Context and Challenges
UNICEF Germany planned a campaign denouncing “everyday violence” against children. To succeed, it needed to know how the issue was already discussed in Germany and how to measure whether the campaign changed that debate.
Our Role
Research for Purpose first analysed German media and social media coverage of violence against children from June to September 2020. The analysis covered 12,500 articles and posts, which generated 3.5 million reactions. It showed that the debate was driven by the media and focused almost entirely on sexual violence and abuse. UNICEF Germany therefore decided to give visibility to the everyday forms of violence that received little attention.
We recommended investing in media relations and gathering testimonies from social workers, teachers, psychologists and health professionals, so that the campaign would raise awareness without exposing children publicly. We also mapped the journalists and associations most likely to amplify the campaign.
We then built key performance indicators for two objectives. The first was to raise awareness, measured through mentions, engagement and articles in leading media quoting UNICEF Germany. The second was to shift the narrative, measured through the share of coverage on everyday violence compared with sexual violence. We monitored the campaign against these indicators for one year, with weekly and monthly dashboards and regular reports.
Results
The indicators gave UNICEF Germany a transparent and replicable way to measure change in the debate over time, beyond simple visibility. The campaign generated more attention from leading media than the team had anticipated.
We learnt that indicators are most useful when they track the specific change a campaign seeks, in this case a shift in how violence against children is framed.