ABSTRACT
Saying no to drugs, buckling up, donating blood, and preventing forest fires; public information messages are prevalent in our daily consumption of information. Although public information campaigns are used by non-government entities, they are classically government-sponsored campaigns developed to address various social problems and communicate information to a large number of citizens to achieve positive societal results. A well-crafted public information campaign can raise awareness, change attitudes, motivate behaviors, and even impact public policy by providing crucial information to a defined target audience. This chapter will draw on multidisciplinary insights and theoretical perspectives as well as the experiences of the authors to provide a practitioner guide for planning, implementing, and evaluating public information campaigns. In addition, the use of historical and contemporary public information campaigns will provide a background for reviewing campaign development stages as well as analyzing communication strategies that have proven successful in communicating public-centered messages at the local, state, and federal levels of government. A practitioner checklist will be provided at the end of the chapter to facilitate the development, implementation, and evaluation of a public information effort. This chapter includes updated examples of public information campaigns from the previous edition.
