Social Norms
Social norms action with informed and engaged societies
Social Norms
After nearly 28 years, The Communication Initiative (The CI) Global is entering a new chapter. Following a period of transition, the global website has been transferred to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, where it will be administered by the Social and Behaviour Change Communication Division. Wits' commitment to social change and justice makes it a trusted steward for The CI's legacy and future.
 
Co-founder Victoria Martin is pleased to see this work continue under Wits' leadership. Victoria knows that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction.
 
We honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades. Meanwhile, La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA) continues independently at cila.comminitcila.com and is linked with The CI Global site.
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Reconstructing Gender Norms Through Ritual Communication: A Study of African Transformation

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Underwood, C., Brown, J., Sherard, D., Tushabe, B., & Abdur-Rahman, A. (2011). Reconstructing Gender Norms Through Ritual Communication: A Study of African Transformation. Journal of Communication, 61(2), 197-218. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01537.x

DESIGN: African Transformation (AT) is a community development program informed by James Carey's notion of ritual communication and Paulo Freire's theory of critical pedagogy. AT features video portraits of ordinary people in Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia who have overcome gender-based obstacles to better their lives. In Uganda, women and men gathered to interrogate common beliefs and explore actions they could take in light of the real-life stories portrayed in the videos.

HYPOTHESIS: We hypothesized that individuals who participated in the program would be more likely than nonparticipants to express high levels of self-efficacy, espouse equitable gender norms, and report high levels of agency. Multivariate regression analysis, controlling for socioeconomic characteristics, confirmed that hypothesis.