1. Entertainment-Education A Critical Assessment of the History and Development
Thomas Tufte & Rafael Obregon
Ørecomm Global Launch Panel
PCR Section, IAMCR World Congress
Stockholm, 22 July 2008

2. Introduction
Theory: Re-considering the field of EE from a participatory perspective and beyond
Practice: One of the most innovative and used comm strategies in ComDev in the past 2 decades – more than 200 experiences
Evaluation: Consolidated strategy, but what do the evaluations say about outputs and results?

3. Claim No 1
While EE emerged at the time as a fresh contribution to the field of development and health communication, it has failed to incorporate new theoretical perspectives that address the underlying causes on poverty, underdevelopment, and health inequities.

4. Claim No 2
The application and practice of EE remains heavily driven by perspectives focused on creating change at individual level, the result of the shortsighted agendas of international donors and funding agencies

5. Claim No 3
Evaluation of EE interventions have failed to take into account richer culture-driven communication perspectives that could help examine how EE content serves as a platform for people to make sense of their own realities, create and circulate meanings, and act upon to transform their environments.

6. Defining EE (1)
“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 and Rogers 2004)

7. Defining EE (2)
Entertainment-Education is the use of entertainment as a communicative practice crafted to strategically communicate about development issues in a manner and with a purpose that can range from the more narrowly defined social marketing of individual behaviours to the liberating and citizen-driven articulation of social change agendas (Tufte 2005).

8. The Known Story of EE (1934-2004)
Popeye, 1930ies, US
The Archers, 1950ies, UK
Simplesmente Maria, 1960ies, Peru
Sabido soap operas, 1970ies Mexico
Pro-development soap operas…
1990ies proliferation of the strategy: TfD, concerts, radio dramas, computer games, etc

9. Other stories of EE
Forum theatre – participatory theatre (Augusto Boal)
Social Critique from ’within’ established media (Dias Gomes in Rede Globo)
Social movements’ use of EE – theatre, musik, film…
Challenge – disconnect between these experiences and the institutionally driven EE initiatives

10. Critiques of EE practice
A critique of the narrow focus on BCC – Waisbord (2001)
Other critiques: non-participatory, top-down, donor-driven, unsustainable, instrumental, limited outcomes
Diffusion and participation: a false dichotomy – Morris (2003)

11. EE Scholarship Expanding
EE and Social Change revisited
EE from a Freireian perspective
EE and the Public Sphere
Sense-making and multiple mediations

12. Theoretical Challenges (1)
Dialogic Communication and liberating pedagogy
Action-reflection-action
Naming the world
Participatory approaches to social change
Culture as Circulation of meaning
Audience Reception Analysis and Sense–Making processes
Telenovelas, storytelling – understanding potential of soap operas
Methodological challenges to capture these processes

13. Theoretical Challenges (2)
Organization and Systems Perspectives
Organizing for Social Change
Complexity theory
Governance and Social Change
From Service Provision to Advocacy
Post–Development
* Issues of voice, questioning the dominant discourse of development
Radical democracy
Framework on democracy and citizenship (Chantal Mouffe – 1993/2005)

14. Conclusion
EE keeps growing as a practice of ComDev and as a scholarly theme
Need to move beyond ’just’ understanding development interventions, dig deeper
Still underexplored fields on learning processes, conceptualizing entertainment, analysing social change processes