1 / 14

Entertainment-Education A Critical Assessment of the History and Development

This panel discussion critically assesses the history, theory, and practice of Entertainment-Education (EE) from a participatory perspective and beyond. It examines the failure of EE to incorporate new theoretical perspectives addressing poverty, underdevelopment, and health inequities, and its heavy reliance on individual-level change driven by donor agendas. The panel also highlights the need for richer culture-driven communication perspectives in evaluating EE interventions. Additionally, it explores theoretical challenges such as dialogic communication, liberating pedagogy, and the role of culture in sense-making processes.

tonif
Download Presentation

Entertainment-Education A Critical Assessment of the History and Development

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. 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

  2. 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?

  3. 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.

  4. 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

  5. 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.

  6. 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)

  7. 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).

  8. 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

  9. 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

  10. 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)

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

  12. 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 Sense–Making processes • Telenovelas, storytelling – understanding potential of soap operas • Methodological challenges to capture these processes

  13. Theoretical Challenges (2) Organization and Systems Perspectives • 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 • Framework on democracy and citizenship (Chantal Mouffe – 1993/2005)

  14. 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

More Related