Is Social Media Killing Entertainment Education (EE) for Behavior Change?
Summary:
Part of Entertainment Education's power for behavior change is how the audience can come to care about characters, identify with them, mentally rehearse to modeled behavior and begin to emulate it. Many programs globally have proven this concept. A 2018 Summit theme was how the EE experience could be deepened by social media/transmedia approaches that extend the ways audiences can encounter and engage with the characters in more traditional EE formats. Instead, short form social media are becoming the preferred medium instead of, not in addition to, mass media-based story telling. Why? Are they less expensive/time intensive to produce? Are producers pandering to shorter audience attention span? What effect does this have on the processes of identification, empathy, and narrative cohesion? What is lost in translation to these newer approaches and what is gained? Are these formats simply raising issues but not allowing a purposive story to unfold or do they put narrative construction into the hands of audiences to develop according to their own needs? Does this enhance or undermine how audiences view the complexity of behavior? Does this affect how learning leads to action? How should EE continue to evolve in the new digital environment?
Discussion/Implications for the Field:
We all know the media landscape is changing and becoming increasingly fragmented. How can we take advantage of the opportunity of social media without losing the power of the story? What have we learned from the experience to date with existing transmedia programs? Web-based EE?
Abstract submitted by:
Caroline Jacoby - JHU
Martine Bouman - Center for Media & Health
Douglas Storey - JHU
Uttara Bharath-Kumar - JHU
Part of Entertainment Education's power for behavior change is how the audience can come to care about characters, identify with them, mentally rehearse to modeled behavior and begin to emulate it. Many programs globally have proven this concept. A 2018 Summit theme was how the EE experience could be deepened by social media/transmedia approaches that extend the ways audiences can encounter and engage with the characters in more traditional EE formats. Instead, short form social media are becoming the preferred medium instead of, not in addition to, mass media-based story telling. Why? Are they less expensive/time intensive to produce? Are producers pandering to shorter audience attention span? What effect does this have on the processes of identification, empathy, and narrative cohesion? What is lost in translation to these newer approaches and what is gained? Are these formats simply raising issues but not allowing a purposive story to unfold or do they put narrative construction into the hands of audiences to develop according to their own needs? Does this enhance or undermine how audiences view the complexity of behavior? Does this affect how learning leads to action? How should EE continue to evolve in the new digital environment?
Discussion/Implications for the Field:
We all know the media landscape is changing and becoming increasingly fragmented. How can we take advantage of the opportunity of social media without losing the power of the story? What have we learned from the experience to date with existing transmedia programs? Web-based EE?
Abstract submitted by:
Caroline Jacoby - JHU
Martine Bouman - Center for Media & Health
Douglas Storey - JHU
Uttara Bharath-Kumar - JHU
Source
Approved abstract for the postponed 2020 SBCC Summit in Marrakech, Morocco. Provided by the International Steering Committee for the Summit. Image credit: Pixabay
