Social Masks and Dramaturgy in Diabetes Health Campaigns in Low Resourced and “Closed” Communities

Diabetes campaigns in remote villages of Botswana bring together cultural groups which come from completely different life worlds into communication events: the urbanized, educated and “rich” diabetes health promotion officials and the poor and illiterate remote villagers. Based on persona, a concept that represents the construction and employment of social roles and identities to mediate between the inner self and external social world, were expected to make conscious decisions to “fashion” their interpersonal communications around remote villagers’ cultural, communication and discursive practices. Grounded on the premise that different cultures have different communication practices, different sense making practices, and different ways of seeing reality, the objective of this study was to find out the personae that diabetes health promoters adopt when communicating diabetes campaign information to remote villagers. Using a participant observation of diabetes public wellness talks and semi-structured interviews, the findings show that diabetes health promotion practitioners adopt social masks which are quite different from, and are polar opposites of their own interpersonal communication practices when disseminating diabetes health messages in remote areas. They adopt verbal behaviours, non-verbal behaviours and contextual influences that shape conversations and narratives in remote villages and incorporate them into their interpersonal communication.