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Creating Change or Just Making Noise?
Tips for Media Campaign Evaluation
Media campaigns pose an interesting challenge to evaluation: how do you know your message got through? In today’s media-rich environment, it can be difficult to isolate one voice.
Nonprofits and foundations devote considerable resources to public communications (how else to educate the public and the policy-makers about social issues?), but are often skeptical about making an investment in evaluation. But without evaluation, how do you know resources were well spent? Anecdotal information and gut reactions are not enough. You need to know whether your campaign is creating change, and if so, how much and what kind of change.
Over the past several years, the field of public communications evaluation has started to gain more recognition as an important area of study. One major player in this area is the Communication Consortium Media Center (CCMC), which now runs the Media Evaluation Project. The Project had a series of five working papers written by experts from the Berkley Media Studies Group, Harvard Family Research Project, and Michigan State University. The papers provide a comprehensive review of current communications in the nonprofit world and the social science of communication strategies.
In the fifth working paper of the series, the Media Evaluation Project defined a set of practical “Overarching Evaluation Principles.” These insightful tips, guidelines, and methods will help you plan an evaluation that will work for you – and some of them are remarkably simple.
The Media Evaluation Project presents an integrated approach to measuring the impact of communication strategies designed to create social change. The Project provides guidelines, lessons learned, and evaluation strategies. It is a tremendous resource for evaluators, communications professionals, funders, and advocates.
Visit the Media Evaluation Project website to learn more.
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