BOOK REVIEW: Setting the Tone for Effective Communication
By Abdulsalam Mahmud
The crafty art of communication may appear easy. But very few people can effectively pass across the right, accurate and intended message to the general public or any kind of audience.
If that is the case, then there is need for attention to be focused on strategic communication. Everyone should master how to communicate strategically, especially when dealing with the public holding divergent viewpoints.
The benefits of doing so, of course are innumerable. And they are what one can readily see, observe and feel in “An Introduction to Strategic Communication”, a book recently published by Dr. Suleiman Ya’u Sule, a public affairs analyst.
Dr. Ya’u Sule, a serving Governing Council Member and Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, NIPR, as well as Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON) is also a career journalist, renowned media scholar and public relations strategist.
The all-round communication scholar and doyen of public relations practice is also a consummate perception specialist, with over three decades of uninterrupted practice spanning both public and private sectors. His forte extends to all communication genres.
Dr. Ya’u Sule’s “An Introduction to Strategic Communication”, dedicated to the author’s late father, Alhaji Ya’u Sule Maihula, has 141 pages spread across eighth chapters, together with an acknowledgement page, preface, foreword, references and index.
It is apt to assert that strategic communication, being an ancient concept, connotes a deliberate and thoughtful plan integrating the communication function into achieving a broader organizational goal. Indeed, it is an inevitable condiment of institutional and organizational success and achievements.
Strategic communication, like the preface of the book says, has been used wherever and whenever there is a plan to achieve an objective, persuade, control, influence and predict the outcome of a goal at any level by any organisation, and for a sustained period.
In recent years, strategic communication has been deployed to successfully implement public diplomacy, information warfare, public relations, social marketing, political communication and technical communication, among others.
In the words of Dr. Ya’u Sule, Chapter One of “An Introduction to Strategic Communication” clearly offers a definitional overview of strategic communication, together with its history and evolution, as a vital tool of control and domination by different civilizations.
It also includes the rise of social media as a potent mass communication tool and how it has transformed the form and style of strategic messaging, while empowering organizations to bypass traditional hurdles, having birthed a new digital-savvy, data-driven generation with new characteristics and challenges.
Chapter Two of the book examines “The Origin of Strategic Communication”, exploring historical perspectives on its growth and development from ancient to modern times.
It also scrutinizes the ferocious and practical uses, or abuses, of communication during the World War periods, highlighting the notoriety of what became more commonly known as Propaganda that was associated with using communication with ruthless effectiveness, and amorality in the cause of a nation’s war campaign.
In Chapter Three, the author explored the Origin of Strategic Communication in our dear country, from pre-colonial and colonial times to the post-colonial period. This includes how Nigeria’s pre-colonial empires and societies expertly used various forms of strategic communication in consensus building and inclusive governance.
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The chapter also discussed how Biafran secessionists effectively used radio for propaganda and how, since 2009, the Boko Haram insurgency has been forcing a rethinking and reassessment of the values of strategic communication by the nation’s top military hierarchy, and what it can contribute to degrading the insurgency.
Chapter Four discourses Theories and Models of Communication Management. This includes the more familiar contingency, gratification and agenda-setting theories of communication and the lesser-known, but valuable Elaborate Likelihood Model, which is a helpful tool for processing the strategic communication craft.
Communication can be evaluated and audited as a scientific process to determine what has been achieved and where more effort is required. Chapter Four offers insights into these areas.
Chapter Five discusses the Imperative for Strategic Communication in our multi-ethnic Nigeria. It throws light on the role communication has played in shaping the country’s political, economic, cultural and social history in the context of the struggle over resources and value contestations since independence, and from military to civil rule.
The chapter also discusses how strategic communication can be integrated into the national governance system to improve communication between various governments and the people, and how democracy can thrive under this structure.
Meanwhile, Chapter Six focuses on Strategic Communication and Governance to reinforce the linkages between communication, technology and good governance, and the role they can play in promoting the principles embedded in participatory democracy and civil society vigilance.
It is imperative to mention that Chapter Seven and Eight are ones that can become a valuable handbook for practitioners in political communication and how they can design, implement and measure campaign messaging for the Nigerian audience, with a strategic communication framework, including framing deliverables and timelines.
The chapters examine the form, style and context of communication messaging of the major presidential candidates in the 2023 General Elections, offering insightful critique and analytical parameters for the evaluation of effectiveness, from the perspective of strategic communication.
According to Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, the immediate-past Executive Secretary of the National University Commission, NUC, Dr. Ya’u Sule’s book on Strategic Communication has brought an invaluable addition to the expanding knowledge in mass communication studies. Prof. Rasheed noted that, as a practicing strategic communication professional and mass communication teacher, Dr. Ya’u Sule’s expertise in contemporary practice models and environmental particularities further enriched the book.
He said: “The title: Strategic Communication: Concept, Origin, Theory and Practice indicates the book’s ambitious scope and comprehensive subject coverage. Drawing from theoretical, historical, and contemporary traditions, this book examines strategic communication through an academic lens, while providing communication professionals with a practical guide”.
Personally, I have the conviction that this book: “An Introduction to Strategic Communication” is Dr. Ya’u Sule’s modest contribution to the robust discourse of strategic communication, in Nigeria’s communication and PR circuits. The book, similarly, is one that I strongly believe will clarify the broader communication discipline, and the narrower but very significant field of strategic communication, for experts, professionals, administrators and policy makers in both public and private sectors, like the author himself alluded.
While hoping that mass communication scholars, students and the general public will find Dr. Ya’u Sule’s book interesting, engaging and valuable, individuals, together with the key actors of Nigeria’s public and private sectors should assiduously incorporate strategic communication in planning for their organisational successes.
Abdulsalam Mahmud is Deputy Editor, PRNigeria
