Based on a true story. En kvalitativ innehållsanalys av välgörenhetskampanjer från Svenska Röda Korset

Abstract

Executive summary The current state of the world, characterized by conflicts, war and human suffering, implies a severe need for charity- and nonprofit organizations and their work. They play a vital role in helping people in urgent need. In today’s media saturated society, individuals are constantly exposed to different content, information and news. This presents a challenge for nonprofit organizations to reach out with their messages and to stand out in the abundance of competition. We are accustomed to nonprofit marketing that leverages emotional appeals such as anger, shame and agony. Graphic content of starving children, poverty and war-injured civilians are frequently used in charity-campaigns. Some research indicates that this is the most effective way to reach out to the audience, evoke empathy and compassion, and as a result generate more donations. On the other hand, excessively strong and graphic images can lead to people looking the other way, shutting down or becoming desensitized. Therefore, a new form of advertisement may be essential to maintain the audience's attention, and as an organization be able to stand out in the constant media flow. In this thesis we conclude a qualitative content analysis on two different campaigns by the Swedish Red Cross. The primary aim is to bring light to the use of semiotic and rhetorical strategies as well as viewing the handling of narrative in each campaign. When we engaged in searching for material for our study, we initially came across a newly launched campaign by the Swedish Red Cross called “Först på plats, alltid kvar”. Our intention was to find material from earlier campaigns, to which we could draw comparisons too. “THE AID” was published in fall 2018, exactly six years before. This period of time has been marked by crises, conflict and suffering – from the wildfires in 2018, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, to Hamas’s attack on Israel in 2023, to name a few. Therefore we have formed the hypothesis that these six years, as well as the outline of today’s media landscape, might have changed the way nonprofit organizations use communication strategies in their campaigns to reach out and engage the audience more effectively. The questions being answered in this thesis are therefore how semiotics, rhetorics and narrative are adopted as strategies in the Swedish Red Cross campaigns. Along with disclosing the main differences between the campaign from six years ago and the one launched this fall, from a semiotic, rhetorical and narrative perspective. After analyzing material from each campaign, three movies and three posters to be exact, we came to a result that proved a new form of advertising in the campaign from 2024. “THE AID” from 2018 depicts a narrative where a mother and her daughter are separated in war, with graphic contents from the scene. The content draws mainly on pathos, and feelings of sadness, empathy and devastation. The content from “Först på plats, alltid kvar” from 2024 on the other hand, leaves you with a hopeful outlook on the situation. The story has a happy ending, and exercises ethos as it illustrates the work that the organization accomplishes. Thus we came to the conclusion that based on the current state of the world as well as the present media landscape, a new form of storytelling might be necessary to maintain the audience’s attention. For future research we suggest engaging in the outcome of using a narrative in charity campaigns. This in turn provides hope and a positive outlook on the future, and what this could imply for the audience.