Tester Report: Media Campaign Fifth Women

I.Summary

II.Evaluation goals and questions

III.Project Context

IV.Evaluation Methodology

V.Data Summary

VI.Gender and ICT Analysis of Findings

VII.Putting evaluation results to work

APPENDIX 1: Tester profile

APPENDIX 2: Outline of Interviews

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  1. Summary

The Fifth Women Media Campaign was a joint effort of seven Slovakian women's organizations with an active history in working against violence against women. Their campaign was the first public campaign against violence against women carried out at national level in Slovakia.

The Evaluation of FIFTH WOMAN is not very standard. They had decided to apply for GEM testing just after the completation of their campaign. Since the impacts of the campaign had been already evaluated, they focused in their evalution on the use of ICTs in the campaign against violence against women and the gender differences in the discussion about the issue of violence against women.

They focused on the evaluation of:

  1. the public feedback on the campaign and on the issue of the domestic violence against women

A)in the comments in the online discussion on the Fifth Women Campaign website (

B)in the comments on the articles published in the internet media during the campaign

  1. the communication among the organization associated in the Initiative Fifth Womenand their perception about the campaign and use of ICTsin the campaign
  1. Evaluation goals and questions

Fifth Women decided to focus on use of ICT in their media campaign against violence against women (VAW), especially they looked at communication with the public, and internal communication among organization associated in the Initiative Fifth women.

Gender and ICT evalaution objectives were:

To assess gender differencies in the reactions/comments of women and men in the discussions on the campaign website ( and on the articles published during the campaign in the internet media with special focus on the impacts and the relevance of the campaign

To indentify area for improvement in the campaign website with special focus on its efficienfy to promote information about VAW in Slovakia

To find about how effectively the different type of ICTs were used in the internal communication and proposed the area for improvement.

The strategic use of ICTs in the VAW campaighns was the main Gender & ICT issue addressed in the evaluation.

Evaluation questions:

a)Public communication

  • What are the gender differencies in the way how women and men discuss the VAW topic
  • What are the topics most frequently discussed?
  • Is the topics and attitudes towards VAW change during the discussions, which acknowledge the possitive impacts of the campaign?

b)Internal communication & effectivness of the used ICT in the communication with the public

  • How were the members of Fifth women satisfied with the communication and use of ICTs?
  • What kind of reservation they have concerning the internal communication?
  • Do they suggest some changes to improve the communnication in case of the future projects?
  1. Project Context

The campaign Fifth Woman was first media campaign against violence against women carried out at the national level in Slovakia. The Campaign had two following goals:

1. To carry out the first nationwide campaign against gender violence in order to publicly inform on the phenomenon of violence against women as of a gender problem caused by the imbalance of power in the society. We will also inform broad (non-professional, but also professional) public on the causes and extent of violence against women in the Slovak Republic, as well as, on the possible solutions within the campaign how to solve it.

2. To enforce the negotiatory position of women NGOs in the relation to governmental institutions which would consequently lead to assertion of the precautions and activities beneficial for the victims of violence against women.

The Campaign was realized in two periods- from 23rdNovember to 10thDecember 2001, and from 14th January to 10th February 2002, due to Christmas period when to gain free space in media and attention of public is very diffucult. To reach its goals the number of activities were realized:

  • media coverage

To prepare massive presentation of the violence against women issue in media the.close cooperation with journalists, who finally prepared great part of media outputs, were developed. The part of media outputs was also composed by representatives of initiative. The Campaign media coverage was monitored, and also reactions were collected through the whole period of campaign. Total number of media outputs was 96 articles.The campaign organizators also assessed poisitivelly the fact, that generally when media were informing about the violence against women they used an entry „every fifth woman is battered“, and also public accepted this entry.

  • infoline fifth woman

On the basis of cooperation with Slovak Telecommunications, the infoline about campaign was launced. Via infoline the public could support the campaign as well as to learn more about violence against women. Infoline was operated every day from 8 am to 24 pm. The all calls were recorde. Before the launch the trainings for infoline workers were held, and background information for different types of calls were prepared. The infoline was activetillFebruary 28th, and totally 3121 calls was recieved, and 672 people supported campaign.

  • website

After some delay we prepared new version of where are The basic information about campaign, the documents about violence against women, media monitoring, discussion forum and list of the campaign’s partners were published on the website For the period from 23rdNovember 2001 to 10thFebruary 2002, 5672 people visited the site, mostly from Slovakia, but also from other countries (Czech republic, Austria, Germany, USA, Great Britain, Croatia, Canada, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, Australia, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Belgium, Hungary, Russia, Ireland, France, Rumenia, Israel, Netherland, Japan, Finland, Italy, Island, Hongkong, Mexiko, American Samoa, Saudi Arabia, Cyprus).

The information about campaign and the issue of violence against women were also placed on the websites of NGOs, for example Moznost volby and Aspekt.

political negotiations

Some NGOs from the initiative Fifth Women (Aliancia zien Slovenska, Fenestra, Pro Familia) were active in preparation of drafts of legislation changes of civil and criminal codes. In Slovak parliament two meetings with MPs and Ministry of Justice representatives took place. All political parties declared support to these drafts, what can lead to great progress for victims of domestic violence.

  • public discussions

Public discussions about violence against women and gender aspects of this issue, the campaign was presented, were organized across Slovakia.

  • TV and radio clips, internet banner

In cooperation with advertising agency iSTEP Communication theadvertising campaignwere prepared with slogan „Every fifth woman is battered. Do we care about?“. Agency produced TV and radio clip based on children rhyme. Reputable actor and actress acted in the clips. Strategy of clips was to attract recepients, to draw their attention to problem and emotionally disturb them and make them to interest about the issue.

On the basis of the negotiations with media the orgainzators gained free space in many media.. Campaign was run on 3 national TVs (Markiza, Slovak television, Global) and 1 local TV (Nasa Bratislava) in total amount of broadcasts about 300, on 6 national radios (Fun, Twist, Slovak radio, Expres, Okey, RockFM) and 10 local radios in total amount of broadcasts about 1000.

Members of Fifth Women prepared also internet banner based on the campaign slogan and 8 providers provide them with a free space on their websites. Total views of banner were over 1 million.

  • billboards

The billboard with the same slogan was designed and placed on 100 boards across Slovakia. Graphic design and printing realized iSTEP Communication, Akzent media gave us the boards. As it was first campaign on violence against women in Slovakia, we decided for text form of the billboard, not controversial one, even if agency prepared 3 graphic designs with image. On the billboard we presented infoline number and website as well as NGOs involved in initiative, donors and media partners.

  • publication Fifth Woman: Aspects of Violence Against Women

Aspekt published collection of texts Fifth Woman: Aspects of Violence Against Women, which sums up all relevant documents and information about violence against women and contains also interviews and articles. This activity was not funded from campaign’s budget.

  • presentation of publications Fifth Woman: Aspects of Violence Against Women and I Will Make You Hell

Aspekt prepared public presentation of its books Fifth Woman and I Will Make You Hell. Also discussion about violence against women and campaign fifth woman was held. About 60 people, mostly women, came. This activity was not funded from campaign’s budget.

  • public lecture by Renate Egger: Establishment and development of movement against gender violence in Austria

Well-known Austrian psychologist and expert on violence against women Renate Egger presented on public discussion establishment and development of Austrian movement for women human rights and against gender violence. About 80 people came to this lecture. This activity was not funded from campaign’s budget.

  • theatre performence Don‘t cry, Anna

Theatre from Banska Bystrica performed in theatre Arena in Bratislava its play Don’t cry, Anna, which thematically ended campaign.

The campaign impacts could be assessed positively from different aspects:

  • nationwide level of the campaign using multimedia measures
  • cooperation of seven women NGOs working in the field of violence against women in the initiative fifth woman
  • joint support of most relevant donors long-termly supporting women issues
  • attracting attention of media and political parties
  • braeking taboo issue and starting public discussion
  • presenting the extent of violence against women
  • designation of phenomenon of violence against women as gender-based problem, which springs from asymetry of power in society and challenging myths related with this problem
  • preparation of situation in society for adopting needful legislation changes
  • participation on preparation of legislation drafts
  • realization of first representative public opinions research on violence against women
  1. Evaluation Methodology

Fifth Women Initiativeevaluation was very non-standard, since they had decided for additional evaluation of the project after itscompletion. In contrary with common evaluation, the indicators and evaluation goals were not set in the planning stage of the project, but more than year after it finalization. When developing evaluation goals and questions, they were of course limited by the type of data, which were already collected, or which are still accessible one year after the end of project (like comments in the online discussions).

Evaluation Team

For evaluation was responsible only one person. But there had been two additional consultants, who were involved in the specific phases of evaluation. One of them was a consultant with sociology background, whoassisted mainly with the development of methodologies, and the formulation of evaluation question. The second consultant participated in data collection.

The evaluation goals and objectives were discussed with the members of Initiative Fifth Women. Since it was their join project, the all member had to give a consent with the evaluation framework.

Content Analysis

Since the object of the evaluation were the publiccomments in the online discussion on the Fifth Women Campaign website ( and comments on the articles about campaign published on the internet, the content analysis of each comment was used as evaluation methodology.

Based on the review of sample of comments the following categories were proposed forcontentanalysis:

-Sex of the author

-Personal experience with violence

-Personal experience with violence in the close environment

-Denouncement of violence against women (VAW)

-Expression of support to the campaign

-Questioning the reliability of the statistical figures of maltreated women

-Rejection of feminism

-Questioning the effectiveness of the use of financial resources for the campaign

-Refer to violence against men

-Causes of violence mentioned:

  • Education and upbringing
  • Aggressor’s own violence
  • Victim of violence herself
  • Both of them
  • Alcohol

-Attitudes towards institution

  • Attitude toward policy
  • Attitude toward government
  • Attitude toward state

-Attitude toward law

In this case the indicator was explicit expression of the authors in relation to each category.

Interview

Data about internal communication in Fifth Women Initiative were collected viathe interviews withthe fiverepresentatives ofInitiative Fifth Women involved in the realization of the first campaign. The interviews focused on three topics: their motivation to take part in the campaign, ICTs usage during the campaign, and satisfaction with the campaign (for the reason of this report only the part related to ICTs usage is documented below[1]).

  1. Data Summary
  1. Content Analysis

Discussion on the campaign website / Comments on the articles
Number of discussion participants / 49 / 74
Number of comments / 66 / 114
Number of women / 28 / 27
Number of men / 38 / 38
Sex was not able to determinate / 0 / 9
Number of positive rea-
ction on the campaign / women / 15 / 8
men / 6 / 4 (+ 2 without sex determination)
Number of negative rea-ction on the campaign / women / 2 / 0
men / 3 / 0
Most frequent topics / -The name of the campaign
-Financing of the campaign
-Feminism and feminist organization
-Approach of state institution / -The possible causes of the violence against women
-Activities of state institutions and insufficiency of legislation
-Perception of Gender stereotypes as the underlying causes of the VAW

General facts

Online discussion

The online discussion was active during the whole campaign. It is important to highlight that the discussion on the website was very emotive. There were also three people who tried to disturb it. But these ‘extreme’ opinions were obviously ignored by the rest of participants.

Comments on the articles

74 people made comments on the articles published during the campaign in the different internet media. In case of 9 people, it was not possible to indicate their sex. The commentators discussed the issue in wide perspective, and context, but the articles themselves were barely reflected in their comments. The articles had mainly motivation role.

Personal experience with the VAW

Online discussion

It was possible to conclude that, from the reaction of 28 women and 21 men, there were five women who have experienced violence in their lives. Few other participants mentioned that they encountered violence in their close environment.

Comments on the articles

In the 9 cases, the comments described direct experience with VAW, personal or in the close environment.

Denouncement of the VAW

Comments on the articles

The VAW was denounced in majority of comments. 23 people (11 men, 9 women, 3not indicated their sex) denounced it explicitly in their comments. One man defended the violence. Nobody has reacted on his comment.

Expression of the support to the campaign

Online discussion

More than half of discussion participants expressed their support to the campaign, or rejected the violence against women (very often the violence against human being generally). The majority from them were women (15 women, and 6 men).

During the whole discussion, some negative feedbacks on the campaign appeared several times, but it was not more than one quarter of all comments. With exception of one or two comments, the reactions did not express doubts about the sense of whole campaign, but they tried to reduce its meaning by pointing out other important social problems: “There is more serious problem, about which nobody cares, in this state. Everybody has to solve his/her family problem him/herself, and this campaign can not change anything on it.” Also the issue of violence against children, men and animals was mentioned quiteoften:” I am the fifth men, I am maltreated, and do you care about?”

Comments on the articles

The campaign was supported in 14 comments (8 from women, 4 from men, and 2 have not indicated theirsex).

Nobody expressed doubts about the campaign, but again, there were several negative comments on feminist background of campaign organizers.

But as in case of discussion on the website, the number of men (12), but also two women, mentioned the problem of violence against men. 4 peoplehave also emphasized the seriousness of the violence against children, which they considered to be far more important.

Questioning the effectiveness of the use of financial resources for the campaign

Online discussion

Those who reacted negatively on the campaign explained it by distrust of feminism and feminist organizations, or by possibility to use the money more effectively for example on the construction of Safe House for victims.