A RESEARCH ON EFFECTIVENESS OF PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENTS

Public service announcements (PSAs), which are prepared in the fields of education, health, community development and protection of cultural heritage, is composed of educative and informative multimedia contents. PSAs aim a direct change at audience's thoughts or behaviours in the fields that social benefit is targeted. This alteration can be occur via expanding awareness, changing the wrong perception, encouraging a behaviour aimed to be achieved or developing an idea which can strengthen the social coherence. In Turkey, PSAs, which are prepared by public enterprises, various foundations and private institutions to mention about different themes, are broadcasted via radios and televisions. A great extent of budget is reserved for PSAs and it is an important topic of research how far PSAs have reached their goals. Within the scope of this study, we made a choice between the PSAs which are recommended to be broadcast by Turkish Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTüK) in 2018 and we aimed to detect to what extent behavioral change and change in thought is achieved by chosen PSAs in target audience. In this study, although PSAs succeded in changing some perceptions and thoughts, it is insufficient in some other areas. Furthermore, the results of the study point out that it is a need to work meticulously on some fields such as fiction, visual effects, voiceover, music, simplicity and comprehensibility, striking messages in the process of preparing PSAs