A-COP group prepares local police corruption case studies

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Improvement of knowledge and skills in advocating case studies of police corruption was the focus of training organized by Belgrade Centre for Security policy (BCSP) and the Novi Sad School of Journalism (NSSJ) on Fruska Gora on June 20 to 22 2013. The aim of the activity was to raise capacities of civil society organizations from Serbia committed to fight against corruption in police.

Advocacy vs. media promotion

„While advocacy is a set of specific actions directed towards decision makers, campaigns, on the other hand, represent the mobilization of available resources with a goal to inform the public, in a limited time period, about the existence of problems and of possible solutions“, said Djajic.

{image2}Planning the communication of the results, made jointly by all the members of the A-COP group, proceeded with the analysis of „stakeholders“ – target audiences, held by Agnes Curcic Asodi form NSSJ. After a short introduction, group work started. Identification of problems that will be done by the researchers was done first, followed by identification of case-interested parties and description of all stakeholders.

„The basis for success in this phase of working on the project is in finding connections between those who can affect the problem, the problem itself, situation or the case and those that are affected by the problem“, said Curcic Asodi.

Tools to increase project visibility

BCSP Communication Officer Radomir Cvetkovic presented the tools for increasing the visibility of projects and also, examples of good and bad practice of their utilization.

„Communication with media should be planned and conducted in a timely manner. Messages need to be clear, exclusive and with sustainable argumentation. Monitoring and evaluation of the communication activities is necessary for quality improvement reasons. Expected results have to be proportional with invested resources“, Cvetkovic stressed while presenting several, highly visible, BCBP activities, such as presentation of the results of public opinion study and training for journalists.

The members of the A-COP group also discussed with the BCSP Communication Associate about tactics and channels that could be used so that their case studies would get local and national coverage.

Seminar participants then made the basis of their media plan by defining potential activities they will conduct for promotion of their police corruption case studies.

The importance of focusing message towards different audiences was discussed in the lecture of prof. dr Dubravka Valic Nedeljkovic. By going through a number of examples, training participants saw how the same message can be transferred in multiple ways.

„Information can be made attractive or completely uninteresting by stressing out different parts of the sentence, or by using different rhetoric“, Valic Nedeljkovic said.

{image3}Pyramid of influence on Internet

The members of A-COP group discussed the dissemination of information on the internet with a famous blogger Dragan Varagic. He stressed that trust-building is a necessary basis for influencing target groups. He presented the internet pyramid of influence to the group, which has six levels: Presence, Digital identity, Reputation, Credibility, Authority, and at the end – Influence.

„Most important is the content, it has to be useful, interesting and accessible. Everything you do on the internet has to be authentic, has to show the values that you share with the others. The identity and the reputation is built on this system of values, but for story to have influence, it needs to be put into the context of the target audience“, Varagic stressed.