Wilson Okaka

The Challenges of Public Communications Campaigns: in Developing Wetlands Policy Awareness Wilson Okaka

The study was designed to assess the major challenges of designing and delivering effective public communications campaigns for policy awareness of the national wetlands conservation and management policy in Uganda. The main objective was to assess the influence of the national wetlands policy awareness media strategy on the target socio-economic demographic audiences. The survey research was based on cluster methods in selected clusters in Uganda. Findings indicate that a multi-media strategy was employed in the national campaigns. Electronic media was the most accessible channels to the target audiences. There was no gender barrier to information uptake. Low income and education levels were barriers to community access to wetlands information. The campaigns did not emphasize the use of popular media and interpersonal communications media. The study found that the socio-economic backgrounds of the audiences were identical in their access to public information and the types of media used in the campaigns. The major conclusions were that: awareness was moderately high but it was not matched by behaviour change among the intended audiences.