Family planning communication in Uganda : an interrogation of media reporting, communication campaigns and audience perspectives

Abstract

To stabilise Uganda's fast-growing population, the government has positioned media and communication strategies as a primary means of informing and persuading the populace about modern family planning products and services. While this has increased awareness about contraceptives, the uptake of contraception remains persistently low among women and men of reproductive age in Uganda. This qualitative study explored pragmatic ways of resolving this disparity. The study adopted perspectives of health communication to establish how to enrich media and communication strategies for family planning programming to enable the delivery of appropriate information, improved acceptance and consistent use of contraceptives. Using framing, social ecology, and encoding and decoding theories, the study examined the framing of family planning in selected print media stories (n=47) and communication campaign messages (n=9). The study further explored how audience members (n=187) targeted by the campaigns interpreted family planning messages and what factors in their socio-ecological environment influenced their interpretations. Thematic analysis and data triangulation from qualitative content analysis, focus group discussions, and in-depth interviews revealed deficiencies in family planning communication. These deficiencies were occasioned by shallow diagnostic reporting, and information transmission approaches imperceptive to the audience's information needs and contextual forces in their environments. Consequently, there was a boomerang effect in the audience's interpretation of the campaign messages. The study recommends a harmonised planned participatory communication approach at a national level to ensure that audience needs are met at their varying reproductive cycle stages. Additionally, Uganda's media should practise more enterprise and interpretive journalism in reporting family planning to amplify its significance to the public. Also, future family planning communication campaigns must adopt audience-centred messaging approaches that are responsive to the emerging information needs and socio-ecological contexts of different audience segments. Ultimately, this should enable enhanced communication impact and contribute to the country's target of ensuring universal access to modern family planning services by 2030, as stipulated in the National Development Plan III and Sustainable Development Goal 3.