Building Resilience: How Research Has Been Used to Develop and Evaluate a Media and Communication Approach

"...people who had been exposed to BBC Media Action's resilience programmes had improved their knowledge of resilience-related issues, were more motivated to discuss those issues with people around them, felt more confident about their ability to act and, ultimately, took simple actions that could support them to adapt to the shocks and stresses they were experiencing. Furthermore, all of this happened at scale."

Helping people develop long-term strategies for coping with shocks and stresses - from social, economic, and cultural to physical, environmental, and political - is at the heart of the resilience agenda. There is growing evidence to suggest that media and communication can enable people (particularly those in economically poor countries, who are more vulnerable) to manage risk and respond positively to change by making technical information more accessible, addressing social norms and perceptions, supporting people to evaluate their choices, facilitating dialogue, prompting positive decisions, and influencing power. This report describes how BBC Media Action has carried out research in Bangladesh and Tanzania to produce media programming for resilience that is rooted in the needs of people - and that has an impact.

Research across multiple countries shows that the main determinants of whether or not people take steps to become more resilient include:

• The impacts they are feeling or the anticipated risk of those impacts;
• The extent to which they feel informed about how to take action;
• How connected they feel to others in their community;
• How confident they feel to act on their own; and
• How much they believe resources or institutional factors are a barrier to uptake.

In that context, Part 1 of the report defines resilience and reviews the existing evidence around the relationship between media, communication, and resilience. For example, for many years, radio farming programmes (and, more recently, mobile phone services) have increased farmers' knowledge of agricultural innovations, linked farmers to new markets and buyers, strengthened their ability to negotiate prices, and helped them diversify their crops to meet demand, among other things. According to research commissioned by the Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund, 88% of viewers who watched Shamba Shape Up in Kenya reported that the television programme had taught them new things about farming, 84% said that it had helped them to make decisions, and half of all those surveyed reported having adopted new practices as a result.

Part 2 of the paper presents an overview of BBC Media Action's approach to resilience, exploring how the organisation has used research to understand the particular needs of distinct populations and to create media and communication interventions that meet those needs. It is organised around four central questions that can guide such an approach: (i) what impacts are people feeling? (ii) what are their barriers and motivators? (iii) how do audiences differ? (iv) how can research inform a communication strategy?

On this latter point, the first step involves establishing clear objectives for what communication can achieve for an intended audience on a given issue and in a given context. The choice of communication objectives needs to be informed by an in-depth understanding of the country or region's broader socio-political context. For example, women's limited social mobility might necessitate emphasising short-term adaptation strategies that women can adopt within the home, while simultaneously addressing gender norms that might prevent women from adopting other strategies in the longer run.

In sum, BBC Media Action's research approach underscores that resilience is influenced by psychology and attitudes - e.g., people's willingness to change and how connected they feel to community. This approach breaks down a population and a complex issue into five key groups at different stages of action: "unaffected", "surviving", "struggling", "willing", and "adapting". With this enhanced understanding of people's self-identified adaptation needs, programming can be tailored to particular audiences.

Examples from three of BBC Media Action's projects are used to illustrate this approach: Climate Asia, a multi-country research and communication project in Asia; Amrai Pari (Together We Can Do it), a national reality television programme in Bangladesh; and Nyakati Zinabadilika (The Times/Winds Are Changing), a radio programme in two rural regions of Tanzania that was part of the Radio for Resilience initiative.

In brief (see Part 3 of the paper and Related Summaries, below, for more information):

• Climate Asia studied people's everyday experience of climate change using both quantitative and qualitative research, conducted in 2012-2013. The project involved speaking to more than 33,500 people across seven countries (Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, and Vietnam). The main aim was to inform the development of communication to support people to be more resilient to climate change. One finding: Communication can help to shift the conversation away from alarmism around seemingly insurmountable, large-scale problems towards more practical concerns about what people can do to mitigate real and immediate impacts.
• Amrai Pari aimed to increase viewers' awareness of the risk of impacts arising from extreme weather. It also sought to show how Bangladesh's people could take actions to adapt to changing weather, such as raising the plinth of their house, and modelled how people could work with their community to take these actions. Research fed into the continual development of the programme, and later series addressed new issues such as how to work with local power structures to obtain support in becoming more resilient.
• In Tanzania, BBC Media Action worked with three local radio stations in two drought-affected states to produce programmes that informed farmers on specific techniques to improve their farming practices. Nyakati Zinabadilika programming sought to increase farmers' confidence that they could take such actions.

Both the Bangadesh and Tanzania projects used learning derived from research and feedback that emerged during project implementation to refine the approach and build on what was working. For instance, the Tanzania project was set up to be adaptive. Outcome mapping and analysis of audience SMS (text) messages and phone calls were used across the two seasons to reflect on the programmes and modify them based on feedback.

To evaluate the projects, a mix of quantitative and qualitative methodologies was used. In both countries, quantitative surveys with adults over 15 were carried out. In Bangladesh, nationally representative surveys were regularly conducted throughout the project. In Tanzania, one survey was conducted at the end of the project and was representative of people living in the two regions in which the project was operating: Dodoma and Morogoro. The findings show the impact media and communication can have on supporting people's resilience. For example:

• Reach: Over the course of the 3-year project, Amrai Pari (including both the television programme and a public service announcement - PSA) reached an estimated 22.5 million people. In Tanzania, the radio discussion programmes and affiliated debate specials together reached 31% of the population in the two drought affected states.
• Knowledge shifts: In both countries, the programmes helped improve people's understanding of resilience issues: 78% of Amrai Pari audiences and 70% of Nyakati Zinabadilika audiences reported improved understanding as a result of watching or listening to the output.
• Increased discussion: In Bangladesh, 35% of viewers and in Tanzania, 46% of listeners said they discussed the topics covered in the programme(s) with others.
• Efficacy: Amrai Pari audiences were less likely to feel they needed government or non-governmental organisation (NGO) support to take action. In Tanzania, 85% of Nyakati Zinabadilika audiences said the programme improved their confidence in responding to climate-related resilience issues, 60% of listeners agreed the programmes held leaders to account at endline, and 69% of audiences agreed the programmes enabled discussion between government, NGOs, and communities on climate-related resilience issues.
• Action: In Bangladesh, 47% of viewers could name actions they had taken as a result of watching the programme (e.g., making water safe to drink, storing food, and raising their houses so they were less at risk of flooding). Of the 31% of Nyakati Zinabadilika listeners who reported having taken an action, 54% mentioned establishing or joining a community group as a result of the programme.

In addition to assessing the overall impact of the programmes, the analysis investigated pathways to change: i.e., which of the many variables under consideration were most important in generating change. In brief, Amrai Pari worked primarily through the effect of perceived risk and lack of institutional support, while for Nyakati Zinabadilika, knowledge and confidence appear to have been more important drivers of change. In both cases, more research needs to be conducted to understand the relationship between watching and listening to BBC Media Action programmes and taking action.

The document concludes with recommendations for policy, practice, and research actors:

For media practitioners working on resilience:

• Start with the audience: Resilience is a complex construct thatneeds to be broken down in a way that resonates with people's lives, if communication on the subject is to be effective. To do this, the shocks and stresses that people are experiencing and the impacts they are feeling need to be precisely identified.
• Understand audience needs: Even people living in the same community are likely to have different communication needs.
• Segment to shape communication strategies: In addition to cluster analysis, on a smaller scale, qualitative research exploring how at-risk people feel, the impact of shocks and stresses on their everyday lives, their willingness to act, and the barriers they perceive can inform this understanding.
• Understand how change happens: Path analysis has shown that there are different ways that media outputs can facilitate change.
• Learn and adapt: In contexts where the shocks and stresses facing people are constantly changing, it is important that communication interventions continue to evolve.
• Evaluate resilience projects: More needs to be done to develop measures, test concepts and constructs, and share learnings across the community of researchers operating in this field so as to build a robust evidence base.
• Tailor responses to the socio-political realities at hand: Ask: How do local, provincial, and national institutions place constraints on what is feasible?
• Engage audiences: The art is in using research to identify issues that are relevant to audiences, isolating the drivers of change, and then working with production teams to apply the research findings in creative ways.

For researchers:

• Evaluate over time.
• Fine-tune constructs (e.g., those concerning community efficacy).
• Investigate pathways to change.

For donors:

• Recognise that media and communication projects rooted in audience needs can be effective in achieving resilience.
• Understand that building resilience is a long-term endeavour with long-term objectives and risks.
• Set realistic timeframes - e.g., allow time to create trust and foster real dialogue between the layers of government and between government and the economically poor, considering that governance is at the heart of enabling inclusive and informed decisions, as seen in both of the projects considered in this report.

In conclusion: "To support resilience further, it is important that communication works alongside other initiatives at the government and community level to ensure that its impact is sustained."