Course Glossary

 

The definitions in this glossary are drawn from a variety of sources. They are not necessarily intended to represent the sole definitions for the listed concepts. The glossary on the online version of the course will always have the most up-to-date definitions.

If you have suggestions for further references and/or would like to make contributions, please contact the course facilitators.

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

A

Ableism: A pervasive system of discrimination and exclusion that oppresses people who have mental, emotional and physical disabilities and operates at the individual, institutional, and societal/cultural levels.

Access: (1) Ability of an individual or group to use a service; e.g. use of health care services. (2) The ability to gain the attention of and to influence the decisions of key political agents. Political party leaders, the heads of major interest groups, and those that make large campaign contributions are typically said to have access. It can also mean lobbying and getting information to key decision makers at critical times.

Activity: A specific event or action.

Advocacy: Individual or collective action directed at influencing or changing policies and practices.

Age grade: A category of persons who happen to fall within a particular, culturally distinguished age range.

Allies: Institutions, associations, and/or spokespeople who can serve as a resource, usually on a short-term basis. Their support can be financial, technical, human or material.

Assets-based approach: An approach to community development that seeks to draw on the community’s own strengths and resources for addressing concerns.

Attitudes: Personal dispositions towards a particular subject or situation; how we generally feel about a situation.

Audience segmentation: Process of selecting an audience and learning everything about it, including demographics, knowledge, attitudes, behaviour, lifestyle, etc.

Authority: The approved use of power based on tradition or community practices.  It also refers to the holding of formal public office.  

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B

Behaviour change communication (BCC): The evidence-based, consultative effort to address individual knowledge, attitudes, behaviours, and social norms in a strategic manner. BCC operates through various types of interventions, such as mass media and interpersonal and community-based interactions.

Behavioural skills: The physical and psychosocial ability to behave in a particular way, e.g. negotiating the use of condoms in sexual encounters.

Biomedical interventions: Interventions in which the use and administration of medicines are key features.

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C

Campaign: The planned attempt to influence public opinion, behaviour, attitudes and knowledge on behalf of some cause, person, institution or topic, using different media over a specific period of time. The main types of campaign are advertising, political/public/informational, and fund-raising. Public campaigns are usually directed towards socially approved goals. They are often based on research and subject to evaluation of success.

Capacity building: The process of improving people’s skills and knowledge in a particular area of functioning. It is a complex concept increasingly referred to as capacity development. It refers to the strengthening of capacities, particularly communication capacity, at the personal, community and international levels.

Catalytic interventions: Interventions that are seen as important triggers in changing the course of an epidemic.

Channel mix: The use of two or more different communication methods in one communication campaign with the goal, intensity, and frequency to reach the intended audiences. Examples include mass media, interpersonal communication, and street theatre.

Civil society: Forms of social organization that offer alternatives to totalitarianism or excessive government control. The key aspect is the existence of an intermediate ‘zone’ between private life and the state, where independent voluntary collective associations and organizations can operate freely. A precondition for this is freedom of association and expression, including the necessary means, amongst which the media are very important. Free media can thus be regarded as an institution of civil society. See also public.

Class: A category of persons who have the same opportunity to obtain economic resources, power, or status.

Classism: The institutional, cultural, and individual set of practices and beliefs that assign differential value to people according to their socio-economic class. It is also an economic system which creates excessive inequality and causes basic human needs to go unmet.

Cognitive dissonance: The situation in which an individual is faced with new information about a given topic that is inconsistent with existing information, attitudes and values. The underlying theory holds that an individual seeks balance and consistency of attitudes and values and consequently avoids or misperceives incoming messages (e.g. from mass media) that challenge settled opinions and beliefs.

Cohort: A group of people sharing a common characteristic, e.g. females born in 1985, males who have never had sex, etc.

Communication: A process of increased commonality or sharing between participants on the basis of sending and receiving messages. Theoretical disagreement exists about whether we should count as communication the transmission or expression of some message, on its own, without evidence of reception, effect or completion of a sequence. The most important dimensions of communication concern two points: the degree of response or feedback (one–way versus interactive process), and the degree to which a communication relationship is also a social relationship. 

Communication based assessment (CBA): A flexible, two-way communication research method, which investigates and assesses key issues that can be relevant to any sector. It can be carried out either in a few days or in a longer period of time depending on the circumstances.

Communication campaign: A campaign to generate specific effects, with respect to a relatively large number of individuals, within a specified period of time, and through an organized set of communication activities.

Communication for social change (CFSC): A multi-faceted, multi-dimensional, and participatory process of public and private dialogue through which people themselves define who they are, what they need, and how to get what they need in order to improve their own lives. It utilizes dialogue that leads to collective problem identification, decision-making, and community-based implementations of solutions to development issues. CFSC was defined by the Rockefeller Foundation in the late 1990s to address inconsistencies in the application of communication among Foundation grantees.

Communication media: Specific artificial channels used as vehicles for transmitting messages between thinking, sending and receiving beings.

Communication objectives: Named or designated ways to remove barriers to achieve desired change in policies, social norms, or behaviours. They are audience specific. They support and contribute to programme objectives and are more specific than desired behaviours, which often only mirror what we want people to do, instead of addressing what obstacles they may face getting there.

Community: A form of human association in which the members share geographical and/or other attributes, such as cultural, religious or other social or demographic features, backgrounds and interests. Community implies collective identity and shared goals. Therefore, individuals may belong to more than one community.

Community development: A strategy that seeks to foster social and cultural change in a particular community by empowering its members. Through a process of listening, facilitating dialogue and participation and promoting leadership, community development seeks to change attitudes and aptitudes so that the members of a community can collectively organize to achieve common goals.

Community empowerment: Process by which communities are enabled to assume leadership and exercise control over the processes and resources for their own transformation.

Community outreach: An organized series of activities within a specified area, such as a town or village, with the aim of extending information or services to the population in the area.

Community participation: A process through which communities participate in determining their condition without, necessarily, controlling the process.

Computer-mediated communication (CMC): Any communicative transaction that takes place through a computer, whether online or offline, but especially the former.

Connectivity: The capacity of a network to link participants together in a common space for communicating with each other. As such it is also an attribute of groups and communities that can vary according to the density of the network links. The Internet and other personal communication media can achieve much higher degrees of connectivity than traditional mass media.

Construct: A feature or characteristic of human life or society that is not inborn or given, but that is created by the society or culture in which people live.  Constructionism is a theoretical perspective that looks at the role of human beings in shaping assumptions, beliefs and viewpoints about their world, and provides a way for human beings to understand that they can change aspects of society and culture that are undesirable.

Contemplation: Used in the stages of change theory to describe the period prior to adoption of a new behaviour when one is thinking but not yet acting.

Culture: A patterned set of beliefs, behaviours, attitudes and emotions that are shared by the members of a group.  Aspects of a social environment are used to communicate values such as what is considered good and desirable, right and wrong, normal, different, appropriate, or attractive. It is also the means through which society creates a context in which individuals derive meaning and prescriptions for successful living within that culture. These means include language, speech, orientation toward time, standards of beauty, holidays that are celebrated, and images of a ‘normal’ family.

Cultural imperialism: The tendency of global media industry exports, especially from the USA, to dominate the media consumption in other smaller and poorer countries and in doing so impose their own cultural and other values on audiences. Not only is content exported but also technology, production, values, professional ideologies, and ownership. The analogy is with historical imperialism where the means were military and economic power. Explicitly or implicitly, it is assumed that cultural imperialism leads to dependence, loss of autonomy, and decline in national or local cultures. Some latitude exists as to whether the process is deliberate and the degree to which it is involuntary at the receiving end. The concept is a fairly crude one, but it has a strong resonance.

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D

Decentralization: A process through which powers, functions, responsibilities and resources are transferred from central to local governments and/or to other decentralized entities. In practical terms, decentralization is a process of striking a balance between the claims of the periphery and the demands of the centre. Decentralization, when appropriately structured, provides an arrangement through which critical issues can be reconciled. These include those of national unity and indivisibility, how to safeguard national interests and ensure coordinated and even development, equity in the distribution of resources, diversity, and local autonomy.

Descriptive theories: Theories meant to describe are good at telling us what the factual truths, moral norms, or group identities of a community are, but seldom present these factors as a way to promote change. Descriptive theories tell us what is happening in a community, but do not necessarily emphasize or provide details on how to change communities in pro-social ways.

Determinants: Factors that cause changes in behaviour.

Development: A term with a broad and multifaceted meaning that can be broadly defined as the systematic attempt to support betterment of people’s conditions especially those of the poorest, at local, national and international levels.

Dialogic: A mode that is associated with the emerging participation paradigm. It is based on the horizontal, two-way model of communication that creates a constructive environment where stakeholders can participate in the definition of problems and solutions.

Dialogue: The professional use of two-way communication methods and techniques to engage stakeholders in the investigation, assessment, and definition of problems, needs, risks, opportunities, and priorities. Dialogue is also used to ensure mutual understanding among stakeholders, reduce the likelihood of conflicts, and empower stakeholders.

Diffusion mode: The perspective or modality rooted in the modernization paradigm that conceives communication as an agent for the dissemination of information and innovations. Based on the one-way, or monologic, communication model, diffusion approaches are based on the belief that effective dissemination of information can induce behaviour change.

Diffusion of innovation: The process of spreading any kind of new technical device, idea or useful information. It generally follows an S-shaped pattern, with a slow start, an acceleration of adoption, and a long tail. The early adopters tend to be atypical in terms of social composition and communication behaviour. The mass media have been found to play a secondary role in influencing diffusion. Personal communication, example, and known authority sources play the primary role. The media themselves provide typical examples of innovations that fit the S-curve pattern of diffusion.

Diffusion of news: Process whereby awareness of events is spread through a population either by mass media or via personal, word to mouth contact, with or without media involvement. Key questions concern the degree and spread of public diffusion in relation to actual or types of events and also the relative weight of media and personal sources in achieving the outcome.

Digital divide: The inequalities resulting from the development of computer-based digital means of communication. These new inequalities derive from the cost of equipment, dependence on advanced infrastructure and the higher skills needed to communicate. These inequalities arise between persons, social groups, and national societies.

Disempower: Policies, practices, and traditions that reduce the individual exercise of self-determination.

Diversity: In simple terms, it is no more than the degree or range of difference across any chosen dimension: the more difference, the more diversity. For example, when applied to mass media it can relate to structures of ownership and control, to content as it is produced and transmitted, and to audience composition and content choices. Each of these can be empirically assessed in terms of diversity. Diversity is associated with access, freedom, choice, change, and equality. It stands as a positive value in opposition to monopoly, uniformity, conformity, and consensus.

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E

Ecological systems theory: Also known as Human Ecology Theory, the theory, formulated by the psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner, states that human development is influenced by different types of environmental systems.  The theory helps explain why humans may behave differently in different situations, e.g. in family, school or work settings.  In social and behaviour change communication, ecological systems theory has been used to construct socio-ecological models to show overlapping influences at the individual, interpersonal, community and societal levels.

Empathy: An attitude or orientation of sympathy and understanding towards others, especially with reference to casualties, victims of society, and those who are stigmatized, marginalized and excluded. One of the informal roles adopted by media, especially in journalism, documentary, and realistic drama, is to encourage public empathy. It can be achieved by reporting on its own, without conscious advocacy.

Empowerment: A process leading to individuals being able and willing to take part in decisions concerning their own lives. Empowerment can take place on a personal, community, or institutional level.

Enculturation: The process of teaching the young how to be members of the culture or society. It involves the informal and formal transmission of beliefs, values, norms, knowledge, and behaviours from generation to generation. It is similar to the notion of socialization. This transmission enables a young person to perform according to the expectations of the culture or society.

Entertainment: A main branch of media production and consumption covering a range of formats that generally display the qualities of attracting, amusing, diverting and taking people out of themselves. It also refers to the process of diversion itself, and in this sense it can also relate to the genres that are not usually regarded as entertaining, such as news, advertising or education. It is often perceived as problematic when addiction to entertainment excludes informational uses of media or when the entertainment mode invades the sphere of reality content, especially news, information and politics. The term ‘infotainment’ has been coined to describe the result.

Entertainment-Education: Refers to “the process of purposely designing and implementing a media message to both entertain and educate, in order to increase audience knowledge about an educational issue, create favorable attitudes, and change overt behavior” (Singhal and Rogers 1999, xii). Like social marketing and health promotion, entertainment-education is concerned with social change at the individual and community levels.  Its focus is on how entertainment media such as soap operas, songs, cartoons, comics and theatre can be used to promote pro-social behavior.

Environment: The physical, emotional, or social contexts that shape individual attitudes and behaviours.

Epidemic: A significantly high incidence of disease occurrence in a population.

Ethnicity: A social construct which divides people into smaller social gatherings based on characteristics such as a shared sense of group membership, values, behaviour patterns, language, political and economic interests, history, and ancestral geographical base. Examples: Cape Verdean, Haitian, Chinese, Korean, Polish, Irish, Cherokee.

Evaluation: A process that tries to determine as systematically and objectively as possible the worth or significance of an intervention. Evaluation includes the use of research techniques to measure the past performance of a specific programme, particularly the programme's impact on the conditions it seeks to modify, for the purposes of changing the operation of the programme to improve its effectiveness at achieving objectives. 

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F

Focus group discussion: In-depth discussion in which a small group of people, usually eight to 10, talk about a topic of common interest to all the participants. These group discussions take place under the guidance of a facilitator and are used to collect research data, and sometimes to inform or motivate a group on a particular topic.

Formative research: Research conducted during the planning process that allows programme planners to obtain insight into the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of the participants in a communication initiative or strategy. This research helps to form, plan and develop communication programmes and determine audiences and strategies.

Freedom of information (or communication): Freedom of information has a broad meaning that covers all aspects of public expression and transmission of and access to all kinds of content. It has been advanced as a human right that should be guaranteed internationally, not just within a society. In a narrow sense, it usually refers to public rights of access to information of public interest or relevance held by various types of authorities or official agencies.

Freedom of the press: A fundamental principle of individual, political and human rights that guarantees in law the rights of all citizens to publish without advance censorship or fear of reprisal. It has to be exercised within the limits of law and respect for the rights of others. In practice, freedom of the press is often limited by (economic) barriers of access to the means of publication. The right is usually regarded as fundamental to political democracy. It is related to, but distinct from, freedom of expression, opinion or belief, and also freedom of information.

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G

Gatekeepers: Powerful individuals or groups that influence the environment and can inhibit or promote change. They can be brought in as partners, or “neutralized” so as not to inhibit progress.

Gate keeping: The initial selection and later editorial processing of event reports in a news organization. News media have to decide what ‘events’ to admit through the ‘gates’ of the media on the grounds of their ‘newsworthiness’ and other criteria. The key question concerns the criteria applied and the systematic bias that has been discerned in exercising this role.

Gender: The social differences, as opposed to the biological ones, between women and men that have been learned, are changeable over time, and have wide variations within and between cultures.

Gender analysis: The study of differences in the conditions, needs, participation rates, access to resources and development, control of assets, decision making powers, etc. between women and men in their assigned gender roles.

Gender inequality: Conditions under which men and women are systematically provided different access to resources for self-determination such that one accrues unearned advantages over the other.

Gender roles: Behaviours expected of males and females on the basis of their sex, not their abilities. Also refers to socially constructed and culturally specific behaviours and expectations for women (femininity) and men (masculinity). This includes expectations concerning the division of labour.

Generalized epidemic: An epidemic is considered generalized when more than 1% of the population of a country has become infected.

Gerontocracy: A principle used in society and culture that provides for important public and private power to be held by older members of society. A gerontocracy is a form of oligarchical rule in which an entity is ruled by leaders who are significantly older than most of the adult population. Often the political structure is such that political power within the ruling class accumulates with age, so that the oldest hold the most power.

Globalisation: The process of increasing the connectivity and interdependence of the world's markets and businesses. For the media, globalisation refers to the deterritorialisation of the location of production, transmission and reception of media content, partly as a result of technology but also through international media structure and organization. Many cultural consequences are predicted to follow, especially the delocalizing of content and the undermining of local cultures. These may be regarded as positive when local cultures are enriched by new impulses and creative hybridization occurs. More often they are viewed as negative because of threats to cultural identity, autonomy, and integrity. The new media are widely thought to be accelerating the process of globalisation.

Goal: The result hoped for from a programme (e.g., reduction of HIV incidence). Goals are achieved over the long term and through the combined efforts of multiple programmes.

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H

Health Belief model:  Holds that people form behaviours based on perceptions such as: How severe is the illness? How likely am I to get it? What is the benefit of trying to prevent it and how effective is the new behaviour? What keeps me from taking this action?  In C4D, the model can help programme planners address personal risk perception and beliefs in the severity of a disease, identify key benefits and barriers to change and stimulate discussion, and demonstrate potential positive results of change.

Hegemony: Power that arises from the all–embracing ideological tendencies of mass media to support the established power system and to exclude opposition and competing values. In brief, it is a kind of dominant consensus that works in a concealed way without direct coercion.

High-risk group: A group of people sharing characteristics that make them more likely to become affected by a particular phenomenon or issue than the general population.

Human motivation, theory of: Attributed to Abraham Maslow, the theory explains that humans must first meet basic physiological and safety needs (food, water, shelter, etc.) before addressing "higher" needs such as social relations, esteem, or “self-actualization” (e.g., a fulfilling career).  This hierarchy of needs provides a reference to understand barriers to change for any behaviour.  It suggests that when planning and designing an intervention, success may be limited in circumstances/contexts where people are focused on meeting basic needs or have other priorities. 

Human Rights Based Approach (HRBA): Based on classical political philosophy, national laws and, most importantly, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the HRBA holds that citizens, as members of both national and global communities, bear and claim rights and have responsibilities as participants in social and legal contracts. Social change occurs as people gain knowledge of and act upon legal, political, and social rights. The notion of rights can only exist when there is a clear articulation of who is responsible for fulfilling them, and who can be held accountable if that doesn’t happen. The HRBA implies the need to examine systems and structures, including those of governance, that are accountable to citizens.  Although human rights are universal as they apply to all humans, they are fundamentally locally developed, exercised, and enforced.

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I

Ideology: An organized belief system or set of values that is disseminated or reinforced through communication. While mass media do not typically set out deliberately to propagate ideology, in practice most media content does so implicitly by selectively emphasizing certain values and norms. This is referred to as a ‘preferred reading’ in the theory of coding and decoding. Often these reflect the national culture that provides the context for the media system, but also the class position and the outlook of those who own, control, and make media.

Impact: Long-term effects (e.g., changes in health status). This can be measured through special studies with district, regional, or national coverage.

Implementation: That which occurs when an individual puts an innovation into use or a plan into action.

Incidence: Refers to the extent or frequency of an occurrence. In health, incidence refers to the number of new cases of infection within a specified period of time.

Inclusion: A process of transforming systems to be inclusive of all people, regardless of ability or status. Inclusive communities put into place measures to support all children at home, at school and in their communities. Inclusion may also refer to transformation of the way communities are organized to meet the needs of all children.

Indicators: Clues, signs, and markers that show how close a communication intervention is to its planned process. These clues “indicate” possible changes in the situation that may lead to changes in behaviour.

Informal communications: Communication networks that fall outside of established systems for conveying information, e.g. information communicated over drinks at the bar or by the communal pipe stand.

Information: In a broad sense, the content (messages) of all meaningful communication is information. More specifically, information refers to verifiable, reliable, and factual data. This includes opinions as well as reports about the facts of the world. Even more narrowly and precisely, information may be equated with communicated data that do (or can) enable differentiation in some domain or reality and thus reduce uncertainty for the receiver.

IEC (Information Education Communication): A communications strategy for influencing behaviour with an emphasis on information and education.

Innovation: An idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or another unit of adoption, such as a group, community, or society.

Inputs: Resources that go into conducting and carrying out the project or programme activities. These could include staff, finance, materials, and time.

Institutional bias: Official policies or established procedures that discriminate; e.g. applications for loans are accepted from married males but not from married females without the spouse’s consent.

Interpersonal communication: Face-to-face exchange of information; includes education, motivation, counseling, and dialogue.

Interpretative community: A term originating in linguistics that describes the set of users of a given language or cultural code who have a shared understanding of texts and symbols. When applied to a media audience, it is usually relates to a particular group of fans or devotees formed around some performance, performer or work, among whom similarly there is a large measure of shared values, interests and meanings. Such communities usually arise spontaneously and are not exclusive. They are also encouraged to form for publicity purposes.

Intervention: A set of complementary programme activities designed to achieve programme goals.

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K

Knowledge gap: The structured differences in information levels between groups in society. The original promise of mass communication was that it would help to close the gaps between the information rich and the information poor. The concept has stimulated research to investigate how far this has happened and what types of media use and other conditions are associated with such an effect or its reversal. The dominant outcome has been that newspapers have been better at closing the gaps than television. Current expectations are that new media are more likely to widen than close gaps because of their differential availability to the already better informed.

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L

Learning: A process of mastering or internalizing values, knowledge, and skills through socialization, formal instruction or experience.

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M

Maintenance: The ability of an individual to sustain a newly adopted behaviour.

Mediatisation: The process by which the mass media come to affect many other areas of society, especially institutions with a public role, such as politics, justice, health, education, and religion. Observation suggests that many public activities are now undertaken with a high regard for how they can gain access to publicity on favorable terms and with maximum impact. The term implies that activity may often be distorted, with timing, priorities, and meanings being adapted to the requirements of the media and media logic.

Message: A brief, value-based statement aimed at a specific segment of an audience or participants. Messages must be personally appealing and discuss only one/two key points. The information in the message should be new, clear, accurate, complete, culturally appropriate, and include specific suggestions for action.

Millennium Development Goals (MDG): The United Nations' list of eight specific goals to be achieved by 2015 in order to address the needs of the poorest of the world. These have been endorsed by most countries and international organizations. 

Monitoring: A process of tracking or measuring what is happening. In this course, we focus on monitoring two aspects of C4D activities: process and quality.

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N

Network: Any interconnected set of points, which could be persons, places, organizations, machines, and so on. In communication, the focus is on the flow of information through the lines of a network, with particular reference to their carrying capacity and interactivity. Compared with other types of organized human association, networks are less hierarchical and more flexible and informal. The term network society has been coined by theorists as an alternative way of expressing the reality of the information society.

Non-verbal communication: The term refers primarily to non-verbal (vocal or non-vocal) communication between persons, rather than to media that use music or images, for instance. Non-verbal communication is sometimes called paralinguistic or prelinguistic. Non-verbal human communication often adds to or extends verbal communication. Although the lack of codification and rules for non-verbal communication make it less than a language, there are often agreed meanings in a particular culture for noises, gestures, postures, and the like that are characteristic of non-verbal communication.

Normalize: The process of making ideas, beliefs, values and behaviours a regular aspect of group life.  Once normalized, group members tend to take these ideas, beliefs, values, and behaviours to be given and do not subject them to conscious thought.

Norms: Established standards of behaviour maintained and observed by a society; shared ideas about the way things ought to be done; behaviour rules that reflect and are enforced by the society.

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O

Objectives: Specific, operationalized statements detailing the desired accomplishments. A properly stated objective is action-oriented, starts with the word “to,” and is followed by an action verb. Objectives address questions of what, when, and how much, but not why, who or how. Objectives are stated in terms of results to be achieved, not processes or activities to be performed.

Obstacles: Barriers that people face with regard to solving the problem identified.

Opinion leader: The social role of persons who influence the thinking or behaviour of others in informal social relationships. The identifying characteristics vary according to the topic of influence and social setting, but the people concerned are generally better informed, make more use of mass media and other resources, are gregarious and are likely to be respected by those they influence.

Oppression: A systemic social phenomenon based on the perceived and real differences among social groups that involve ideological domination, institutional control, and promulgation of an oppressor’s ideology, logic system, and culture to the oppressed group. The result is exploitation of one social group by another for the benefit of the oppressor group.

Organization: A stable system of individuals who work together to achieve common goals through a hierarchy of ranks and a division of labour.

Outcomes: Short-term or intermediate results and changes in a population/community that are obtained by a programme through the execution of activities.

Outputs: Immediate results obtained by the programme through the execution of activities (e.g., number of commodities distributed, number of staff trained, number of people reached, or number of people served). Good process monitoring of outputs from activities (if mutually supportive) can lead to positive programme outcomes and hopefully have an impact.

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P

Para-social interaction: The pseudo-interaction that can take place between individuals in audiences and fictional characters or media personalities. Some degree of loss of contact with reality is involved, and it may be the basis for influence on behaviour.

Participation: The involvement of stakeholders in the decision-making and implementation process, which can occur at different levels and degrees, for example, from passive participation to full collaboration. This concept is at the core of the development paradigm; in communication, the participation mode is linked with the two-way/dialogic model.

Participatory communication:  A major approach within the dialogic or participatory mode. It combines participation and two-way communication methods, techniques, and tools to ensure mutual understanding, investigate key issues, minimize risks, identify best options, and most of all to build broad consensus for change as defined by stakeholders.

Partners: Any group, formal or informal, with whom you might work long term to make your effort a success.

Patriarchy: A systemic societal structure that institutionalizes male physical, social, and economic power over women.

Perceived barrier: Belief or perception that there are negative consequences associated with a contemplated change in behaviour.

Perceived benefit: The belief that there are benefits or positive outcomes associated with changing a current behaviour.

Perceived risk: Belief or perception that one is in danger from a particular condition or illness, if prevailing conditions remain unchanged.

Perceived vulnerability: Recognition that current behaviour places one at risk.

Popular education: Education that employs simple, learner-centred methods and is aimed at broadening people’s understanding of factors that affect their lives.

Positioning: In the context of strategic design, the presentation of an issue, service, or product in such a way that it stands out from others, is appealing, and is persuasive. Positioning creates a distinctive and attractive image, which may be turned into a logo or brand.

Positioning statement: Describes how the proposed issue, service, or product will be seen in the minds of the audience. It is not a catchy slogan, but rather provides direction for message design.

Power: A term that is open to many interpretations but the basic idea refers to the capacity to gain the compliance of others, even against their will, as is the case with police or military power. In this meaning power has no direct relevance to communication, since no effect can be compelled. However, we can speak of a probability of gaining compliance with some communicative purpose (in relation to information or opinion) and the term ‘influence’, which is widely applicable to mass communication, whereby compliance is gained by force of argument or certain psychological rewards.

Prejudice: A term applied either to attitudes on the part of the public, or to media publication that involves systematically negative views about or negative treatment of (usually) a social group or category. Frequent targets of prejudice have been ethnic minorities or out groups such as homosexuals, foreign immigrants, the mentally ill, etc. The media have been accused of fomenting prejudice, sometimes unintentionally, and credited with some capacity to counter prejudice.

Prescriptive theories: Theories meant to prescribe are very good at helping us to envision a more desirable world. Prescriptive theories are designed to tell us what the theorist thinks the best possible world would look like. The limitation of such theories is that they may be difficult to apply to practical problems because they look at what should be done rather than what actually can be done. Also, many prescriptive theories can be easily politicized.

Pretesting: A type of formative evaluation that involves systematically gathering the reactions of intended audience to messages and materials before these messages and materials are produced in final form.

Prevalence: The proportion of persons in a population who are affected by a particular condition or phenomenon.

Privilege: A resource or a state of being that is only readily available to some people because of their social group membership.

Problem statement: Succinct summary of what is discovered during the situation analysis that helps programmers clearly see what is happening so that they can focus attention to where it will make a difference.

Process: Set of activities in which programme resources are used to achieve the expected results (e.g., number of workshops or number of training sessions).

Programme objectives: The specific outcomes that you expect your entire programme to achieve. These will be broader than communication objectives, but must also specify outcomes.

Propaganda: The process and product of deliberate attempts to influence collective behaviour and opinion by the use of multiple means of communication in systematic and one-sided ways. Propaganda is carried out in the interest of the source or sender, not the recipient. It is usually misleading, partially true, or entirely untrue, as with certain kinds of disinformation. It can also be psychologically aggressive and distorted in its representation of reality. Its effectiveness depends more on the context and dispositions of the target audience than on ‘message’ characteristics. See Campaign.

Public: As a noun it refers to the general body of free citizens of a given society or geographical space. Its connotations are strongly influenced by democratic theory, since freedom and equality (of rights) are generally only available in a democracy. The members of a genuine public in a democracy are free to associate, converse, organize and express themselves on all subjects, and the government is ultimately accountable to the will of the public. This broad notion of what constitutes the public is one reason why public communication has a certain claim to protection and respect in a democracy.

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Q

Qualitative methods: Qualitative methods help build an in-depth picture regarding a specific issue faced by a relatively small sample of people. They reveal in more detail how people perceive their own situation and problems and what their priorities are. Questions are asked in an open-ended way and the findings are usually analyzed as data is collected.

Quantitative methods: With quantitative methods, things are either measured or counted, or questions are asked according to a defined questionnaire so that the answers can be coded and analyzed numerically.

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R

Racism: The systematic subordination of members of a targeted racial group who have relatively little social power by members of a racial group that have relatively more social power. This subordination is supported by actions of individuals, cultural norms, values, institutional structures, and practices of society.

Reinforcement: Information, actions or rewards that encourage adoption or continuation of a particular behaviour.

Religion: A set of beliefs and practices that order society and provide its members with meaning, unity, and a degree of control over events. It generally includes beliefs about the relationship between the average human beings and the non-human beings and forces that inhabit the universe.

Risk: The probability of being affected by an illness, epidemic, or otherwise dangerous event.

Risk factor: Conditions associated with increased likelihood of a particular condition or phenomenon, e.g. individual behaviours, lifestyle, environmental exposure or hereditary characteristics.

Role model: A person who is respected and revered such that one patterns one’s behaviour on that person's example.

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S

Segmenting: Dividing and organizing an audience into smaller groups who have similar communication-related needs, preferences, and characteristics.

Self–efficacy: The belief and confidence in one’s ability to do something successfully.

Sequencing: The order in which activities are implemented.

Sex: The biological characteristics that define humans as female or male. The sets of biological characteristics tend to differentiate, but they are not mutually exclusive, as there are individuals who possess both.

Sexism: A cultural, institutional and individual set of beliefs and practices that privilege men, subordinate women, and denigrate values and practices associated with women.

Situation analysis: An analysis of a development problem, that takes into account both direct and immediate causes and the underlying factors, e.g. political, economic, demographic, socio-cultural systems and norms, that contribute to it.   A comprehensive situation analysis should include dialogue and interaction with key participant groups for an analysis of factors that influence their beliefs, attitudes, and practices.

SMART objectives: Communication and programme objectives need to be formulated in a way that the results of a given intervention can be evaluated.  The “SMART” acronym--Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound—is a useful tool for drafting objectives. 

Social and behaviour change communication (SBCC): An interactive, researched and planned process aimed at changing social conditions and individual behaviours. SBCC requires an ecological model for analysis and operates through three main strategies: advocacy, social mobilization, and behaviour change communication.

Social change intervention: Activities directed at changing conditions within the social environment and the process by which alterations occurs in the structure and functioning of a social system.

Social differentiation: The relative access individuals and groups have to basic material resources, wealth, power, and status.

Social efficacy: A community’s global perception of its ability to achieve new objectives.

Social learning: Learning that comes about as a result of socialization and observation of social norms - usually passive and subconscious.

Social mobilization: A process that engages and motivates communities to commit resources, such as time or commodities, and to increase their participation in interventions that support programme objectives.

Social marketing: Application of commercial and consumer marketing techniques to the planning, development, implementation, promotion, and evaluation of programmes that are designed to bring about behaviour change to improve the welfare of individuals or society.

Social norms: Dominant beliefs and standards about what is normal and acceptable in a society.

Social norms (or conventions) theory: Holds that much of people’s behavior is influenced by their perception of how other members of their social group behave. According to social norms theory, if unhealthy behavior is perceived to be the standard in a social group, the social urge to conform will negatively affect overall behaviour of group members. Alternatively, by educating a group about healthy behavior that is in fact the usual practice among their peers, behaviour can be affected in a positive manner. Social norms theory, widely applied in social marketing, is an environmental approach that seeks to impact social and cultural environments as the way to then influence individuals.

Social skills: The ability to successfully negotiate acceptance of one’s behaviours by one’s peer group or society.

Social support: Stated and unstated approval of one’s behaviour by the society or peer groups within which one operates.

Social system: The people in a society considered as a system, organized by a characteristic pattern of relationships.

Society: A group of people who depend on one another for survival or well-being and the relationships among such people, including their status and roles. The group might come to be associated with a certain territory, language, and culture.

Socio-ecological model (SEM): Locates individual behaviour within larger social structures and acknowledges that individual behaviour should be considered in context, in relation to the family, institutions, community and national-level history, policies and laws.  See also Ecological systems theory.

Socio-economic status: Differences in wealth, income, other economic resources, and social ranking. 

Stakeholder: A person or group whose interests are affected by the outcome of an intervention.

Stereotype: An assumption about an entire group based on limited exposure to that group.

Stigma: Dishonouring, shaming, disgracing, and discriminating against an individual on the basis of a single characteristic, e.g. homelessness, HIV infection, and commercial sex work.

Strategic approach: The way you package or frame what you are doing into a single programme or campaign. The strategic approach is one of the most important elements in a communication strategy because it drives the programme and tells you how the communication objectives will be achieved.

Strategic gender needs: Legal and social conditions needed to create equality between women and men.

Strategy: A coordinated and comprehensive set of activities aimed at achieving an objective.

Strategy outline: A document that contains a summary of analysis, communication strategy, implementation plan, and monitoring plan.

Susceptibility: Individual, group and general social predisposition to becoming affected by a particular condition or phenomenon. This concept may be applied at any level, from an entire society or country to a household. Thus, individuals, nations, and societies can be more or less susceptible to infection. The speed and extent of the spread of, for instance, HIV, will be determined by the susceptibility.

Sustainability: The degree to which a change is continued or maintained over time after an intervention ends.

Synergy: The added benefits you get from activities or materials that enhance each other.

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T

Targeting: The process of customizing the design and delivery of a communication programme on the bais of the characteristics of an intended audience segment.

Trend: Patterns in frequencies of incidents or prevalence over time, within or across various subgroups.

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V

Values: Deeply held feelings/beliefs that shape our choices and behaviours; may also refer to combinations of attitudes that generate action or the deliberate choice to avoid action.

Vulnerability: Those features within a society/community that make it more or less likely that its members will be disproportionately impacted by an adverse condition, like HIV/AIDS; vulnerability analysis focuses on political, social, cultural and economic factors influencing health behaviour.

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