Media advocacy for alcohol policy support: results from the New Zealand Community Action Project

Media advocacy has been described as the strategic use of massmedia for advancing a social or public policy initiative. Thispaper describes an attempt to use media advocacy to increasepublic awareness and support for public health policies on alcoholin a demonstration project. The New Zealand Community ActionProject (CAP) was an evaluated alcohol problem prevention programmewhich compared cities exposed to a mass media campaign with,and without, community organization, against reference cities.Media advocacy was an element in both a community organizationstrategy and in a print media advertising campaign. Major objectivesof CAP were to increase the level of support for alcohol policiesin the general population and to increase the amount of alcohol-relatedmaterial (excluding liquor industry promotion) in the localprint media. Evaluation of the media advocacy strategies are reported froman analysis of alcohol-related material in the local print media,from a general population survey conducted in the six cities,a complementary qualitative key informants interview study,and a street interview survey. The results indicated that inthe four cities where. mass media only or intrusive intervention(mass media and community organization) were employed, therewas increased newspaper coverage of alcohol-related materialon the focus areas of moderation and social policy. Resultsfrom the general population survey, the key informants interviewstudy and the street interview survey suggested a positive effectof the programme both in the media only, and in the intensiveintervention cities, compared with the reference cities.