AN EVALUATION OF AUDIENCE RESPONSE TO MEDIA CAMPAIGNS ON EBOLA VIRUS DISEASE PREVENTION AND CONTROL IN SOUTH-SOUTH NIGERIA

Over the years, the process of health behavioural change or development is hardly successful without communication. This is so because any real social development and behavioural change involves the participation of people in the society and they participate mainly through communication. The 2014 Ebola Virus Disease (EVD ) outbreak evolved in alarming ways, with the affected countries, Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria struggling to control the escalating outbreak. The EVD outbreak led to various launching of media campaigns towards the prevention and control of the disease by various organisations in the country. However, the EVD disease was successfully contained in the country but audience responses to those preventive and control messages of the campaign and the possible success or failure of the campaigns are yet undetermined. This study evaluates audience response to media campaigns on Ebola Virus Disease prevention and control in South-South Nigeria. The survey research method was used and Australian National Statistical Service (NSS) Online Calculator was used to draw a sample size of 385 from the population to ascertain: awareness, exposure, perception and extent to which the audience responded to the media campaign messages on EVD. The findings revealed that majotiry of the respondents(95.7%) were exposed to the campaigns, also their knowledge about the disease was increased through the campaigns. A greater percentage of the respondednts agreed that to a large extent the campaign was successful. The findings also revealed that a greater percentage of the audience (92.6%) responded to the campaigns and majority among them always observe the control measures contained in the campaign. The study therefore emphasized the need for adoption of mixed media strategy in disseminating health campaigns such that one medium will complement the lapses of the others