A Critical Investigation of Parents’ Self-efficacy on Polio Messages : Political Hegemony and Digressive Role of Pakistani Television in Sindh, Pakistan

Farheen Qasim, Nizamani (2018) A Critical Investigation of Parents’ Self-efficacy on Polio Messages : Political Hegemony and Digressive Role of Pakistani Television in Sindh, Pakistan. PhD thesis, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS).

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Abstract

The persistent plight of polio health disease in Pakistan and its appalling treatment on television has challenged the credibility and reliability of the television institution among Pakistani citizens. Mass media polio campaigns started many years ago in Pakistan, yet polio remains a serious health threat to child development in the country. Parents’ understandings of their children’s health status and its perceptions can be triggered by televised health messages. However, few researchers have examined this issue by means of critical paradigm in relation to the lower middle class parents in Pakistan. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine the lower middle class parents’ perceptions, and their engagement to televised polio messages as a resource of attitude change in the Jamshoro district of Sindh province, Pakistan. This research takes issue with the socio-cultural dynamics, and political leadership affecting parents’ perceptions in the study area. Indeed, perception cannot stand in the void rather it is shaped by socio-political setting of any country. This thesis argues that television as an institution in Pakistan focused on their economic benefits does not enhance parents’ self-efficacy to adopt a knowledge basedoutlook for attitude change in the polio eradication initiative. Besides, literatures on health only examined newspaper’s coverage of health issues through content analysis technique. The methodological approach to this research employs a critical inquiry that enables this study to investigate parents’ interpretations of televised polio messages with qualitative analysis through 35 in-depth interviews. Therefore, this research engrosses an investigation and critical reading of televised health messages in the realm of culture, religion, power and political hegemony. This research also observes as how these televised polio messages portray gender roles and discriminate fathers’ and mothers’ health position in a family affecting mothers’ empowerment in child health care. The conceptual framework used to investigate these dynamics is drawn from self-efficacy and collective efficacy of leadership under the umbrella of social cognitive theory (SCT). However, this thesis intends that selfefficacy does not exist as a single identity to adopt a change in parents’ perceptions due to political hegemony over televised health messages. But a combination of self-efficacy and collective efficacy of socio-cultural leadership can bring positivity in the ideas of Jamshoro parents’ cognitive attitudes. Therefore, the study proposes that “collectivism” in the light of collective efficacy of society, culture and religion is a core of Pakistani civilisation and a social morality for effective health outcomes in the polio eradication from Pakistan. This thesis also argues that gender roles in Pakistani patriarchal society oppress and discourage mothers’ appraisal, and empowerment in televised polio images. This whole mechanism of mothers’ oppression is a disadvantage to their cognitive perceptions that lowers and robs mothers’ decisive power, self-esteem and social position in a family in relation to the child vaccination decisions in Pakistan. Yet, improved television content can facilitate parents to overcome socio-political and gender inequality issues for better health outcomes in Pakistan.

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