Cambodia Loy9

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) engaged BBC Media Action to implement the Multimedia Initiative For Youth Civic Education In Cambodia to increase youth access to information about civic life and opportunities for participation. Known to the public as Loy9 (a slang term of praise amongst young Cambodians,. ages 15 - 20), it combines a television magazine, a TV drama, a phone-in radio programme, public service announcements, websites, apps and live games, and events. The show started broadcasting on January 15 2012 and began a second series in 2013.This document describes research in preparation for writing and broadcasting the original series.

Because, as stated in the document, young people in Cambodia are significant media consumers, and they place considerable trust in the media, this multi-media project was designed to increase levels of understanding of key facts and concepts necessary for meaningful engagement in decision making so that young Cambodians could become active participants in civic life as a key to national and local development.

"The formative KAP (Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices) study took place in August 2010, and in 2011 the research team was primarily engaged in user-testing a wide range of ideas being developed by production teams. Since then, qualitative research has fed continuously into production and project strategy. One example of this is the use of Loy9 audience panels of 60 young people from across Cambodia. The BBC Media Action research team selected a sample of Cambodian youth, which included a slightly higher proportion of online users than in the general population. The researchers got to know the panellists, finding out in particular about their experiences of civic participation, and revisiting them every one-to-two months to learn whether they are viewing or listening to Loy9 on TV, radio or online, and if so what their reactions have been."

According to the monitoring of the project in October of 2012, "Loy9 [has] become a household name. Its weekly TV audience is around 2.5 million; its Facebook page is the second most popular media page in the country; and its online episodes have so far been watched 250,000 times. In a country of 14 million with only 7% internet access, this online success has been particularly striking." A blog associated with the BBC Media Action blog site suggests that at least 2,300 callers called this one hour weekly show between January 2012 and January 2013.

Researcher found that over half of the panellists interviewed "said they had learned something specific about civic engagement from Loy9....A common response has been to say that Loy9 encourages young people to be "brave". This is interesting because it is not a word that has been often used in the programmes"; however, it is consistent with a goal of encouraging young people to ask questions of people in authority.

Click here and here to read blogs on this topic from the BBC Media Action blog site.