Final Evaluation Report

4.3 Our Watch

Overview

Our Watch was established by the Commonwealth and Victorian governments in 2013 to drive nation-wide change in the culture, behaviours and attitudes that lead to violence against women and their children. Our Watch’s primary social marketing campaign is The Line - a primary prevention campaign aimed at young people aged 12-20 years. The Our Watch website outlines some of the projects delivered by the organisation which are outlined overleaf.

Change the story: A shared framework for the primary prevention of violence	In partnership with VicHealth and ANROWS, Our Watch launched an evidence-based, nation-wide primary prevention strategy to end violence against women and their children in November 2015.
National Media Engagement Project	Aims to improve media reporting of violence against women and their children and to raise awareness of the impacts of gender stereotyping and inequality. It includes four key initiatives: Training materials for journalists and journalist students to effectively report on violence against women; A national survivors media advocacy program to assist survivors to become more effective media advocates; A national awards scheme to recognise and encourage quality reporting of violence against women; and A website portal with resources for journalists. These are supported and informed by: A national toolkit for engaging the media in the prevention of violence against women; Formative research to develop an evidence base; and A Media Advisory Board.
Reducing violence against women and their children community of practice	A knowledge sharing opportunity for practitioners who implement projects to prevent violence against women and their children. This runs only in Victoria.
Respectful Relationships Education in schools (Victoria)	Delivery of respectful relationships education in Schools pilot program across 19 VIC secondary schools.
Sports Engagement Program	Our Watch grants four sporting codes $250,000 to facilitate violence prevention activities in the sporting community and promote gender equality and respectful relationships.
Strengthening Hospital Responses to Family Violence	Pilot program in Victoria to build the capacity of hospitals to identify, respond to and prevent violence against women and their children.
Working with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) Communities	Working with CALD communities to design, develop and deliver their own prevention activities. This currently operates as a pilot program in Victoria.

A large portion of the pilot programs occur in Victoria as Our Watch was originally established as a partnership between the Australian and VIC government before other state and territory governments joined including the NT, SA, TAS, QLD and ACT between 2014 and 2016. The VIC government self-funds a number of the pilot programs within the state. The Commonwealth and other state and territory governments also fund Our Watch to deliver specific projects.

Effectiveness – Social Media Analysis

A social media analysis conducted by KPMG demonstrated that Our Watch operates across six media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn and Google+. The membership for Our Watch on each platform is shown below:

Figure 4.4: Membership of Our Watch across platforms.

The analysis showed that most of the posts on the primary social network, Facebook, were about domestic violence or violence against women, as demonstrated in Figure 4.5 below.

Figure 4.5: Our Watch Facebook post analysis

Source: KPMG social media analysis

Most Facebook and other social media posts use images, videos and external links to articles to raise awareness about the behaviours and attitudes that lead to violence against women and their children. The KPMG social media analysis demonstrated that Our Watch’s social media accounts are frequently updated and attract a high level of engagement from third party users. Third party users are other social media accounts who refer to Our Watch’s posts in their own posts. For example, a politician might have a twitter account which they can use to comment on Our Watch’s posts and re-tweet them – this would constitute an engagement from a third party.

Effectiveness - Performance indicators

Our Watch undertakes periodic evaluations of a range of pilot programs including:

• 
  ongoing evaluation of the pilot program Strengthening Hospital Responses to Family Violence in Victoria;
  
• 
  ongoing evaluation of the Working with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Communities program in Victoria;
  
• 
  an independent organisational review; and
  
• 
  independent tracking research on The Line campaign.
  

The significant third party engagement on social media for Our Watch indicates that Our Watch is having a significant impact on the community. In particular, high levels of third party engagement coincided with the launch of Our Watch’s Change the Story developed in partnership with ANROWS and VicHealth on 10 November 2015.⁶⁹

Analysis of one of the social media platforms in particular, Facebook, indicates that it has especially high third party engagement of 4.1 per cent which is impressively high given that average engagement rate for Facebook is 0.5-1 per cent. Figure 4.6 below shows the three post themes which received the highest engagement rate.

Figure 4.6: Engagement rate by Facebook post type

Source: KPMG social media analysis, 2016

Effectiveness - Stakeholder views

In general, stakeholders considered the video and imagery of the Our Watch campaign to be effective and a powerful tool in changing behaviour and attitudes. NSW and VIC stakeholders described the Our Watch campaign as highly effective. However, many in other states felt the campaign had not been distributed as widely as it could have been, particularly in reaching young people. Some NGO stakeholders in smaller states indicated that they felt that many of their clients had not seen the Our Watch campaign. It is possible that these stakeholders were unaware of the extent of the social media campaign run by Our Watch which has a predominantly young audience. Further, some of the states with large remote areas such as QLD and the NT indicated that Our Watch campaigning was more concentrated in larger cities and people living in regional areas were often unaware of the campaign.

Stakeholders in the larger states of NSW, QLD and VIC noted that the campaigns run by Our Watch did not always connect with CALD communities who are generally at higher risk of experiencing violence. Although Our Watch has recently started advertising on SBS television in other languages, up until recently, CALD women faced language barriers in accessing the Our Watch material and it was not always culturally appropriate.

Stakeholders also suggested that the use of social media (which requires participants to follow a user before they necessarily see the content) and online sources means that the advertising is often distributed to individuals working in the field of domestic violence or those particularly concerned about it rather than the perpetrators and victims. One stakeholder described it as “preaching to the converted” and suggested that there needs to be more of a focus on reaching out to other individuals.