceted approach, including advocating for media rights, ensuring sound financing, conducting thorough audience research, and implementing robust evaluation methodologies to measure the impact of community media initiatives. Additionally, building partnerships and seeking support from relevant stakeholders can help overcome some of these challenges.
To address the challenges of implementing a community media approach, organisations can consider the following strategies:
- Fostering a Culture of Openness to Change and Collaboration: Overcoming resistance to change and cultural disruption by fostering a culture of openness to change and collaboration within the community media sector.
- Strategic Community Management: Engaging new, existing, and potential community members through strategic community management to foster innovation in community media.
- Empowering Volunteers and Enthusiasts: Making media production a rewarding and fun activity for volunteers, leading to increased enthusiasm and active involvement, which can enhance the effectiveness of community media projects.
- Experimenting with Communication on Different Channels: Embracing a multichannel approach and experimenting with communication on different platforms to provide opportunities for innovation in community media.
- Prioritising Direct and Personal Communication: Emphasising direct and personal communication with the community to create a more intimate and responsive environment, enabling the organisation to test new approaches and take risks in a more controlled setting.
- Adapting to the Changing Media Environment: Embracing experimentation and risk-taking to adapt to the changing media environment, including the adoption of new technologies and the development of innovative content formats.
By implementing these strategies, organisations can effectively address the challenges of implementing a community media approach, fostering innovation, growth, and meaningful engagement within their communities.
Meaningfulness
Understanding the distinction between a goal-driven community communications model and a meaning-driven community communications model is crucial for developing and implementing effective community media strategies that align with the broader objectives of personal and community growth. Each model offers a distinct perspective on motivation and purpose within a community context, influencing how individuals and communities engage with and interpret their environments.
Goal-Driven Social Model
A goal-driven social model is rooted in the idea of setting specific, measurable objectives that are to be achieved within a defined timeframe. This model is highly structured, with a clear focus on outcomes and results. It often employs quantifiable targets to gauge progress, making it particularly appealing in contexts where efficiency, productivity, and tangible achievements are valued. In a goal-driven model, success is defined by the ability to meet or exceed these predetermined objectives.
Characteristics:
- Objective-Oriented: Emphasis on achieving specific targets.
- Quantifiable Outcomes: Success is measured through tangible results.
- Structured Approach: Utilises clear plans and strategies to achieve goals.
- Motivation by Achievement: Individuals are driven by the prospect of meeting objectives.
Meaning-Driven Social Model
Conversely, a meaning-driven social model places emphasis on the significance and purpose of actions and initiatives, rather than solely on their outcomes. This model is more subjective and fluid, focusing on the experiences, values, and beliefs that motivate individuals and communities. It seeks to cultivate a sense of belonging, fulfilment, and understanding, with success being measured by the degree to which activities resonate with personal and communal values.
Characteristics:
- Value-oriented: Prioritises actions that align with deep-seated beliefs and principles.
- Subjective Outcomes: Success is measured by personal and collective fulfilment.
- Flexible Approach: Adapts to the evolving needs and aspirations of individuals and communities.
- Motivation by Significance: Individuals are driven by the search for meaning and purpose in their activities.
Implications for Community Media
In the context of developing better community media, understanding these models can guide the creation of content and strategies that either aim to achieve specific objectives (goal-driven) or to resonate on a deeper, more personal level with the audience (meaning-driven). A goal-driven approach might focus on metrics such as reach, engagement rates, and the completion of projects within deadlines. In contrast, a meaning-driven approach would emphasise the impact of content on community cohesion, individual identity, and the expression of communal values.
For someone with an interest and commitment to social democracy, blending these models can offer a nuanced approach to community media. By incorporating goal-oriented strategies to ensure the viability and sustainability of initiatives, while also embedding meaning and value in the content and engagement processes, it is possible to foster a community media landscape that is both impactful and resonant with the audiences’ deeper needs and aspirations.
While a goal-driven model offers clarity and direction through objective-setting, a meaning-driven model enriches the process by imbuing it with significance and purpose, thus catering to a broader spectrum of human motivation and fulfilment.