Entertainment education (“edutainment”) is a communication strategy that works through mass entertainment media with the aim of promoting a better context for behavior change than the delivery of information alone. We experimentally evaluate season 3 of the edutainment TV series MTV Shuga, produced by MTV Staying Alive Foundation and filmed in Nigeria. Shuga 3 consists of eight episodes of 22 minutes each. While the main focus of the series is HIV, a subplot involves a married couple with a violent husband.
In this paper, we focus on this theme and assess the impact of Shuga on attitudes toward domestic violence. We find broadly positive effects. Moreover, the effect seems to be concentrated among people who recall the show and the narrative around the characters well, consistent with the idea of edutainment.
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After Cyclone Gaja wreaked havoc in Tamil Nadu, a community radio station in Nagapattinam district started an initiative called “Voice of the Vulnerable”. The initiative aims to engage and empower coastal communities with stories of environment and climate change affecting their everyday lives. The radio station also conducts community journalism workshops to train the youth about the various issues in the regions and also ways to report them.
BBC Media Action has been supporting 15 local radio stations across Zambia to cover local governance issues and improve accountability in the delivery of critical services including education, sanitation and access to water through two projects: Radio Waves (since 2014) and Zambia Speaks! (since 2016).