“A blog is a decentralized way of communicating and a potential for African journalists to relay information on tobacco control” Interview with Philippe Boucher
African journalists present during the third Convention of the Parties (COP3) have been galvanized into the creation of blogs with the assistance of Philippe Boucher, communication expert presently working as consultant with the International Development Research Center on the communication strategy of ATSA (African Tobacco Situational Analyses, a project funded by the Gates Foundation). When asked to assess the level of communication of tobacco control in Africa, he said:
“In 2007 I worked for a programme funded by the Norwegian Cancer Society in which we spent one year to develop Global Link Africa where they started to create blogs for tobacco control in Africa, so I developed the blogs of fervent tobacco advocates such as Adeola Akinremi (www.adeola-akinremi.com ) from Nigeria, Veronique Le Clezio (www.veronique-leclezio.com ) from Mauritius, Pascal Bogui (www.pascal-bogui.com) from cote d’Ivoire, Francis kabo (www.francis-kabo.com ) for from Mozambique, and Jackie Tumwine (www.jackie-tumwine.com ) from Uganda. This gave birth to a new set of tobacco bloggers in Africa. Today, more and more Africans have seen the importance of this communication tool and as you can see I have created about 10 blogs since the start of COP3…this make Africa the number one blogger continent on tobacco control. It is rather unfortunate that some other organizations have not seen the importance of this tool. I understand it is because each of them wants to control information on this issue thus forcing to dwell on traditional websites...”
What is the difference between a website and a blog?
A very conspicuous difference is that blogs do not require any technical skills to manage whereas a website demands the services of a webmaster that most of the time may not be immediately available thus slowing down the updating process. So it sometimes takes time for information to be published in a website as to a blog where as soon as your article is ready, you need not more than five minutes for it to be on the internet…which can also be dangerous (he laughs). Blogs are also very interactive communication tools! Blogs are considerably cheap as compared to traditional websites.
But do you think this is the best means of communicating tobacco looking into our local realities where not everyone can have access to a computer not talk of internet?
It is true that the business of trading internet is still a dilemma in Africa…but it is a tremendous potential tool for tobacco control advocates to communicate amongst themselves, for researchers to put information at the disposal of these advocates. Not many people in Africa are interested in tobacco related. This means blogs on tobacco control should be focused on a specific audience (e.g. professionals in the field as mentioned above) who will intern relay information to the general public. A good example on the importance of tobacco related blogs is in Nigeria where radio programs where produced for a local radio and put on internet for free download and airing by who ever. http://www.tobaccoandyou.com/ has more on the Nigerian experience.
If the tobacco industry’s efforts remain unchecked, they will continue to develop new and innovative campaigns to create a positive image of their product and attract new users. This conclusion forces journalists and other tobacco experts and advocates to be more and more involved in investigating the “hidden” efforts made by tobacco industries to counter our global strategy to free the world from the dungeon of tobacco.
To prevent the population from being enticed by the generous mask worn by the tobacco industries, journalists and communication experts are faced by the challenge to develop communication strategies on anti-tobacco that will reach the general public.
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