Cartoons as a Mass Communication Strategy for Sustainable Transport

Sudhir Gota

The first thing most of us often notice in the newspaper is the editorial cartoon – an art of the moment drawn to illustrate message in a comic way. The illustrations often reside in our memory for a long time and thus newspapers use cartoons as a means to provide the knockout punch – to create an immediate impact among the audience.

This benefit of quick impact provides huge potential for educating masses on sustainable transport issues. To initiate the paradigm shift, a huge effort needs to be made in changing the mindset of transport consumers and policy makers. Cartoons in newspapers can provide the not only an easiest way of reaching vast segment of audience– educated to non-educated, children to elders, urban and rural people etc., but also creating lasting impact in few seconds.

When editorial cartoons are supported by think pieces written by editors, policy makers and experts, it creates the momentum at the grass route level thereby increasing the support for the paradigm shift in transport. One needs all the support when trying to create solutions by attacking the demand and breaking the trend of using infrastructure as a magic bullet.

Take the case of Ahmedabad BRTS, where media played a constructive role in highlighting various issues related to BRTS, educating the people and providing constructive criticisms which enabled it to become a best practice BRT in Asia. Without media support, things become very difficult for policy makers and political support for radical actions often evaporates.

In order to capture as to how newspaper cartoons can create lasting impact, transport cartoons from times of India newspaper (TOI) from India where collated from the period January-2008 till now. This newspaper is extremely popular in India and supposed to have the largest circulation among all English-language newspapers in the world. According to some estimates it has a print readership of 13.3 million and its online version reaching a record 159 million page views in May 2009. Scanning through 840 newspaper editions though is a time consuming process, extracted collection is very impressive with many transport related stories being told with simple images.

Studying the cartoons from last early 2008, fuel prices and congestion has been the favorite topic of the artists. In 2008, newspapers used cartoons many a times to create awareness on fuel consumption and rising fuel prices. Climate change and COP discussion was another favorite topic during 2009. Many cartoons were localized to suit domestic audience to create greater impact and many also relied on quotes to add the punch. The stories were conveyed from the perspective of common man.
Though, few cartoons took potshots against Delhi BRT, many were highlighting the poor pedestrian infrastructure. Surprisingly, considering very high accident fatalities, not many cartoons highlighted the road safety aspects.

Please find some of the collection below. Please source all the cartoons to Times of India and do send them positive feedback and request for more transport related cartoons @http://epaper.timesofindia.com/index.asp. Many a times such efforts can create lasting impression and thus resulting in better outreach.

See the cartoons @ http://cleanairinitiative.org/portal/system/files/Times_of_India.pptx

MEDIA STUDY OF AHMEDABAD BRTS

By Sudhir Gota

CAI-Asia Center through the SUMA program and in cooperation with ITDP has provided support to the development of the Ahmedabad BRTS. We have been tracking news articles and online documents related to the development of the Ahmedabad BRTS for some time. The collated information and its review (july 1st week) showed very interesting results.

“Ahmedabad BRTS” search in Google yields approximately 5620 results. Interesting to note here is that of those results, Ahmedabad BRTS is mentioned approximately 220 times by English News agencies.


One of the important lessons learned by experts and stakeholders by Delhi BRTS experience was the role of media and the need to have sustained positive media campaign. Public awareness needs to be started at the grass root levels from project inception stage considering various social issues influenced by the project and this needs to be carried out during the project implementation and the probably with greater intensity during the project operation for few years. It is to be noted that transport projects in developing nations suffer from “ribbon-cutting” syndrome. This syndrome refers to use of media by political class for scoring political points by unveiling massive concrete structures as magic bullet solutions. People used to such media publicity often link immediate relief provided by such solutions as success without thinking of long-term impacts. On the other hand “public transport improvement” projects lack such immediate improvement effect as it generally has impacts over the longer run considering its intrinsic link with behavior aspects. Considering such impacts a different media campaign approach is needed by authorities.


In order to investigate the role played by media in highlighting various public transport issues, CAI-Asia Center surveyed English news agency reports on Ahmedabad BRTS. It is to be noted that this survey is limited to English news agencies and not the entire spectrum of media reports which would be a major limitation of the study. Regional NEWS agencies played a bigger role then English media in Indian cities as the readership levels of regional language newspapers are higher. Nearly 221 English news reports from the year 2005 were collected and analyzed. Of those 221 news reports, 68 news reports were neglected as the Ahmedabad BRTS was not substantially discussed.


The news reports were evaluated using various parameters such as:


1. What were the various issues highlighted?
a. Non Motorized Transport
b. Infrastructure,
c. Economic and financial issues,
d. Bus related articles,
e. Political
f. Environment related articles
g. BRTS and Metro single article
h. Social impact issues
i. Land-use issues
j. Security issues
k. Road safety
l. General articles on BRTS (it captures BRTS awareness, institutional aspects, launching dates etc.)


2. Positive and Negative Reports – Whether news reports highlighted positive or negative issues. The point to be noted is first – if the news captures positive image or negative image. If the news generates negative image – what is the reason behind it? Is the report biased against the BRTS system as a whole or is reporting some implementation issues which is not perfect or in other words is the criticism “constructive” or outright “negative”.


The evaluation showed some surprising results:


1. What were the various issues highlighted?


a. It was surprising to note the high frequency of articles on physical infrastructure (18%). The media also highlighted the general issues in more detail such as “what are BRTS”, “international views”, “institutional aspects, launching dates etc. The media did well in raising BRTS awareness by giving several prominent ‘eye-catching’ articles. In the infrastructure – flyovers took the major share of articles indicating the traditional focus of media. Bus/rolling stock featured in many articles raising the expectations of people. Traffic management issues or construction caused congestion allowed media an opportunity to highlight these issues.


b. The “co-benefits” agenda was not highlighted by the news agencies. There were surprisingly no articles as such on quantum of air pollutant reductions, benefit of BRTS on climate change. There were two news articles that slightly mentioned CDM and BRTS but no substantial discussions. Issues on impact of BRTS on poor and vulnerable section were also not highlighted. There was a single article on BRTS being accessible to the visually impaired. There was also single article on women and few resettlement issues. The officials could have highlighted the impact of improved bus services on the “captive section”. Hawkers did not receive any attention. The non-motorized section also did not receive much media attention with only 4 pedestrian-cyclist oriented articles. Even with shaded exclusive cycle lanes with Ahmedabad being cycling city of India, not much media attention has been focused in this direction. Road safety was one issue which was again not highlighted (5 articles). General security of BRTS and its insulation against terrorist attack attracted two articles.

c. Land value increase due to liberation of floor-area ratio (FAR) also attracted some attention from media (2%). Media also engaged in allowing BRTS and proposed metro in single articles for catching viewer’s attention. The surprising fact was use of BRTS in political articles (3%) with both ruling and opposition packaging the news for their benefit.


2. Positive and Negative Reports – The news reports were majorly positive in nature (62%). The majority of negative reports were “constructive” in nature. The criticisms focused on physical infrastructure issues which are common in many projects in developing countries. The author found many criticisms constructive and devoid of bias (86% of total criticisms were constructive in nature). It is important to note that media in developing countries act as watchdog and it is their role to bring about the shortcomings to government and political officials. Only 7 articles out of 153 could be categorized as “not justifiable” criticism.



The analysis shows that media has played a responsible role till now in highlighting the issues related to BRTS, educating the people and providing constructive criticisms. But the benefits of BRTS like its impact on environment, NMT and climate have not been highlighted properly. The authorities need to emphasize the impact of BRTS on quality of life and package it as an urban solution rather than being a system with buses and infrastructure.