Evaluation of alternative narrative campaigns

Part 5

Evaluation of the alternative narrative campaigns

Why is it important to evaluate a campaign?

Evaluation is a process that examines a project or an activity to ensure it meets its objectives and targets. It checks reality against plans and helps to draw conclusions about perceptions and satisfaction with results, efficiency, impact and sustainability. Its purpose is to improve projects, activities or campaigns so that they are as close as possible to their pre-defined goals. An evaluation not only serves to assess whether the objectives have been achieved, but also to design better projects or campaigns in the future. Stakeholders and partners can adapt their activities accordingly and can benefit from critical perspectives and self-reflection.

Who should be involved in the evaluation process of a campaign?

Evaluation should be more a dialogue between the persons involved than a control instrument. It should be conceived as a contribution to the overall success of the project or activity and should therefore associate all those who have been involved in one way or another to the project. A distinction should be made between those who commission and organise a project or campaign, those who design and implement the campaign and those who compose the target audience. All these groups should have the opportunity to express their perceptions and to make suggestions for improvement.

Why should local and regional authorities evaluate campaigns?

Municipalities can invest in evaluation to better understand the efficacy of alternative narratives campaigns and can use the results according to their operational needs (e.g. foster youth engagement, or design prevention strategies against discrimination, extremism or intolerance).

Measuring the effectiveness of your campaign

One very important aspect is, of course, how to measure the effectiveness of your campaign. Two main criteria are used: reach, i.e. the extent to which your campaign reached the desired audience and how many people saw it; and conversion, i.e. the extent to which your audience carried out the desired action (e.g. signing your petition or introducing new procedures to eliminate racial prejudice). You can do this throughout the campaign: before it is created by determining your ‘landscape’ (the context in which you operate); during the campaign through optimisation and testing, which is often easier to do online; and after the campaign, as part of a wider evaluation and to learn from it. Based on the experience of the LOUD project, we recommend evaluating this type of campaign according to three criteria:

1. Evaluation of campaigns and their impact on the target audience (product, result and impact)

Has the campaign contributed to self-reflection and critical thinking? Did they realize the damage they can do to others with hate speech? Are they strengthened in their competences to identify hate speech and to react?

2. Evaluation of youth participation in initiatives against discrimination, polarisation and radicalisation

The second part of the evaluation deals with those young people who participated in the design and implementation of the campaign. Taking into account that the participation in anti-discrimination/extremism/ polarisation initiatives is a special challenge for local authorities, the results and lessons learnt from LOUD could give them insights for their future projects/initiatives in these areas.

3. Evaluation of campaigns as tools to promote youth participation in prevention actions developed by local authorities

The third part consists in observing wether this kind of project based on promoting alternative narrative campagins and involving youth is an efficient tool for local authorities to act against discrimination, marginalisation and extremism, and whether it can be replicated by other local authorities. Can they use the campaign for other purposes? How

satisfied are they with the involvement of local stakeholders? What do they think is necessary to improve these campaigns? How does the action influence their prevention strategy? As we have seen, the evaluation can be used by local authorities as yet another occasion to communicate with and mobilise all those who have participated in the campaign. First of all because it is a good opportunity to share the results in terms of reach and impact with those who have worked hard to make the campaign happen. It is a way of showing your appreciation and valuing what has been accomplished. But beyond that, it is an occasion to reflect collectively on how to further the campaign and keep working together to counter hate and discrimination and promote tolerance and inclusivity. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>