Download Entertainment-Education A Critical Assessment of the History and

Entertainment-Education
A Critical Assessment of the History and Development
Thomas Tufte & Rafael Obregon
Ørecomm Global Launch Panel
PCR Section, IAMCR World Congress
Stockholm, 22 July 2008
Introduction
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Theory: Re-considering the field of EE from a
participatory perspective and beyond
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Practice: One of the most innovative and used
comm strategies in ComDev in the past 2
decades – more than 200 experiences
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Evaluation: Consolidated strategy, but what do
the evaluations say about outputs and results?
Claim No 1
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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.
Claim No 2
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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
Claim No 3
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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.
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)
Defining EE (2)
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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).
The Known Story of EE (1934-2004)
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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
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…
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Challenge – disconnect between these experiences
and the institutionally driven EE initiatives
Critiques of EE practice
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A critique of the narrow focus on BCC –
Waisbord (2001)
Other critiques: non-participatory, topdown, donor-driven, unsustainable,
instrumental, limited outcomes
Diffusion and participation: a false
dichotomy – Morris (2003)
EE Scholarship Expanding

EE and Social Change revisited
 EE
from a Freireian perspective
 EE and the Public Sphere
 Sense-making and multiple mediations
Theoretical Challenges (1)
Dialogic Communication and liberating pedagogy
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Action-reflection-action
Naming the world
Participatory approaches to social change
Culture as Circulation of meaning
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Audience Reception Analysis and Sense–Making processes
Telenovelas, storytelling – understanding potential of soap
operas
Methodological challenges to capture these processes
Theoretical Challenges (2)
Organization and Systems Perspectives
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Organizing for Social Change
Complexity theory
Governance and Social Change

From Service Provision to Advocacy
Post–Development
* Issues of voice, questioning the dominant discourse of
development
Radical democracy
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Framework on democracy and citizenship (Chantal Mouffe –
1993/2005)
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
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