EntertainmentEducation A Critical Assessment of the History and Development

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Entertainment-EducationA Critical Assessment of
the History and Development

• Thomas Tufte Rafael Obregon
• Ørecomm Global Launch Panel
• PCR Section, IAMCR World Congress
• Stockholm, 22 July 2008

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Introduction

• Theory Re-considering the field of EE from a
  participatory perspective and beyond
• Practice One of the most innovative and used
  comm strategies in ComDev in the past 2 decades
  more than 200 experiences
• Evaluation Consolidated strategy, but what do
  the evaluations say about outputs and results?

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Claim No 1

• While EE emerged at the time as a fresh
  contribution to the field of development and
  health communication, it has failed to
  incorporate new theoretical perspectives that
  address the underlying causes on poverty,
  underdevelopment, and health inequities.

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Claim No 2

• The application and practice of EE remains
  heavily driven by perspectives focused on
  creating change at individual level, the result
  of the shortsighted agendas of international
  donors and funding agencies

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Claim No 3

• Evaluation of EE interventions have failed to
  take into account richer culture-driven
  communication perspectives that could help
  examine how EE content serves as a platform for
  people to make sense of their own realities,
  create and circulate meanings, and act upon to
  transform their environments.

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Defining EE (1)

• the process of purposely designing and
  implementing a media message to both entertain
  and educate, in order to increase audience
  members knowledge about an issue, create
  favorable attitudes, shift social norms, and
  change the overt behavior of individuals and
  communities (Singhal and Rogers 2004)

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Defining EE (2)

• Entertainment-Education is the use of
  entertainment as a communicative practice crafted
  to strategically communicate about development
  issues in a manner and with a purpose that can
  range from the more narrowly defined social
  marketing of individual behaviours to the
  liberating and citizen-driven articulation of
  social change agendas (Tufte 2005).

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The Known Story of EE (1934-2004)

• Popeye, 1930ies, US
• The Archers, 1950ies, UK
• Simplesmente Maria, 1960ies, Peru
• Sabido soap operas, 1970ies Mexico
• Pro-development soap operas
• 1990ies proliferation of the strategy TfD,
  concerts, radio dramas, computer games, etc

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Other stories of EE

• Forum theatre participatory theatre (Augusto
  Boal)
• Social Critique from within established media
  (Dias Gomes in Rede Globo)
• Social movements use of EE theatre, musik,
  film
• Challenge disconnect between these experiences
  and the institutionally driven EE initiatives

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Critiques of EE practice

• A critique of the narrow focus on BCC Waisbord
  (2001)
• Other critiques non-participatory, top-down,
  donor-driven, unsustainable, instrumental,
  limited outcomes
• Diffusion and participation a false dichotomy
  Morris (2003)

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EE Scholarship Expanding

• EE and Social Change revisited
• EE from a Freireian perspective
• EE and the Public Sphere
• Sense-making and multiple mediations

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Theoretical Challenges (1)

• Dialogic Communication and liberating pedagogy
• Action-reflection-action
• Naming the world
• Participatory approaches to social change
• Culture as Circulation of meaning
• Audience Reception Analysis and SenseMaking
  processes
• Telenovelas, storytelling understanding
  potential of soap operas
• Methodological challenges to capture these
  processes

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Theoretical Challenges (2)

• Organization and Systems Perspectives
• Organizing for Social Change
• Complexity theory
• Governance and Social Change
• From Service Provision to Advocacy
• PostDevelopment
• Issues of voice, questioning the dominant
  discourse of development
• Radical democracy
• Framework on democracy and citizenship (Chantal
  Mouffe 1993/2005)

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Conclusion

• EE keeps growing as a practice of ComDev and as a
  scholarly theme
• Need to move beyond just understanding
  development interventions, dig deeper
• Still underexplored fields on learning processes,
  conceptualizing entertainment, analysing social
  change processes