Women in Bangladesh Media

Women in Media : The Global Situation

The research paper on gender discrimination in Bangladeshi media is certainly a matter of misfortune, but I personally disagree with the researchers there as they have blamed the locals as far as the international media for this discrimination. I am thinking about the root of this situation. Is only the media sector is liable for this? Or anything else? In this sector I want to mention that, in the global context, women are severely suppressed by the male in all the sectors. This is also true that the days are changing and better days of gender equity and gender equality are on rise, but it obviously will take a bit longer time to change our (male) habituated in the changed environment where the man and women will be treated neutrally only as a human being not only in a sex-oriented way. So here what can we see, from the very beginning of a girl’s life, she gets repeatedly deprived from her normal humanistic behavior from the society, in each and every step in her life the society reminds her that she is a girl-going to be a woman whose duty will be just support a man. We bind that girl’s hands with our chain of so called social rules and regulations. In these circumstances how much transparency we should expect from our media, whether it’s national or international, when the world-wide picture of gender discrimination is almost same, and the media is also the human from our society. So this research topic and findings seemed a bit vague and meaningless to me as we are expecting a good harvest from such a tree that we have never thought to taken care of. So according to my limited understanding, I want to say that to see the woman in the media in a prestigious place where she will be never be discriminated, we first think about change our thought process, change the view of our social system. Certainly in that very case media also can play a vital role, but before media most effective steps has to be taken care in root level social thinkers as long as the opinion leaders of our society, which might be tough indeed, but not impossible.

Behavior Change Communication (BCC): An introduction

Behavior Change Communication Model

Behavior Change Communication is a development communication strategy to promote positive behavior which are appropriate to the setting. In other words BCC refers to provide supportive environment to enable people to initiate and sustain the behavior.

Roles of BCC:
• Increase knowledge level
• Encourage Community Dialogue
• Reduce discrimination
• Create demand for information and services
• Promote services for prevention, care and support
• Improve skills and sense of self-efficiency

Basically behavior change communication is an development communication approach like Media Advocacy or Social marketing but the difference is in this process is about the main objective here is to bring individual level change in thought process. This individual level change which will effect largely on the mass if behavior change communication gets successful in action.

Examples of Behavior change communication:
* Hand wash awareness program to promote hand washing habit in individual level to protest diseases.
* Anti Tobacco Campaign in earlier times. But now it has become a Media Advocacy whenever it got involved with anti-tobacco rules to fine on public place smoking.

Quit (1988): An unreachable Anti Tobacco Campaign in Australia

Video Result on Quit, 1980's anti tobacco campaingn in Australia

Edutainment : Education through Entertainment

Edutainment or education through entertainment is a popular way of conveying information to the mass audience. More specifically its the easiest way to reach people's mind to establish the message to be perceived in more active form.

Edutainment programs are used to a strong tool in social marketing or media advocacy approaches to make the people informed and aware about any specific issue. In Bangladesh this policy of entertainment education has been implemented several times in different development projects:

Meena : A animation film based on a rural girls daily life, backed by UNICEF.
Goals : To build awareness about Gender Discrimination, Early Marriage, Women Education, Women Empowerment and many more awareness agendas regarding daily life issues.


Sabuj Chhaya: A TV Play written and Directed by Popular Bangladeshi Novelist Humayun Ahmed, telecasted in Bangladesh Television.
Goals: This TV play was an Family Planning and Health Issue Awareness project of Bangladesh Governement entitled 'Sabuj Chhata' with the slogan "Seba Nin Bhalo Thakun". The episodes were plotted various health issue related phenomenons in Bangladeshi rural areas and their solutions in Sabuj Chhata marked governement clinics.

Social Marketing : An approach to individual level change

What is social Marketing?

Social Marketing is the systematic approach of marketing along with other concepts and techniques to achieve specific behavioral goals for a social good. Generally marketing means the business approach to promote any product to the consumer. Actually the steps in between the production and the product to be consumed by a consumer are basically marketing. But in social marketing the main objective is not all the time a product, but also promoting a new thought process, may be some time backed by some physical product issues. But obviously it has to be for any greater good of the society.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)'s awareness program against drunk driving

How it is different to Media Advocacy?

Both of them are obviously same by their objective. But the difference is in their systematic approach. Media Advocacy works to bring any change in policy level when Social Marketing works in grassroots level to bring the change in individuals.

Social Marketing: Objectives
Bring Merit Good To bring any positive change in the society. To promote the change in individuals behavioral or habituation level to make the society better for living, eg. "Gachh Lagan, Poribesh Bachan" tree plantation campaign by Bangladesh Government, "Sunday ho ya Money roj khao andey" to include at least an egg in daily meal as the cheaper source of nutrition by Indian Governement.
Avoid Demerit Good By the same way social marketing can play role in the society to promote awareness against any harmful activities like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)'s campaign against drunk driving, "Bachte hole Jante hobe", AIDS awreness Campaign to protect the nation from AIDS in Bangladesh.
Change in a whole Another vision of Social Marketing is the bring the change in whole and to do this working in the grassroots to access the core of the society to make the change effective for most of the society members. And this is also make social marketing significant from media advocacy.

4 Ps of Social Marketing

Price | The cost, not only the financial one, but also the social, material, physical, behavioral, habitual psychological, that the audience is being asked to give up to achieve the betterment through the Social Marketing Program.

Product | In terms of behavior, beliefs, information, or services, the change is being achieved through the Social Marketing Campaign.

Promotion | The process through what target audience will be made aware of the product and its availability, and how the awareness will make the society members intend to accept the product.

Place | The use of media to disseminate the information to the people. The media is the place from where mass people can get the detailed information about what to do, how to do, what to change, why and so on. Most of the time the success of any social marketing campaign’s success depends upon the choice of proper media to disseminate information. Moreover the choice of placing information also effects on the mass audience that how much cost they has to sacrifice for achieving the betterment.

A Media Advocacy Guideline ::: Hand Wash Program

Identifying the Issue
The rural people and urban under-privileged class people of our country are seriously facing health threat from water contaminated diseases and infections like diarrhea, dysentery, cholera, skin irruption, and hook worm. Though they drink safe drinking water, but they are not safe from the disease threat.
Identifying the Policy Solution
The mass I have said about in the previous section have common phenomena, they are not aware about washing their hands before taking meals or after using the toilet, which results this sort of infection or infective diseases through the germs contained dirty hands.
Identifying the Primary Audience
In our case the first level audience will be the local government authority and local health department officials who can play a vital role to inform and educate the targeted mass if motivated properly. Here we have chosen them as they have directly involvement regarding the topic we have planned about.
Identifying the Secondary Intended Audience
The political leaders, Religious and intellectual opinion leaders whose word have a big influence on the target community can play a important role as the secondary intended audience in our case.
Research about the Policy to be adopted or not
A prior research about the issue has to be done before whether it will work on our focused issue or not. Is more or less like designing a prototype before the commercial production of any new innovation.
Research the audience is notified about the issue or not
It is very important to know about whether the targeted audience is prior-informed about the issue or not. If yes, then why they are not aware about it. To get the information its necessary to conduct a survey to gather the information from them.
Review Data to show the targeted mass
To make the people aware about hand-wash program it’s highly recommended to show some real life examples in front of them about its impact on daily life health. And for that reason it’s also necessary to go through a study that if the proposed example is viable for the audience or not.
Which Media to choose
In this case we have to understand that in which media the targeted audience has the access most. For example in case of our targeted audience Newspaper Editorials, Satellite TV Bulletins or Awareness E-Mails will not work out when radio announcement or BTV Public Service Announcement might work more effectively.
Choose the best way to deal with Media
Getting rich knowledge of communication skills to make the media work more powerfully to work for achieving our goal. This process also defines how effectively I can deal with the media to make my issue more attracted to the audience as well as the media representatives.

:: MEDIA ADVOCACY and it's ELEMENTS ::

Media Advocacy
Media advocacy refers to the strategic use of mass media along with direct participation of the members of civil society and opinion leaders, with the vision to bring any significant positive change in mass lifestyle or policy level. Actually media advocacy means, the use of media as a powerful tool in development communication’s process.

Elements of Media Advocacy
To make a media advocacy process to be fruitful in its working process, the strategy planner has to be aware about Media Advocacy’s element, which means some key-factors to keep in mind when someone is dealing with Media Advocacy.

Communication Goal
Define clearly the goal. That means what is our objective by applying the media advocacy in the specific area.
Target Audience
Finding out the key-audience is the second most important duty. Target mass might be of a huge number but there might be a limited number of people who can perform better in message conveying process to achieve our goal.
The Message
Clearly define the message what I want to convey to the target audience. The message will consist of the information which will focus on our goal.
Key Stakeholders
Determine the most effective communication stakeholders through whom message could be conveyed to the target audience most effectively.
Targeting the Media
To identify which part of mass media will perform more effectively on the target people and use that particular media in the media advocacy is a vital element. Because wrong choice of it might turn the advocacy planning worthless.