New Perspectives on Miscommunication - Literature review Example

MISCOMMUNICATION Name Institution Lecturer Course Date Introduction According to Anolli et al (2012), miscommunicaion is the fact in which information that is prsented by one busness organiusationis not understood by the targeted audicnce of it is controversial in nature. This means that the media artifact that is used in the communication is understood differebtly from the inteded purpose. Acccprding to theories of media and communication, communcation shou;ld not vilate the ruiles and regulation that govern adverisements or vi.ate the rifgts of other individuals by designing a provoking media portfolio. Different organisation use different means of communication in order to carry out their campoaign to sensitive the puiblic against issues that affect the society (Miller, 2004, p. 76). However, there have been some capaiogn adverts that have brought a lot of cointroiveresy since they have ben misunderstood by the community and the target grouyp or have been wrongfully designed by the businesss organisation that is communicating the message. Proper communication nthrough postive campaign portfoli resuklts to positive resuylkts and avoid the consequences asocaited with miscommunication (Renkstorf, 2004, 125). When the message in the campaighn poster is miscommunicated and misunderstood, it fails to realise the true intended impact of the poster. This essay focuses on critical analysis of the “I Wish I Had Breast Cancer” campaign poster on pancreatic cancer. This campaihn poster was designed by the Pancreratic Cancer Action. Pancreatic Cancer Action Campaogn Portfolio The pancraetic Cancer Action is an organization that is mandated to carry awarenes and issues realted to pancraetic cancer. Suring one of its campaign, the pancreatic cancer campain designed a campaign poster (Figure 1), that featured a real time cancver patient. According to Griggs (2014), the pancraetic campaign porfolio, it had the words “I Wish I Had Breast Cancer.” According to Strahs-Lorenc (2010), the intention of the campaign was to create awareness on pancreatic cancer and ensure that the society undrstand s that having breast cancer means a graeter chances of survial than having pancreatic cancer. This is because statistcs show that pancreatic cancer patients have a low chance of surviving than patients with creats cancer who have a high chance of surviving he cancer. Although the inteded meaning of the campaign poster was to create awareness and understnding on pancraetci cancer, the poster was misunderstood and was said to be contriversial and a way of miscommunication on the cancer diseaes (Eddy, 2014). The miscommunication of the poster means that tehe poster had differing impact om the spcoety and had peoel reacting differently. This shows that miscommunication of a media artifact has a negative impact on the achieveme ts of the objectives of the business organisation. Figure 1: Pancreatic Cancer Action ‘I Wish I Had Breast Cancer” Campaign Poster (Griggs, 2014) When one looks and reads at the pancreatic advert, he or she is made to understand that breast cancer is a much better disease that women should suffer from rather than pancreatic cancer. This means that depending on who is reading that advertisement, the advert can be misunderstood. This is because there has been major campaign in the world that has sensitized women against the disease and ways in which women can reduce their risks of breast cancer. Other cancer charities have criticized the campaign poster and termed it as insensitive and abusive to those who have survived breast and other forms of cancer apart from pancreatic cancer. This is because the cancer charities especially those on breast cancer argued that the campaign portfolio disrespected women who have survived breast cancer and disregard those who were not able to survive breast cancer in the world (Reynolds, 2014). Since the campaign poster portrays the low survival rates of people suffering from pancreatic cancer, as compared to those with breast and testicular cancer, it failed to understand that it was through the use of different campaign strategies and not comparison with other forms of cancer. This is because comparing the disease with other forms of cancer all of which are deadly will reduce the effort on fighting the other forms of cancer. Eddy (2014) argues that, the words that appear on the campaign advert seem to hurt the feelings of the survivors and the families of breast cancer victims. A good campaign n poster should have a better way of making one remember it for the good reasons and not for the bad reasons. In this case, the message on highlighting poor survival rates among pancreatic cancer patient swas misunderstood since it was wrongfully presented to the audience. Representative of other cancer charities and especially those in breast cancer argued that it’s wrong for people to say that one form of cancer is better than the other. All forms of cancer are deadly and should be treated as such. Any effort by any group to campaign for a positive change among cancer patient should be a collective effort that focus on all cancer disease but will particular interest to pancreatic cancer as it has low survival rates. Although the poster had a real cancer patient on it, it was misleading to the public to make them understand that breast cancer is preferable to pancreatic cancer. The result of this poster and miscommunication is that people started viewing those with breast cancer as people who needed less attention in society as compared to those with pancreatic cancer, This is because the poster had mislead them to believe that breast cancer is a much better disease than pancreatic cancer (Mathos & Norman, 2012, p. 25). Although statistics indicate that breast cancer patients have high chances of survival, the advert should have used better way of communicating the statistics rather than comparing it with another deadly disease. In other words, the poster led to discrimination of breast cancer patients in the society. However, according to the Agenda-setting theory of communication, it is important for an advertisement to put more emphasis on the issue at hand and disregard others. The assumption in this theory is that the media campaign poster puts more emphasis on pancreatic cancer and sees other forms of cancer as less important in terms of awareness. This implies that the campaigners in pancreatic cancer were concentrating more on pancreatic cancer as it was their basic agenda. According to the social action theory of media communication, a campaign advert should take into account the reactions, emotions and feelings of other individuals. However, this poster was insensitive to other cancer patients. According to Reynolds (2014), instead of people focusing on creating pancreatic cancer awareness, the society began discussions on the campaign poster. This had different impact in that the miscommunication of the campaign poster spurred a discussion on pancreatic cancer and the statistics of cancer patients. In addition, the miscommunication of the campaign poster discouraged those individuals who would have taken part in the campaign but were discourages due to the offensive nature of the poster. This is because cancer survivors especially those with breast cancer felt offended and distanced themselves from the campaign on pancreatic cancer. Wright et al (2012) argues that miscommunication of different campaign portfolios results in division and discrimination among cancer patients and different cancer charities. As pointed out in Bernard & Parker (2012) in order to avoid the misunderstanding and controversy, pancreatic cancer Action should have not compared the disease with another poster. They should have only designed poster campaign that indicates an increase in pancreatic cancer level and a decrease in other form of cancer. This implies that they should have just made a general remark that pancreatic cancer level are high while other diseases have high chances of survival as compared to pancreatic cancer (Miller, 2004, p. 322). This would have made the campaign a huge success and avoid the misunderstanding. This would mean tat in future the pancreatic cancer action should avoid any campaign massage that implies other form of cancer is better than the other. The campaign used real pancreatic cancer patient who is seen to deliver the massage to the camping and be an ambassador of pancreatic caner. However, the misunderstanding of the campaign poster makes her to be seen s a hypocrite in the society. In order to avoid this, the Pancreatic Cancer Action should avoid the use of real patients in their campaign especially if they employ the agenda setting theory of media communication on controversial posters (Renkstorf, 2004, p. 123). Conclusion Miscommunication of information in a business organization has different consequences of the intended information. There has been a number of campaign portfolio sin the world that had miscommunication of information. Miscommunication results in division and discrimination among those parties that fell offended by the information. Among the miscommunication campaign poster is the pancreatic cancer action “I Wish I Had Breast Cancer” campaign poster. This poster created a lot of controversy among different cancer charities. Although the intention of the campaign was to create awareness on survival rates of pancreatic cancer patients, other cancer charity organizations felt that the campaign poster was an insult in survivors and families of breast cancer patients. They argued that the campaign poster was implying that some forms of cancer were better to have them than other. The implication was that pancreatic cancer was more deadly than breast cancer. In order to avoid miscommunication in future, pancreatic cancer Action should design campaign poster that are not discriminatory in nature and do not compare pancreatic cancer with other forms of cancer or other life ending diseases. References Anolli, L., Ceciri, R., & Riva, G 2002. Say Not to Say: New Perspectives on Miscommunication. Amsterdam: IOS Press Bernard, A., & Parker, C 2012. Campaign It!: Achieving Success through Communication. London: Kogan Page Publishers Eddy, P 2014. 'I wish I had breast cancer': Outrage at pancreatic cancer charity’s ‘repugnant’ new ad campaign. Mirror. Available at http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/pancreatic-cancer-wish-campaign-outrage-3116014. Accessed on 23rd April 2014. Griggs, I 2014. Cancer charities criticize Pancreatic Cancer Action's 'insensitive' adverts. Third Sector Online. Available at http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/Communications/article/1230255/cancer-charities-criticise-pancreatic-cancer-actions-insensitive-adverts/. Accessed on 23rd April 2014. Mathos, M., & Norman, C 2012. 101 Social Media Tactics for Nonprofits: A Field Guide. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Miller, K 2004. Communication Theories: Perspectives, Processes, and Contexts. New York: McGraw-Hill Education. Renkstorf, K 2004. Action Theory and Communication Research: Recent Developments in Europe. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter Reynolds, J 2014. Advertising watchdog to investigate Pancreatic Cancer Action campaign. The Guardian. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/feb/27/advertising-pancreatic-cancer-ads-ban accessed on 24th April 2014. Strahs-Lorenc, L 2010. Pancreatic Cancer: It's a Family Affair. New York: Xlibris Corporation Wright, B., Sparks, L., & O’Hair, D 2012. Health Communication in the 21st Century. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Read More