Thread by @moefeliu

Today, #PuertoRico's Dept. of Health published and quickly removed a few social media posts about safe sex practices during the pandemic. The backlash was instant.

A case study on why knowing the culture and social context of your audience is KEY. 🧵apnews.com/article/pandem…

Knowing your audience is comms 101. But knowing your audience goes beyond demographics or consumer behaviors. A critical and sometimes ignored aspect (case in point) is the importance of knowing the social and cultural context of that audience.

#PuertoRico is a socially conservative place, where safe sex education is rare. Openly discussing masturbation (let alone suggesting its practice) does not happen, unless it's comedy.

Talking openly about sex and sexuality remains taboo in #PuertoRico. Unless women are being sexualized in the media... Then it's OK, and even so the discussion is not open but rather full of innuendo.

This election cycle the discussion about implementing a curriculum to teach with a gender perspective has been controversial and become a political football. The meaning of teaching with a gender perspective has been misconstrued by some and weaponized by social conservatives.

With this in mind, who thought that openly suggesting masturbation as a safe sex alternative would be well received?

To be clear, I think safe sex education is really important. I think telling people how they can keep a healthy sex life while avoiding #COVID19 is a great idea (and important). NYC did it. But #PuertoRico is NOT NYC. www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/dow…

On top of everything else, we are a week away from the election in #PuertoRico. Tensions are high. Religious and social conservatives have sizable political power. Of course, they reacted negatively. Per the PRDoH some groups were "offended".

As Puerto Rican and as a communicator, it's hard for me to understand how the Dept. of Health could not anticipate the backlash, the memes and jokes. Sure, hindsight is 20/20, but this should have been an easy one.

I think these safe sex during #COVID19 messages could have been framed and delivered differently because they are very important. The idea was good, but the execution missed the mark.

/end of my random #scicomm lesson.