Persuasive Communication Pattern of Public Service Announcement, A Highlight of Cancer Education by Indonesia Government in Television

Abstract

As one of a non-communicable disease, cancer has become threatening disease for many people in the world. In Indonesia, the prevalence of this disease is increasing from year to year. To reduce the number of cancer patients, Indonesian Government through Ministry of Health has variety of efforts, including communicate to people about the important of having healthy lifestyle so that cancer can be prevented. Communication through education about cancer and healthy lifestyle conducts by several mediums and one of these is through Public Service Announcement (PSA) on television. PSA is needed to raise awareness about cancer among people and give them understanding about how to prevent cancer by implementing a certain lifestyle. It takes proper persuasive communication so that the PSA can perform its function to influence people to change their behavior in a positive way. This persuasive effort becomes interesting to be studied considering persuasive communication is related to various aspects, such as attitude, behavior and knowledge of target audience. In the context of cancer education, persuasive communication is needed to convince people to be more concerned about cancer by implementing a healthy lifestyle so that cancer can be prevented. This study aims to find a pattern of persuasive communication about cancer education in PSA to support behavior change in society. The research was conducted in Cirendeu, Ciputat. Data survey was obtained from the students of the University of Muhammadiyah Jakarta and advertising practitioner who became informants. The research method used is qualitative descriptive, through data collection procedure of FGD and in-depth interview. The data is analyzed qualitatively which is then interpreted and presented in the form of a description or narrative followed by conducted theoretical interpretation to give meaning to the result of the research that has been done. Result of this study was indicate that communication pattern of PSA about cancer education refers to these three important things; first, endorsers, second, message execution approach such as animation, and third longer duration for presenting more detail information. First, informants prefer endorsers who are considered close and familiar with their daily lives. They also had trust with medical workers to endorse cancer prevention. Second, animated version is considered a fairly appealing advertisement message that is easy to understand, keep in mind and able to provide solutions for cancer prevention. The unique, local animal character like “Kancil” brought PSA into energetic and passionate message to the informants. Third, the informants preferred longer version of the PSA since it was more persuasive and detailed for the information.