MINISTRY OF HEALTH AND FAMILY WELFARE , GOVERNMENT OF INDIA NEEDS A POSTER FOR ITS ANTI - ALCHOLISM DRIVE. DRAFT THE POSTER IN NOT MORE THAN 50 WORDS HIGHLITING THE FOLLOWING POINTS (1)-WHAT PROBLEMS EXCESSIVE DRINKING CAUSE (2)-HOW PEOPLE CAN UITE DRINKING (3)-WHAT IS THE BENEFITS OF QUITTING DRINKING I HAVE ONLY ONE POINT THAT IS -- SAPS THE STRENGTH SLOWLY AND SURELY I WANT SOME POINTS LIKE THIS PLEASE HELP ME ! I WANT POSTER ALSO SORRY FOR DISTURBING AND ASKING QUESTIONS
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Anti-alcohol Posters in Poland, 1945-1989: Diverse Meanings, Uncertain Effects
Martin Gorsky, PhD, Krzysztof Krajewski-Siuda, MD, PhD, [...], and Virginia Berridge, PhD
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Abstract
We provide a historical study of the anti-alcohol public health poster in Poland between 1948 and 1990. Our case study illuminates public health policies under communism, with the state as the dominant force in health communication. Poland has a distinctive history of poster art, moving from a Stalinist phase of socialist realism to the diverse styles of the later Polish School. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of 213 posters establishes the major themes and differentiates community approaches, which depict the drinker as a social or political deviant, from those emphasizing individual risk. Medical issues were a minor theme, reflecting public policies geared more toward confinement than treatment. However, Polish School artists used metaphor and ambiguity, and references to the contested cultural symbolism of drink, to complicate and subvert the narrow propaganda intent. Thus, although apparently unsuccessful in restraining overall consumption, these posters offer valuable lessons for policymakers on the use of visual media in health campaigns.
ALTHOUGH ITS ORIGINS LIE IN commercial advertising, the poster was used throughout the twentieth century as a medium for the dissemination of public health messages.1 Until recently, analysis by historians was limited to collection-based studies that emphasized design rather than broader context.2 However, the resurgence of public health posters during the AIDS epidemic has prompted -renewed historical interest in the form.3 More generally, historians increasingly advocate visual media as a source for exploring the contested terrain of understanding between lay audiences, medical professionals, and the state.4 We present findings drawn from a larger study of the public health poster in Poland between the country's independence in 1918 and the fall of communism in 1989. Its focus is one of the major preoccupations of propaganda posters in the postwar period: the drinking of alcohol.
There is a substantial contemporary literature both on the poster as an instrument of health communication and on the use of visual media in anti-alcohol campaigns. Evaluations of the effectiveness of health posters in modifying behavior are numerous; crudely, they show that sometimes these posters produce only limited changes in knowledge, attitudes, and practice, but at other times, especially in mixed-mode campaigns, they contribute to -improved health outcomes.5 The second approach deals with poster content, drawing on the methodological tools of cultural studies to consider how meaning is conveyed through visual images. Here, the aim is to sharpen the awareness of commissioning agents about how poster messages may be read, internalized, or rejected according to the social and cultural context in which they appear.6
Within the alcohol literature, evaluative studies are also numerous, with the poster typically considered alongside other communication media. Again, the evidence for success is mixed, suggesting that informational or persuasory campaigns typically have no direct effect on long-term consumption patterns.7 They can, however, have an impact on knowledge and attitudes, and may therefore be effective when integrated with other policies, such as drunk-driving messages alongside enhanced policing, or in preparing public opinion for more effectual environmental measures, such as advertising bans or licensing restriction.8
This equivocal evidence for success, whether of poster campaigns alone or, more broadly, of mass media health campaigns, has also prompted a more skeptical literature. Criticism centers on the concern that efforts to affect individual behavior place public health officials in a disciplinary or moralizing posture, and may serve to enforce inequalities. In areas such as obesity, alcohol, and smoking, mass media campaigns are arguably “little more than public relations exercises” on the part of the state, designed to proclaim concern while avoiding more meaningful actions at the population level that would offend vested economic interests.9 More broadly, poorly designed campaigns may stigmatize vulnerable populations through visual and textual representations, thereby creating a “counterpublic” that actively resists medical advice.10