Week 3 Assignment

Application: Communicating a Message to Multiple Audiences

Real life is not always tidy, and this fact certainly holds true in
public communications. Audiences have multiple characteristics that can
influence how a message should be delivered. As a criminal justice
professional, you must consider how audience characteristics might
influence how a message should be delivered. You should then consider
challenges to effectively communicating a message to that audience.

Perhaps you select to use visual aids for a group of 7th grade
children. You then find out that the children attend an inner-city
school with a low reading level and will not be able to understand your
visual aids. Or perhaps they are Non-English speaking children who
might not be able to read your visual aids. Once you begin to consider
the variety of potential audiences, and their distinct characteristics,
the importance of presenting the same message in several different
formats becomes clear.

For this assignment, review your video submission from Week 2. Then
select one audience from the list provided. Consider how that audience
might benefit from the message that was delivered in Week 2. Next,
examine characteristics specific to that audience that may influence
how the message should be delivered. Look at potential challenges in
communicating this message to the selected audience. Finally, consider
how your communication might have to be altered in order to deliver
this same message to the new audience.

• Children
• Juveniles (under the age of 18)
• People with Mental Illness
• Ethnic/Racial minorities
• Persons living in poverty
• Criminals
• Immigrants
• Non-English-speaking citizens
• People with Intellectual Disabilities
• Deaf Community
• Elderly
• Pregnant Women

The Assignment (2–3 pages)

Review your video submission from Week 2.

• Describe an audience that might benefit from the message you delivered in your Week 2 video submission
• Explain characteristics specific to that audience that may influence how the message should be delivered
• Explain potential challenges in communicating the message to the selected audience
• Explain how you might revise your approach in the video based on
  the characteristics specific to the audience you selected and why. Be
  sure not to change the content of the message

By Day 7, submit your Assignment.

Support your Assignment with specific references to all
resources used in its preparation. You are to provide a reference list
for all resources, including those in the Learning Resources for this
course.

Week 3 Learning Resources

This page contains the Learning Resources for this week. Be sure to
scroll down the page to see all of this week’s assigned Learning
Resources.

Required Resources

Note: To access this week’s required library resources, please click on the link to the Course Readings List, found in the Course Materials section of your Syllabus.

Readings

• Johnson, W. A., Rettig, R. P., Scott, G. M., & Garrison, S. M. (2015). The criminal justice student writer’s manual (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
  • pp. 29–30
• Lamb, H. R., Weinberger, L. E., & Gross, B. H. (2004).
  Mentally ill persons in the criminal justice system: Some perspectives.
  Psychiatric Quarterly, 75(2), 107–126.
  Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.

• Identify and write for your audience. Federal Plain Language Guidelines. Retrieved from http://www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/guidelines/bigdoc/audId.cfm
• Anonymous (2004). Nothing lost in the translation: Overcoming barriers to communications due to language limitations. Corrections Forum, 13(2), 96.
  Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.