Figure 5. Home Improvement (Service Alberta, 2023)
This digital public service poster is a photo linked to a Twitter post created by Service Alberta to provide Albertans with tips on protecting themselves from unprofessional businesses. The post has also attached a weblink that directs viewers to an informational page with specific actions to perform due diligence before shopping for a home improvement contractor. In addition, full-text tip sheets are also available for consumers who seek additional information. Communication between Service Alberta and consumers is paramount in ensuring the safety of Alberta's marketplace. It is imperative to serve and communicate the importance of consumer protection to protect the financial integrity of Albertans, this is especially the case with the socioeconomically vulnerable population. In turn, the Government of Alberta can establish a strong and healthy relationship with Albertan consumers built on transparency, trust, and integrity. Additionally, the public receives advice on financial literacy, consumer safety, and knowledge of provincial services in return. The Government of Alberta provides consumer protection tip sheets to inform Albertan consumers of their rights and privileges. Tip sheets are divided by business sectors Service Alberta has jurisdiction over, such as high-cost credit loans, home improvement, and residential tenancy. The information consists of consumer practices on fraud and scam protection as well as reliable advice on best consumer practices. Service Alberta regularly updates these tip sheets to ensure that Albertans are up to date on any institutional changes or to inform them of new issues in the marketplace.
Consumer tip sheets are crucial in communicating and educating Alberta's consumers about dangerous business practices, fraudulent activity, and how the Government of Alberta is promoting a fair marketplace through their operations. An example of these operations is social justice initiatives which raise awareness of unfair business practices and how to prevent victimization. With the boom of technology and social media, digital public service posters serve as an excellent and efficient medium to disseminate useful information to the public. This form of information access for Alberta consumers allows government agencies to compress and concentrate information from various sources into one place. Spruce & Leaf (2017) state that in the event social media is utilized as a mechanism to spark conversation about political and socioeconomic issues, such agencies who aim to raise awareness find a new home to inform and interact with the public in a mutually beneficial way. More specifically, government agencies are able to extrapolate and condense from various sources such as databases, historical records, and other websites to in essence spoon-feed the public with crucial information to protect themselves. These digital public service posters are also able to provide internet weblinks to redirect readers to original and external sources for additional information. In doing so, the government can be confident that they have provided tools to access content for the public and serve as a digital cornerstone on the topic of financial safety (Spruce & Leaf, 2017). Centralizing such information in the form of digital forms and posters gives the Government of Alberta the ability to serve the public in an effective manner and maintain a digital record of relevant information for ease of access and convenience. Schatz (1997, as cited in Kobayashi & Takeda, 2000) found that the number of internet users from 1992 to 1997 alone skyrocketed from one million to 25 million users. With the advancement of social media in the past two decades, the internet has become the primary domain in which the public consumes content and information. To not take advantage of such a wide audience would be foolish for any agency trying to perform public outreach and information dissemination. Additionally, digital public service posters of this nature provide consumers with a call to action to share essential information with loved ones and do their due diligence before buying goods and services. The CIU's goal to inform the public about consumer protection raises awareness and mobilizes consumers to take actionable steps in fostering a fair marketplace for Albertans.
References
Kobayashi, M., & Takeda, K. (2000). Information Retrieval on the web. ACM Computing Surveys, 32(2), 144-173.
https://doi.org/10.1145/358923.358934
Service Alberta. [@ServiceAlberta]. (2023, October 10). Before you hire some help, check out our home improvement tips [Tweet[.
https://twitter.com/ServiceAlberta/status/1711792460224233860
Spruce, L., & Leaf, K. (2017). Social Media for Social Justice. The Journal of Museum Education: Roundtable Reports., 42(1), 41-53.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10598650.2016.1265852