From my findings it seems entertainment-education characters may become real for learners through the processes of involvement, internalization and identification as part of the parasocial learning process. By using these active, imaginative processes learners may experience interactions with the online characters as if they are real people and discuss them in the same way as they would any other patient or colleague. Giles (2002) asserts that once an audience member has engaged in a parasocial interaction with a media character they occupy the same space in the audience member’s social network as a real person, overcoming the boundary between the media environment and the real world. Exploring learner experience suggests that discussions of entertainment-education characters by learners within their social networks may be a core element of parasocial learning that enables nurse learners to transport theory from the OLLE into the clinical setting and in doing so may promote opportunities for change in the practice environment.
Learning parasocially may enable learners to make links between theory and practice in a unique way. The educational messages embedded in entertainment-education stories that learners access through parasocial interactions with characters, seem to be remembered by the learner as a construction of the situation in the form of a story. As suggested by Sabido (in Narimann 1993) learners may disseminate this knowledge to others in their social network by discussing the character and telling their story; the character’s story becomes part of the learner’s story and knowledge may potentially be transferred from the character to the learner with the story. Schank and Berman (2006) suggest that knowledge is transferred from one person to another in the
classroom setting in this way. The discursive process between characters, nurse learners in the OLLE and their clinical colleagues seems to parallel Giles’ (2002) assertion that characters from parasocial interactions occupy the same social space as real people. This blurring of social boundaries between the OLLE and the practice setting means that a character’s story appears to become part of everyday conversations and may be discussed with colleagues in the same way that nursing interactions from a TV show such as Holby City (BBC) might be discussed in the workplace. Yet because the story under
162 discussion is supported by educational messages, the evidence to guide practice development appears to be transferred from the OLLE, through the learner to their colleagues in the telling of the character’s story.
In addition to information sharing, telling stories also seems to allow the information contained within the story to be critiqued through discussion. As Mezirow (2009) asserts that discourse involves critically reflective thinking and Vygotsky (1962) states the act of articulating an idea contributes to the understanding of it, discussing stories may help learners to validate, justify and test out their beliefs with others. Discussing stories based on interactions with patient characters may help nurse learners gain shared perspectives with their practice colleagues and work to resolving mutually experienced problems. According to Tyler (2009) it is the richness of stories that enables listeners to move beyond the basics of a problem to see where their own experience interacts with the teller; implying that it is the story that facilitates shared understanding and a desire to seek solutions to common problems collaboratively. Critiquing character stories is
comparable to the reported use of stories by nurses to share knowledge from real world experience to generate common understandings (Benner and Wrubel 1989, Adamson and Dewar 2014) that have been widely discussed in the nurse education literature (Johns and Freshwater 2005, Freshwater et al 2008, Rolfe et al 2011). As entertainment-education characters occupy the same social space as real people it seems that discussing their stories from parasocial interactions in the OLLE may help nurse learners overcome barriers to integrating knowledge from higher education into the practice setting. The implication here for nurse education is that parasocial learning may offer a unique opportunity to transcend the theory practice gap that is so commonly reported in the nurse education literature (Gallagher 2007, Moss et al 2010, Hope et al 2011, Scully et al 2011, Ajani and Moez 2011, Dadaragan et al 2012, Jamison and Lis 2014).
Rather than just transmitting educational messages, it seems learners learning parasocially may actively engage in a critical review of their practice in order to change it and that the discussion of stories about patient characters may be an integral part of this process. Although in entertainment-
163 education circles the audience member is at times described as an agent of change (Singhal et al 2004), the mechanism by which a learner may enact change is not clear. From the literature in this area it seems the learner is perceived as a disseminator of information rather than an enactor of change. This role for the learner is reflected in Sabido’s (in Nariman 1993) communication circuit (Figure 3 p.146 ) which shows the audience member transmitting the entertainment-education message to their social circle. In identifying the occurrence of parasocial learning in learner experience, I am suggesting that the conduct of the learner is an interaction within their social network and aligned to the idea of praxis as proposed by Friere (1972) in which communities reflect and act on their world in order to transform it. This position implies that learning parasocially empowers nurse learners to enact change in their practice environments. As discussed in the literature review, empowerment is a common aspiration in entertainment-education projects and though it is difficult to demonstrate as an outcome, researchers in the field have attempted to do so from its earliest inceptions (Nariman 1993, Singhal et al 1994) to recent work (Soul City Institute 2007, Singhal et al 2007). By identifying the discursive step in parasocial learning my work appears to identify the mechanism by which the learner becomes an agent for change in their social
environment. In making this connection I recommend amending Sabido’s (in Nariman 1993) communication circuit to reflect the dialectic and socially transformative nature of the learners role by adding the word “agent” and inserting an additional arrow with the label “discussion” showing communication between the learner’s social circle and the learner (See Figure 14).
This change will enhance understanding of learning processes in entertainment-education by better reflecting the discursive nature of the relationship between the learner and their community that leads to common understanding, the co-construction of knowledge between them and the desire to enact change in collaboration in the social environment.
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Figure 14 Showing Sabido’s 1993 communication circuit amended to show the active role of the learner and the community in enacting social change.