Entertainment-Education and Social Change

History, Research, and Practice

Arvind Singhal, Michael J. Cody, Everett M. Rogers, Miguel Sabido, Arvind Singhal, Michael J. Cody, Everett M. Rogers, Miguel Sabido

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9781135624552
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Entertainment-Education and Social Change introduces readers to entertainment-education (E-E) literature from multiple perspectives. This distinctive collection covers the history of entertainment-education, its applications in the United States and throughout the world, the multiple communication theories that bear on E-E, and a range of research methods for studying the effects of E-E interventions. The editors include commentary and insights from prominent E-E theoreticians, practitioners, activists, and researchers, representing a wide range of nationalities and theoretical orientations.


Examples of effective E-E designs and applications, as well as an agenda for future E-E initiatives and campaigns, make this work a useful volume for scholars, educators, and practitioners in entertainment media studies, behavior change communications, public health, psychology, social work, and other arenas concerned with strategies for social change. It will be an invaluable resource book for members of governmental and non-profit agencies, public health and development professionals, and social activists.

II
Research and Implementation

8
No Short Cuts in Entertainment-Education: Designing Soul City Step-by-Step¹

Shereen Usdin
Soul City Institute of Health and Development
Arvind Singhal
Ohio University
Thuli Shongwe, Sue Goldstein, and Agnes Shabalala
Soul City Institute of Health and Development

EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION

The authors are employees of the Soul City Institute of Health and Development Communication in South Africa except for Dr. Arvind Singhal of Ohio University. Singhal served on the research advisory committee to Soul City IV, the subject of the present chapter.

“I saw it on the telly [television] and it was an eye opener. . . . We Black people have this tendency that when we have problems at home we hide them. . . . A woman who is being abused by her husband won’t tell anyone. . . . What Soul City has done is to show us that if a woman is being abused physically and emotionally, she should report that. . . . And if you see someone in the street being beaten, you are not supposed to keep quiet . . . Like in Soul City when Matlakala was being abused, the community kept quiet until she was hurt and admitted at the hospital. . . . One nurse was angry because her husband was there when Matlakala was beaten. . . . He heard when she screamed and did nothing to help. Then the next time when the beating happened, they started hitting tins and made lots of noise and that stopped the fight.”

—A woman viewer of Soul City IV from Mamelodi Township in South Africa.

In 1999, in the fourth Soul City entertainment-education television series (referred to hereafter as Soul City IV ) in South Africa, a new collective behavior was modeled to portray how neighbors might intervene in a domestic violence situation. The prevailing cultural normin South Africa was for neighbors, even if they wished to help an abused woman, not to intervene in such a situation. Wife (or partner) abuse was seen as a private matter, carried out in a private space, with curtains drawn and behind closed doors (Singhal & Rogers, 2003).

In the Soul City IV series, neighbors collectively decide to break the ongoing cycle of spousal abuse in a neighboring home. When the next wife-beating episode occurred, they gathered around the abuser’s residence and collectively banged pots and pans, censuring the abuser’s actions (Photo 8.1). This prime-time entertainment-education episode, which earned one of the highest audience ratings in South Africa in 1999, demonstrated the importance of creatively modeling collective efficacy in order to energize neighbors, who, for social and cultural reasons, felt previously inefficacious. After this episode was broadcast, pot banging to stop partner abuse was reported in several locations in South Africa. Patrons of a local pub in Thembisa Township in South Africa exhibited a variation of this practice: They collectively banged bottles in the bar when a man physically abused his girlfriend (Soul City, 2000).

PHOTO 8.1. Neighbors collectively bang pots and pans to protest Thabang’s abuse of Matlakala. (Source: Soul City Institute of Health and Development Communication. Used with permission.)

The purpose of this chapter is to describe the step-by-step process of designing the Soul City IV domestic violence campaign, including aspects of message design, social mobilization, and advocacy. The chapter discusses in detail the formative research and design inputs for the domestic violence storyline, including the pot-banging episode in which neighbors collectively protest a wife-beating situation, modeling a novel way of breaking the cycle of domestic violence. Decisions taken about the delineation of characters, plot, and situations are discussed against the backdrop of cultural and social norms in South Africa. Finally, an assessment is provided of the impact of the Soul City IV campaign on domestic violence in South Africa.

Soul City: An Ongoing Multimedia Intervention in South Africa

The Soul City Institute for Health and Development Communication (or Soul City, in short) is a nongovernmental organization based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Soul City was established in 1992 to harness the power of mass media for health and development in South Africa.

South Africa faces enormous health and development challenges: An estimated 20% of South Africans (some 4.2 million people) are HIV positive. For children under five years of age, the largest single cause of death is diarrhea. Mainly a legacy of apartheid, this dismal health record existed despite a highly developed mass media system in South Africa: Some 98% of South Africans access radio, 65% access television, and over 40% access newspapers and magazines.

The bedrock of Soul City’s health promotion strategy is entertainment-education (also called “edutainment”), defined as 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 & Rogers, 1999; Singhal & Rogers, 2002). In the realm of entertainment-education programming, Soul City pioneered several new directions, including the strategy of having an “on-going” multimedia vehicle to address high priority national health issues. Each year a series of mass media interventions are implemented, including the flagship Soul City, a 13-part prime-time television drama series broadcast on South Africa’s most popular television channel, a 60-episode prime-time radio drama series broadcast in nine South African languages, covering all regional stations, and some 2.5 million health education booklets, designed around the popularity of the TV series’ characters, which are serialized by 11 major newspapers and distributed nationally.

Each year, after the television and radio series are broadcast, several campaign activities are implemented to keep people talking about Soul City and the issues it covers. Such initiatives include the “Soul City Search for Stars” (to recruit talent for next year’s television series), and the “Soul City Health Care Worker of the Year” (to recognize outstanding grassroots community workers). The ability of the Soul City Project (including its various media components) to attract advertising revenue allows an unusual opportunity to recover the costs of media production.

The first Soul City series (in 1994) focused on maternal and child health, and HIV prevention. The second Soul City series (in 1996) focused on HIV prevention, housing and land reform, and tuberculosis and tobacco control. The third Soul City series (in 1997) dealt with HIV prevention, alcohol abuse, energy conservation, and violence prevention. The fourth Soul City series (in 1999) focused primarily on violence against women, youth sexuality and AIDS, hypertension, personal finance, and small business development. While a fifth and a sixth Soul City series were implemented in 2001 and 2002, respectively, the present chapter focuses primarily on the fourth series.

THE FORMATIVE RESEARCH PROCESS FOR SOUL CITY IV

As with all Soul City media materials, extensive formative research was conducted to design the fourth series. Soul City IV ’s 18-month formative research process included (1) stakeholder consultations, (2) literature reviews, (3) case studies of abused women and abusers, (4) general audience research, and (5) workshops with the National Network on Violence against Women (NNVAW). Soul City IV extended the core edutainment vehicle to include a partnership with the NNVAW, a coalition of over 1,500 activists and community organizations in South Africa (Usdin et al., 2000).

Three members of NNVAW, Mpho Thekiso, Lisa Vetten and David Bohlale, worked closely with Soul City in developing the domestic violence series. Vetten’s extensive experience in working with abused women, and Bohlale’s experience as a male gender activist, brought important perspectives to the project, while Thekiso was critical in mobilizing NNVAW members. Incorporating the “male” perspective was essential to engage men in the audience, as opposed to alienating them. Mmatshilo Motsei, an outspoken survivor of domestic violence in South Africa, also worked closely with the team, providing invaluable inputs in developing the fourth series. The storyline was also extensively workshopped with a group of men (many ex-abusers) working in an organization aimed at transforming other male abusers.

Stakeholder consultations involved in-depth interviews with government and civil society officials who were involved in addressing gender-based violence in South Africa. Stakeholders were concerned that when the Soul City IV series motivated abused women to take action, it could place them at increased risk for harm. So the need to establish a “safety net” to assist abused women was broached. The idea to establish a toll-free telephone helpline for women experiencing domestic violence emerged from these consultations. The helpline was advertised in all campaign materials and activities.

An extensive literature review helped situate the Soul City IV series in a human rights framework, focusing on the rights of battered women and of their children. It highlighted the adverse impacts of domestic violence on abused women, and on the children who witnessed the violence. It noted that patriarchal attitudes endorsing gender violence were handed down in-tergenerationally. Male children were socialized by their fathers to believe that they were the “captains of the ship,” while female children were socialized by their mothers “to endure.”

The literature review revealed that while abused women showed a strong desire to seek recourse from the law, various structural barriers prevented them from seeking help, stemming from the indifference of health workers, the police, and the judiciary. So it was decided to depict the reality of police indifference and apathy to domestic violence situations while at the same time role modeling how health workers, the police, and judges should behave in handling such cases. It was clear from the formative research that the police, healthworkers, and magistrates needed to be trained to better handle cases of gender-based violence. Accordingly, excerpted clips from Soul City IV were used to develop training materials for healthworkers, police, and the judiciary. The literature review highlighted the important role that society plays in perpetuating domestic violence, which is widely perceived as a “private affair.” This attitude, pervasive among members of the general audience in South Africa, as well as among health workers, police, and judiciary, perpetuated widespread tolerance of domestic violence. It was decided to focus the Soul City series on shifting social norms away from tolerating domestic violence. Community action was the way to accomplish this goal.

The NNVAW compiled eight detailed case studies of abused women in South Africa. Further, four focus groups interviews, and four in-depth interviews were conducted with abused women. Their narratives brought realism to the storyline. Another focus group was conducted with male perpetrators. Additionally, four focus groups interviews were conducted with the general public, from both urban and rural areas.

Translating Formative Research Findings

The composite picture that emerged from this formative research process was that gender inequality lies at the heart of domestic violence. Women are expected to tolerate abuse, and men believe they have the right to discipline their partners who are “disobedient.” The practice of lobola (or “bride price”) allowed men to view their spouses as personal property and to abuse them at will. Women were expected to make their marriages work whatever the cost. Domestic violence was culturally tolerated. Women were resigned to accept domestic violence as their lot in life, as something inevitable.

The next step was to translate these formative research insights into clear message briefs for the Soul City IV scriptwriters, producers, and directors. A workshop was held with NNVAW members, representing all provinces of South Africa. Consensus was reached on key message issues. It was decided that the television series would be combined with an advocacy campaign to tackle structural barriers that stopped women from seeking help. The message brief was then presented, and discussed intensively in a workshop with the creative team. Mmatshilo Motsei, a survivor of gender violence, attended this workshop, and shared her poignant story. The scriptwriters were then in a workshop with Men for Change, a men’s organization that works to reduce domestic violence. The organization includes several men who previously abused their partners. The creative team also watched a number of feature films on domestic violence, immersing themselves in the subject matter.

Scriptwriting

An extensive process of scriptwriting ensued. Story outlines were developed, and developed into scripts. These draft storylines were discussed by audience groups in both rural and urban South Africa. Their feedback, together with that from NNVAW members, was incorporated into new drafts of the scripts. Care was taken to ensure that domestic violence was well integrated into the drama, and that the situations resonated with the audiences’ experiences.

Many alterations to the storyline were made. For example, group feedback on the early scripts indicated that Thabang, the perpetrator-protagonist of domestic violence, was portrayed as “too monstrous.” Male audience members distanced themselves from Thabang’s behavior, perceiving him as a “sick beast.” Thabang’s behavior was toned downto depict the abuser as a respected person. Also, the domestic violence storyline, initially planned for the first episode, was shifted to the fourth episode, to allow audiences to first see Thabang’s “nicer” side, and also to show his family in happier times. This adjustment was important to convey the cycle of abuse in which women remain trapped: They hope that their happy times will return.

Further, in their enthusiasm to convey the intergenerational pattern of domestic violence, the scriptwriters initially created a highly dysfunctional family. Pretesting showed that audience members saw Thabang’s behavior as genetically determined, rather than as the result of negative socialization. The storyline was altered to emphasiz...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PREFACE
• LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES, AND PHOTOS
• I: HISTORY AND THEORY
• II: RESEARCH AND IMPLEMENTATION
• III: ENTERTAINMENT-EDUCATION INTERVENTIONS AND THEIR OUTCOMES
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS