VISUAL COMMUNICATION IN GOVERNMENT WELFARE CAMPAIGNS: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES IN DIGITAL PUBLIC RELATIONS

Sonia; Jyotsana  Thakur

doi:10.29121/shodhkosh.v7.i4s.2026.7605

Authors

Sonia Research Scholar, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Chandigarh University, Punjab, India
Dr. Jyotsana Thakur Professor, Institute of Media Studies, Chandigarh University, Punjab, India

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29121/shodhkosh.v7.i4s.2026.7605

Keywords:

Digital Platforms, Visual Communication, Public Relations, Government Welfare, Global South, India, Social Media, E-Government, Stakeholder Engagement, Digital Divide, Misinformation, Accessibility, Trust, Myscheme, Digital Inclusion

Abstract [English]

The integration of digital platforms into the dissemination of government welfare information signifies a remarkable advancement in visual communication and public relations strategies. This holds significant importance within the framework of the Global South, specifically emphasizing the case of India. This thorough investigation explores the potential opportunities and obstacles associated with the adoption of digital visual communication technologies. This encompasses a diverse array of platforms, including various social media channels, e-government structures, and integrated digital systems, all carefully designed to enhance the worldwide execution of public relations related to welfare initiatives. This study offers a comprehensive examination of the evolution of digital communication interactions, the methodologies associated with visual media, and the complex relationships involved in stakeholder involvement. This research is grounded in an extensive assessment of 56 scholarly articles that have undergone rigorous peer review, alongside modern case studies that trace back to the year 2012. The findings uncover a complex landscape where visual and digital communication significantly contribute to fostering prompt collaboration, broadening outreach initiatives, and strengthening accountability in the dissemination of welfare-related information. Simultaneously, individuals can persist in addressing ongoing obstacles such as the digital divide, the proliferation of misinformation, limited accessibility, and the vital concern of trust in the online environment. This study utilizes a strong theoretical foundation, particularly highlighting the insights provided by Mergel in 2012 and the work of Hussin and associates in 2024. Additionally, it incorporates the e-Government 2.0 frameworks to perform a comprehensive examination of the efficacy of communication across multiple channels. The scenario in India concerning its MyScheme platform, which has effectively united over 2.34 crore users by October 2024, stands as a remarkable example of the potential and limitations embedded in digital visual communication for delivering services to the broader community. This document advocates for a thorough, stakeholder-centered methodology that employs visual media tactics, emphasizing the importance of accessibility, inclusivity, and proactive involvement in behavior. The results carry significant weight for individuals in leadership roles, experts in communication, and development collaborators engaged in the domain of digital wellbeing ecosystems.

References

Aggrawal, P., Jolly, B. L. K., Gulati, A., Sethi, A., Kumaraguru, P., and Sethi, T. (2021). Psychometric Analysis and Coupling of Emotions Between State Bulletins and Twitter in India During COVID-19 Infodemic. Frontiers in Communication, 6, Article 695913. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2021.695913

Ahuja, V. (2022). Transforming the Media and Entertainment Industry. Journal of Cases on Information Technology. https://doi.org/10.4018/JCIT.296255

Al-Omoush, K. S., Garrido, R., and Cañero, J. (2023). The Impact of Government Use of Social Media and Social Media Contradictions on Trust in Government and Citizens' Attitudes in Times of Crisis. Journal of Business Research, 159, Article 113748. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.113748

Basyir, A., Agustian, E. S., and Amelia, A. (2020). A Review of Penetration Tungsten Based Projectile on Depth of Penetration at Armor of Ceramic Based. Jurnal Pertahanan Media Informasi TTG Kajian and Strategi Pertahanan Yang Mengedepankan Identity Nasionalism and Integrity. https://doi.org/10.33172/jp.v6i3.890

Bergman, J. N., Buxton, R. T., Lin, H.-Y., Lenda, M., Attinello, K., Hajdasz, A. C., Rivest, S. A., Tran Nguyen, T., Cooke, S. J., and Bennett, J. R. (2022). Evaluating the Benefits and Risks of Social Media for Wildlife Conservation. FACETS, 7, 360–397. https://doi.org/10.1139/facets-2021-0112

Bhandari, R. S., and Bansal, S. (2019). Privacy Concerns with Social Networking Sites: An Empirical Investigation of Users in National Capital Region (NCR), India. South Asian Journal of Management, 26(3), 68.

C. K., J. (2016). Social Media and Farmers. International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology. https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2016.0531004

Chakraborty, P., and Chowdhury, A. (2021). Study of Acceptance of Indian Political Cartoons in Facebook Landscape. International Journal of Innovative Technology and Exploring Engineering. https://doi.org/10.35940/ijitee.j9450.08101021

Cowley, S., Whittaker, K., Malone, M., Donetto, S., Grigulis, A., and Maben, J. (2015). Why Health Visiting? Examining the Potential Public Health Benefits from Health Visiting Practice Within a Universal Service: A Narrative of the Literature. International Journal of Nursing Studies. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2014.07.013

Dhiman, A., and Toshniwal, D. (2022). AI-Based Twitter Framework for Assessing the Involvement of Government Schemes in Electoral Campaigns. Expert Systems with Applications, 203, Article 117338. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2022.117338

Fissi, S., Gori, E., and Romolini, A. (2022). Social Media Government Communication and Stakeholder Engagement in the Era of Covid-19: Evidence from Italy. International Journal of Public Sector Management, 35(3), 276–293. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPSM-06-2021-0145

Freeman, J. D., and Peisah, C. (2021). Imposter Syndrome in Doctors Beyond Training: A Narrative Review. Australasian Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1177/10398562211036121

Goswami, A. K., Ramadass, S., Kalaivani, M., Nongkynrih, B., Kant, S., and Gupta, S. K. (2019a). Awareness and Utilization of Social Welfare Schemes by Elderly Persons Residing in an Urban Resettlement Colony of Delhi. Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care. https://doi.org/10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc_28_19

Goswami, A. K., Ramadass, S., Kalaivani, M., Nongkynrih, B., Kant, S., and Gupta, S. K. (2019b). Awareness and Utilization of Social Welfare Schemes by Elderly Persons Residing in an Urban Resettlement Colony of Delhi. Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care. https://doi.org/10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc_28_19

Government of India Scheme. (2024, June 24). [Government].

Green, B. N., Johnson, C. D., and Adams, A. (2006). Writing Narrative Literature Reviews for Peer-Reviewed Journals: Secrets of the Trade. Journal of Chiropractic Medicine, 5(3), 101–117. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0899-3467%2807%2960142-6

Gunasekeran, D. V., Chew, A., Chandrasekar, E. K., Rajendram, P., Kandarpa, V., Rajendram, M., Chia, A., Smith, H., and Leong, C. K. (2022). The Impact and Applications of Social Media Platforms for Public Health Responses Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Systematic Literature Review. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 24(4), e33680. https://doi.org/10.2196/33680

Han, X., and Baird, C. (2024). Government Crisis Messaging on Social Media, Citizen Online Engagement and Compliance with Policies. Public Management Review, 26(3), 613–634. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2022.2103843

Handayani, E., Haryono, S., and Darmawan, A. (2021). Transformation of Entrepreneur Education Programs (EEPS) of Indonesia's Higher Education. International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science (2147-4478). https://doi.org/10.20525/ijrbs.v10i1.976

Hansson, S., and Page, R. (2023). Legitimation in Government Social Media Communication: The Case of the Brexit Department. Critical Discourse Studies, 20(4), 361–378. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2022.2058971

Hettithanthri, U., and Hansen, P. (2021). Design Studio Practice in the Context of Architectural Education: A Narrative Literature Review. International Journal of Technology and Design Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10798-021-09694-2

Hodzi, O., and Zihnioğlu, Ö. (2024). Beyond 'Networked Individuals': Social-Media and Citizen-Led Accountability in Political Protests. Third World Quarterly, 45(1), 43–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2023.2219213

Hussin, Z. N., Chin, C. P.-Y., Sondoh, S. L., and Choo, K.-K. R. (2024). How Do Governments Leverage the Use of Social Media? A Systematic Review. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 71, 7242–7256. https://doi.org/10.1109/TEM.2023.3239382

Hyland-Wood, B., Gardner, J., Leask, J., and Ecker, U. K. H. (2021). Toward Effective Government Communication Strategies in the Era of COVID-19. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 8(1), Article 30. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-00701-w

Jayanthi, R., and Sunethra, B. (2022). Social Impacts of Data Science in Food, Housing and Medical Attention Linked to Public Service. Technoarete Transactions on Advances in Data Science and Analytics. https://doi.org/10.36647/ttadsa/01.01.a004

Jennings, F. J., Suzuki, V. P., and Hubbard, A. (2021). Social Media and Democracy: Fostering Political Deliberation and Participation. Western Journal of Communication, 85(2), 147–167. https://doi.org/10.1080/10570314.2020.1728369

Kada, A., Chouikh, A., Mellouli, S., Prashad, A. J., Straus, S. E., and Fahim, C. (2022). An Exploration of Canadian Government Officials' COVID-19 Messages and the Public's Reaction Using Social Media Data. PLOS ONE, 17(9), e0273153. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273153

Khan, G. F. (2015). Models for Social Media-Based Governments. Asia Pacific Journal of Information Systems, 25(2), 356–369. https://doi.org/10.14329/apjis.2015.25.2.356

Kim, D. K. D., and Kreps, G. L. (2020). An Analysis of Government Communication in the United States During the COVID‐19 Pandemic: Recommendations for Effective Government Health Risk Communication. World Medical and Health Policy, 12(4), 398–412. https://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.363

Kuzmina, A. M., and Abramov, D. A. (2023). Media Communication Framework of Governability in the Digital Public Administration System. In 2023 Communication Strategies in Digital Society Seminar (ComSDS) (70–73). https://doi.org/10.1109/ComSDS58064.2023.10130416

Lin, Y., and Kant, S. (2021). Using Social Media for Citizen Participation: Contexts, Empowerment, and Inclusion. Sustainability, 13(12), 6635. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13126635

Lughbi, H. (2024). A Novel NLP-Driven Dashboard for Interactive Cyberattacks Tweet Classification and Visualization. Information. https://doi.org/10.3390/info15030137

Madyatmadja, E. D., Nindito, H., and Pristinella, D. (2019). Citizen Attitude: Potential Impact of Social Media Based Government. In Proceedings of the 2019 3rd International Conference on Education and E-Learning (pp. 128–134). https://doi.org/10.1145/3371647.3371653

Mergel, I. (2012). The Social Media Innovation Challenge in the Public Sector. Information Polity, 17(3–4), 281–292. https://doi.org/10.3233/IP-2012-000281

Mergel, I., and Bretschneider, S. I. (2013). A Three-Stage Adoption Process for Social Media Use in Government. Public Administration Review, 73(3), 390–400. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12021

Nadzir, M. M. (2019). Proposed E-Government 2.0 Engagement Model Based on Social Media Use in Government Agencies. In 2019 IEEE Conference on E-Learning, e-Management and e-Services (IC3e) (16–19). https://doi.org/10.1109/IC3e47558.2019.8971778

Newman, E., Quayle, E., Cariola, L. A., Cooper, K., Koukopoulos, N., Beier, K. M., Squire, T., and Wortley, R. (2018). Deterrents to Viewing Indecent Images of Children Online: A Protocol for a Meta-Narrative Review. Social Science Protocols. https://doi.org/10.7565/ssp.2018.2648

Nguyen, T. A., Zhurkina, O., Bui, T. C., and Sokolovskiy, K. (2022). Social Media and Political Communication: Studying the Interactive Component. Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies, 9(4), 187–200. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejecs/1112

Palakodety, S., and KhudaBukhsh, A. (2020). Annotation Efficient Language Identification from Weak Labels. In Proceedings of the Sixth Workshop on Noisy User-Generated Text (W-NUT 2020) (181–192). https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2020.wnut-1.24

Peeters, J., Opgenhaffen, M., Kreutz, T., and Van Aelst, P. (2023). Understanding the Online Relationship Between Politicians and Citizens. A Study on the User Engagement of Politicians' Facebook Posts in Election and Routine Periods. Journal of Information Technology and Politics, 20(1), 44–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2022.2029791

Perukshan, N., Abhayasinghe, R. R. W. M. M. T., Wijethunga, R. A. P. K., Tennakoon, R. H. M. V. M., Samarasinghe, H. M. U. S. R., and Rathnayake, R. M. N. M. (2022). Key Success Factors and Challenges Faced by the Female Entrepreneurs - With Special Reference to the Confectionery Industry in Sri Lanka. South Asian Journal of Management, 29(4), 7.

Peterson, D. A. M., Tavanapong, W., Qi, L., Sukul, A., and Khaleel, M. (2023). The Public-Facing Policy Agenda of State Legislatures: The Communication of Public Policy via Twitter. Policy Studies Journal, 51(3), 551–571. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12485

Picazo-Vela, S., Gutiérrez-Martínez, I., and Luna-Reyes, L. F. (2012). Understanding Risks, Benefits, and Strategic Alternatives of Social Media Applications in the Public Sector. Government Information Quarterly, 29(4), 504–511. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2012.07.002

Putta, S. K., Kohir, S., and Chavan, R. A. (2022). Social Networking Sites Usage and Psychological Wellbeing: A Survey Among Telangana Youth. Ijpmonline.

Rajagopalan, S., and Ravi, S. (2020). An Assessment of the Digitalization of the Electoral Process in India and Its Impact on Voter Turnout. South Asian Journal of Management, 27(4), 59.

Reveilhac, M. (2022). The Deployment of Social Media by Political Authorities and Health Experts to Enhance Public Information During the COVID-19 Pandemic. SSM - Population Health, 19, Article 101165. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2022.101165

Roy, D., Das, M., and Deshbandhu, A. (2022). Postcolonial Pandemic Publics: Examining Social Media Health Promotion in India During the COVID-19 Crisis. Health Promotion International, 37(2), daab076. https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/daab076

Schwoerer, K. (2023). An Exploratory Study of Social Media's Role in Facilitating Public Participation in E-Rulemaking Using Computational Text Analysis Tools. Policy and Internet, 15(2), 178–203. https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.332

Shwartz-Asher, D., Chun, S. A., and Adam, N. R. (2016). Social Media User Behavior Analysis in E-Government Context. In Proceedings of the 17th International Digital Government Research Conference on Digital Government Research (39–48). https://doi.org/10.1145/2912160.2912188

Soheylizad, M., and Moeini, B. (2019). Social Media: An Opportunity for Developing Countries to Change Healthy Behaviors. Health Education and Health Promotion. https://doi.org/10.29252/HEHP.7.2.57

UN. (2018). UNITED NATIONS E-GOVERNMENT SURVEY 2018. United Nations Website.

Vaghela, P., Mothilal, R. K., Romero, D., and Pal, J. (2022). Caste Capital on Twitter: A Formal Network Analysis of Caste Relations Among Indian Politicians. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 6(CSCW1), 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1145/3512927

Verma, R. K., Kumar, S., and Ilavarasan, P. V. (2017). Government Portals, Social Media Platforms and Citizen Engagement: Some Insights. Procedia Computer Science, 122, 842–849. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2017.11.445

Wang, N., Lv, X., Sun, S., and Wang, Q. (2022). Research on the Effect of Government Media and Users' Emotional Experience Based on LSTM Deep Neural Network. Neural Computing and Applications, 34(15), 12505–12516. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-021-06567-6