On Defining and Differentiating
… 8
Entertainment-education refers to another approach to change that evolved in some
respects within the diffusion tradition but that also has proponents who are interested in
participation. Entertainment-education is “the process of purposely designing and implementing
a media message to both entertain and educate, in order to increase audience knowledge about at
educational issue, create favorable attitudes, and change overt behavior” (Singhal & Rogers,
1999, p. xii). Entertainment-education projects have employed popular singers to encourage
sexual restraint in Mexico, the Philippines and Nigeria, among other countries. Soap operas have
carried messages about reproductive health in such countries as Egypt, Ghana, India, Nepal, and
Zimbabwe (Singhal & Rogers, 1988). Other projects utilize cartoons, theatre, and television
spots. Like social marketing, participatory dimensions of entertainment-education programs
have been considered and advocated. Because formative research is employed, it can be argued
that entertainment-education begins with a concern for audience or consumer needs and is to this
extent participatory. In addition, entertainment-education typically employs local idiom in
linguistic figures and entertainment aesthetics. For this reason it is argued that entertainment-
education is not a cultural intrusion carrying foreign aesthetics but rather is part of the local
cultural scene and hence can be participatory (Storey, 1999).
Issues
Despite the considerable amount of interest in participatory communication today, and its
variety, this approach is burdened by a number of issues or disputes. One such problem is
relatively straightforward. Due to the popularity of the approach, many projects are called
participatory by their funders and planners that in fact are participatory only in a limited sense.
For those whose work is inspired by Freire’s passionate concern for the oppressed, such uses of
the term participatory reduce it to the status of a buzzword.
Convention