The Entertainment-Education Strategy

The first examples of entertainment-education are as ancient as the art of storytelling if we consider that mythological chronicles were used to teach moral principles of life. Moreover, through history, folk media, such as music, dance or tales, have been used not only for recreation, but also for instructional purposes (Khalid &

Ahmed, 2014). Consequently, they are part of people’s informal education (W. J. Brown

& Singhal, 1999).

Nevertheless, “the earliest well known illustration of the education entertainment strategy can be traced to the radio drama The Lawsons” (Khalid &

Ahmed, 2014, p. 73), followed by The Arches. This last one is a radio soap opera broadcast on the BBC which promotes agricultural innovations among farmers through an entertaining story line (W. J. Brown & Singhal, 1999). From that moment on, this educational and communication strategy has been popular among international health promotion programme planners (Hether, Huang, Beck, Murphy,

& Valente, 2008). Therefore, in the late nineties there were about 75 entertainment- education programmes in progress in more than 40 countries (W. J. Brown & Singhal, 1999). Nowadays, however, we can cite more than 200 entertainment-education initiatives in 50 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas (Igartua, 2011).

Consequently, this strategy has been incorporated into a wide range of entertaining products, such as television series (Hether et al., 2008; Igartua & Vega Casanova, 2016), radio soap operas (Rogers et al., 1999; Vaughan & Rogers, 2000) and magazines (Hust et al., 2017), for covering different health or social issues, such as AIDS prevention, sexual assault prevention and healthy eating (Ayala et al., 2015;

Hether et al., 2008; Hust et al., 2017; Igartua, Cheng, & Lopes, 2003; Khalid & Ahmed, 2014; Vaughan, Rogers, Singhal, & Swalehe, 2000), and in lots of different countries, such as Peru, Colombia, South Africa, the United States, Jamaica or Tanzania (W. J.

Brown & Singhal, 1999; Forster, Allem, Mendez, Qazi, & Unger, 2016; Hether et al.,

2008; Hust et al., 2017; Igartua & Vega Casanova, 2016; Rogers et al., 1999; Y. J. Shin, Miller-Day, Hecht, & Krieger, 2017).

Accordingly, research has supported the effectiveness of integrating educational messages into entertainment products for preventing sexual assault (Hust et al., 2017), increasing the adoption of family planning methods (Rogers et al., 1999;

Vaughan & Rogers, 2000), preventing youth substance (alcohol and drugs) abuse (Y.

J. Shin et al., 2017; van Leeuwen et al., 2013), increasing viewers’ knowledge about breast cancer (Hether et al., 2008; Wilkin et al., 2007) and improving awareness and knowledge about kidney disease, the transplantation process and important aspects of self-care in patients with end-stage renal disease (Forster et al., 2016), among others.

Moreover, a meta-analysis of studies on the impact of entertainment-education on health communication demonstrated that it had a significant, although small, effect (r = .12, p < .001) on persuasion (F. Shen & Han, 2014). At any rate, this effect is greater than the effect of traditional health campaigns, and it shows that the entertainment- education strategy is more effective than traditional campaigns for health issues (Igartua, 2017).

From the beginning, the entertainment-education strategy has been grounded in the social learning or social cognitive theory (Forster et al., 2016; Moyer- Gusé, 2008). According to this well-known theory, developed by Bandura, knowledge, attitudes and behaviours can be developed and influenced by direct experience or by observing and imitating the overt behaviour of other individuals who serve as role models (de Graaf & van Leeuwen, 2017; Hether et al., 2008; Rogers et al., 1999). This process is reinforced while observing the consequences of the behaviour; beneficial consequences will positively reinforce the behaviour, whereas negative consequences will negatively reinforce the behaviour (Vaughan & Rogers, 2000).

Accordingly, characters in the entertainment-education product serve as role models that demonstrate how to perform a desirable behaviour (Rogers et al., 1999; Y.

J. Shin et al., 2017). Therefore, these characters would perform the recommended behaviour, such as using a condom to prevent HIV (Vaughan et al., 2000), and that would result in behaviour change in the audience (Y. J. Shin et al., 2017). Consequently,

“it is important to make sure that positive role models support all of the values important to the message” (Khalid & Ahmed, 2014, p. 78). Moreover, it is also important to show the consequences derived from these behaviours. Provided that there are positive consequences (e.g., good health from regular exercising), the recipient will be more likely to copy this behaviour (de Graaf & van Leeuwen, 2017).

Even though the entertainment-education strategy has been found to be effective with different types of media content, such as TV medical dramas (Hether et al., 2008) or magazines (Hust et al., 2017), the most well-known interventions have been conducted through telenovelas or soap operas (Singhal, Obregon, & Rogers, 1994).

Simplemente María was the first example of a pro-social telenovela (Khalid &

Ahmed, 2014). Created in Peru in 1969, it tells the story of a migrant single mother who decides to enrol in adult literacy classes and to learn how to sew. She became a fashion designer and, at the end of the soap opera, she owns a successful clothing boutique (Singhal et al., 1994). Therefore, she succeeded in achieving upward social mobility (Igartua, 2011; Singhal et al., 1993b). Although there was no quantitative research and the effects of this Peruvian telenovela on its audience were unplanned and unintentional, during its broadcast thousands of women decided, like María, to enrol in adult literacy and sewing classes (Singhal et al., 1994, 1993b). Thus, this pioneering experience demonstrated that soap operas could convey educational messages (Singhal et al., 1993b).

Following this success, Miguel Sabido, a writer, producer and director in Mexico, created an entertainment-education methodology and produced eleven pro- social telenovelas (Khalid & Ahmed, 2014). The aim of these productions was to

educate the audience about values, beliefs and practices intended to advance development in the country, such as sexual responsibility among teenagers and adult literacy (W. J. Brown & Singhal, 1999; Khalid & Ahmed, 2014). These telenovelas were commercial successes with high audience ratings and they were successful in meeting their educational aims (Singhal et al., 1994).

The success of these productions inspired other countries to produce entertainment-education soap operas (W. J. Brown & Singhal, 1999). Consequently, telenovelas have been commonly and successfully used for conveying educational messages and promoting behaviour changes, especially among Hispanic audiences and in developing countries (W. J. Brown & Singhal, 1999; Forster et al., 2016; Singhal et al., 1993b; Wilkin et al., 2007).

Finally, one unique aspect of entertainment-education is its narrative format (Asbeek Brusse et al., 2015; Moyer-Gusé, 2008). In this sense, we can define a narrative as “a story or series of events that has an identifiable beginning, middle, and end, during which characters may encounter and then resolve a crisis or crises” (Fitzgerald

& Green, 2017, p. 50). The narrative structure facilitates transportation or narration involvement and identification with the characters, two key mechanisms underlying narrative persuasion (Brusse et al., 2017; Fitzgerald & Green, 2017; Moyer-Gusé, 2008), as we shall see.

In the next section we will analyse these mechanisms that explain the power of narratives in promoting positive attitudes and behaviours, since the social cognitive theory may not be sufficient to explain the effects of entertainment-education (Slater

& Rouner, 2002). For that reason, the study of narrative persuasion has been incorporated into entertainment-education research (Igartua, 2011), which has led to the incorporation of some theoretical models in this field: the extended elaboration likelihood model (Slater & Rouner, 2002), the transportation-imagery model (Green

& Brock, 2002), and the entertainment overcoming resistance model (Moyer-Gusé,

2008). Accordingly, in the next section we will review these three theoretical models and the mechanisms that explain narrative persuasion.