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Substantial gaps exist in the theoretical conceptualization and practical development of entertainment-education, as studies often fail to account for the ways in which intrinsic message characteristics influence subsequent behavior. These gaps served as the impetus for an international collaborative project that evaluated Vencer el Miedo ("Overcome the Fear"), a Spanish-language program that aired in Mexico from January to March 2020. The telenovela was produced with the aim of improving sexual and reproductive health knowledge and behaviors by modeling effective ways to discuss and negotiate safer sex practices. The show was accompanied by a telephone hotline called OrientaSEX operated by professional counselors from MEXFAM, Planned Parenthood's Mexican affiliate. Utilizing an interrupted time series analysis of calls made to OrientaSEX (N = 11,878) and focusing on changes in the volume of calls and the identity of callers following key moments in the storyline, the findings support the central role played by transitional characters and their similarity to audience members. Implications of these results for the theory and practice of entertainment-education are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sabido Methodology (TSM) is recognised as a discrete methodology of entertainment-education (EE). EE programmes are intentionally designed to entertain and educate through the weaving in of important health and social messaging into powerful storytelling. Sabido-style dramas are highly effective in promoting social and behaviour change around a myriad of issues and its usefulness has been widely documented in long-running serial dramas on traditional media. There is little documentation, however, of how TSM could be applied to newer media, such as social media (SM). Girlsplained was created with the aim of addressing the sexual health of young Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) women in the United Kingdom. Key lessons from the effort can be used to build a proposed framework for adapting TSM to SM, i.e., The Sabido Methodology for Social Media (TSM4SM). We hypothesise 4 key features of TSM4SM should include: 1) the major tenets of TSM in a web-based drama with shorter story arcs; 2) the use of humour as per the Laugh Model framework to create a fourth character; 3) the use of transmedia to create a SM feed following the life of the transitional character based on TSM principles; and 4) a target audience of younger people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contraceptive prevalence (CPR) in North West Nigeria is the lowest in the country coinciding with high fertility driven primarily by large family ideation. Research shows that communication about family planning, especially between spouses/partners leads to adoption of a modern method of contraception. To promote spouse and partner communication and to increase family planning use, an entertainmenteducation radio serial drama was broadcast featuring characters that modelled how to discuss having smaller families, birth spacing, contraceptive use, and maternal and child health. A post-test representative survey of 649 participants found that 71 percent listened to the programme each week. Multivariate analysis found that regular listeners were 2.4 (95% CI 1.4, 4.3) times more likely than nonlisteners to say they "currently use something to delay or avoid pregnancy." On several other behavioural and attitudinal indicators, results showed that regular listeners to the programme had more favourable scores than non-listeners to the programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a report on how Population Media Center (PMC), based in the state of Vermont in the USA, developed a Swahili-language entertainment-education programme in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to support attainment of measurable objectives in the Jane Goodall Institute's (JGI) 2012-2022 Conservation Action Plan (CAP) for the Eastern DRC. The PMC initiative consisted of a 156- episode radio serial drama titled Pambazuko ("New Dawn") that aired from February 2016 to August 2017. Pambazuko was one of three unique serial dramas broadcast in the DRC by PMC, the other two being Vivra Verra ("Time Will Tell") in French and Elembo ("Footprint") in Lingala. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]