Voice Out: An Entertainment-Education Approach?

Introduction

"I think that through these programmes, people's views on the HIV/Aids virus will change. It tells people not to be sexually active until they are married. So I think that it will have a positive effect on many people and their lives." (Urban female pupil at Riverdene Secondary, Newlands, interview 27.05.02)

An Entertainment-Education (EE) approach has an established convention: it is theory based, utilises a comprehensive evaluation process with formative evaluation being paramount, it is a highly consultative process, its design makes purposive use of an entertaining medium to enhance and facilitate behaviour change, and it employs impact evaluation of the intervention.

In this study we have chosen to examine two out of five insert programmes called Voice Out, which was broadcast on the free-to-air channel, SABC 1, within the youth magazine programme, Take 5. We specifically chose Voice Out because the producers at the time were not aware of the strategies and methodologies that underpin EE. Voice Out dealt with the specific health communication issue of teenager sexuality within the highly charged environment of HIV/AIDS.

Mass health communication campaigns specifically use EE as an effective strategy to facilitate desired behaviour change. The insight offered by entertainment-education and supported by various academics in the field of health promotion, is that knowledge is not a sufficient condition for behaviour change (Parker, 1994; Piotrow et. al, 1997; Soul City, 2001; Tomaselli and Shepperson, 1997; Parker, Dalrymple and Durden, 2000). Voice Out was an attempt to fill the gap between knowledge and sexual behaviour among South African youth. The list of mass health communication campaigns that utilise the EE approach is lengthy: the Hum Log television series in India, which promoted family planning; the Philippine Multi Media Campaign for young people, which promoted sexual responsibility in youth; the Sesame Street television series was designed to stimulate the development of children in the United States; the radio programmes in Nepal, which promoted family planning; Soul City in South Africa which dealt with a number of health communication issues such as tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and family planning (Singhal and Rogers, 1999; Meyer, 1994; Coleman, 2000; Storey and Boulay, 2001; Soul City, 2001). Because the production Voice Out addresses what is considered to be a pro-social health communication message, that of sexual responsibility in youth, we considered it an ideal example for analysing how producers, without the knowledge of the EE approach, would produce within this field.

The focus of this essay is to discuss to what extent EE methods and strategies were unconsciously applied in the process of making Voice Out. The essay consists of three major parts based on the following definition of EE:

Entertainment-education strategy is the process of purposely designing and implementing a mediated communication form [1] with the potential of entertaining and educating people [2] in order to enhance and facilitate different stages of prosocial (behaviour) change [3]. (Bouman, 1998:25)

Thus we will start by analysing the research, conceptualisation, production, and transmission of the insert programmes that constitute Voice Out, in the light of theories and methods that underpin EE [1]. Secondly we will discuss to what extent Voice Out was able to combine the two elements of education and entertainment, touching on the documentary genre within which the inserts are produced [2]. Because "the theory-based nature of entertainment-education increases the audience effects" (Singhal and Rogers 1999:211), we would also like to discuss to what degree the content of the programme relates to theories of behavioural change that are central to the field of EE. Here we will assess its impact using a controlled qualitative impact evaluation [3].