Behaviour Change Communication and the Catholic Church Response to Covid-19 in Timor-Leste: a Peircian Perspective.

Abstract

A key challenge for development aid organizations is to clearly communicate messages about their programs in diverse socio-cultural contexts. Behaviour Change Communication (BCC) activities are designed to attempt a persuasive connection with project beneficiaries for whom the development message is usually new or otherwise difficult to understand. One strategy to achieve this connection is to leverage an influential institution whose standing in the community can give development messages authoritative backing. This article draws lessons for BCC programs about building the trustworthiness of new messages by examining the communicative actions of the Catholic Church in Timor-Leste in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis elaborates Charles S. Peirce’s theory of signs wherein the communication between utterers and interpreters is transacted along a continuum that links objects, signs and interpreters. It is argued that an interpreter’s trust in the sign is negotiated between what Peirce calls the Immediate Interpretant and the Dynamic Interpretant, where an object (such as a BCC activity) is contextualized to existing cultural values and mind-sets of the audience.