History of Entertainment
Education
Acompañame ("Come Along With Me") to the
Origins of Family Planning Soaps:
The Enter-Educate Movement, 1969-present
Sarah N. Keller, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Health Communication
Emerson College
Definitions
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Define entertainment education (1 minute
short write)
Definitions
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Entertainment education—also termed
enter-educate, pro-social entertainment,
pro-development entertainment, edu-tainment and
infotainment—is defined as:
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the process of putting educational content in entertaining
formats and messages in order to:
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increase knowledge
create favorable attitudes
change overt behavior concerning an educational issue
Overview
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History
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Mexican television producer Miguel Sabido
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produced and aired the first television soap operas to promote specific
behavior change or moral values among a national audience
Efforts to promote Third World development
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of broadcast media uses to communicate social goals through
entertainment
through mass media, which began shortly after World War II
Case study: “Acompaname”
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1977-78
Mexican soap opera to promote family planning
Question 1
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How do you think entertainment education got
it start? When and where? (1 min. short
writing assignment)
History
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1951 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC):
 the British radio soap opera The Archers promoted agricultural
innovations and was immensely popular among farmers.
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1959 Jamaican government:
 a radio drama, Raymond the Sprayman, to promote mosquito eradication
and urban migration.
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1969 television in Peru:
 Simplemente María, a Cinderella story of a young woman who emigrates
from the Andes to take a job as a maid in Lima
 not designed intentionally to impact viewers' behavior
 watershed event in the history of pro-social mass media
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immense popularity throughout Latin America
impact on human behavior
Televisa & Miguel Sabido
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1975-81 Televisa aired six pro-social soap operas
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1984 Indian government and Population Communication International
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1975 Ven Conmigo (Come with Me), a soap opera to promote literacy
1977 Acompañame to promote family planning
launched Hum Log (We People) to teach people the dangers of
uncontrolled population growth
50 million viewers
1986 Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs
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enlisted two popular music singers, Tatiana and Johnny, to promote family
planning in 12 Latin American countries
History
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Today
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entertainment education has been used to promote
reproductive health in more than 20 countries
6 U.S.-funded agencies use entertainment-education
strategies:
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Academy for Educational Development (AED)
Johns Hopkins University/Population Communication Services
(JHU/PCS)
Population Communications International (PCI)
Population Services International (PSI)
Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH)
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
Question 2

Summarize the history of entertainment
education in a brief list. (1 min. exercise –
pair-share)
Televisa
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Although privately owned, Televisa was legally obligated to promote
social responsibility messages
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Mexican government 1960 TV access law
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required commercial companies to give the government direct access to
12.5% of airtime
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defined responsibilities of broadcast companies as affirming:
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respect for moral principles
human dignity
family relationships
preventing negative disturbances for the harmonious development of children
exalting the values of Mexican nationality
Question 3
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A) Do you think it is the government’s responsibility
to mandate media companies to promote “social
responsibility goals?”
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B) If so, what should these goals be?
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C) Do you think the United States currently holds a
socially responsible policy with regards to the mass
media? If so, what is it?
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(group brainstorm)
U.S. TV access laws
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U.S. Hutchins Commission in 1947
Five demands for an ideal role of communication in society:
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1934 Federal Communication Commission
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1) a truthful, comprehensive account of the day's events
2) a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism
3) a representative picture of diverse social groups
4) clarification of goals and values of society
5) full access to the day's intelligence
mandated ad revenue as the source of funding for TV stations (eclipsed non-profit
voices on the air)
Big Four networks resisted any government attempt to enforce media content
Miguel Sabido, TV Producer
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Sabido is attributed with developing the genre
of pro-social soap operas
He drew from psychology and communication
theories
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Albert Bandura's Social Learning Theory
Jung's theory about the archetypes of collective
unconscious
Peru's experience with Simplemente María
Entertainment Education
Methodology
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1) the determination of a central educational value
which all parties involved could agree on
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2) an integrated multi-disciplinary theoretical
framework
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3) a well-defined telenovela production system
Entertainment-ed
Methodology
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Each of Sabido's soap operas contained
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characters who support the central values (positive role models)
characters who reject those values (negative role models)
those who waiver in between (doubters)
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The doubters represent different sociodemographic categories of
audience and different stages along a continuum of behavior change
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Gradually, each doubter shifts toward the new values and begins to
adopt the corresponding socially desirable behavior
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Each episode is reinforced by a 30-40-second epilogue, an
advertisement for that day's educational message delivered by a
national celebrity
Question 4
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What do you think the political social context
was at the time that entertainment education
was developing? (1950s-70s)
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What major events were occurring with regard
to international development and media that
may have affected it?
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(Break up into pairs and discuss for 5 minutes)
Political-historical context
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1950s
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strong optimism in media as the great multiplier of
knowledge
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emergence of new mass media technologies
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use of film and radio for propaganda during World War II
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newly independent nations of the post-war period were
severely “underdeveloped”
Political-historical context
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1972 New World Information Order
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UNESCO called for mass media companies to assume a positive
responsibility in assisting the creation of a new global order
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Treaty so bold that it prompted nations to withdraw
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Western media organizations, the "Big Four" network companies in the
United States
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Only willing to lend limited technical support to developing countries
Refused to promise assistance in developing pro-social media campaigns
Objected most strongly to manipulation of program content
Context (cont’d)
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1976
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Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo adopted the
UNESCO rhetoric supporting the "right to information"
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applied it to domestic programming, requiring broadcast content to
serve as an instrument of political and social development
U.S. federal agencies willing to support pro-social mass
media campaigns -
as long as they were conducted by independent non-profit agencies
or local media companies in the Third World
Discussion
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What motivated a successful television
producer to dedicate his life's talent to
promoting pro-social goals?
Why was such an altruistic endeavor blocked
in the United States?
Case study
Acompañame
Story of a young married woman who decides
she wants to stop having more children.
She has severe modesty and embarrassment
about discussing sexual matters
Nonetheless, she visits a doctor seeking family
planning advice.
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Case study (cont’d)
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Her husband doesn't know she is there.
Her friend, Marta, has told her some
contraceptive information, but she is "very
ignorant about these things" and fears that the
"pill causes cancer”….
Case study (cont’d)
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Doctor agrees that five children (the number of
children she has already had) are enough
He points out that her husband will likely
appreciate the cost savings of limiting one's
offspring
Effects
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Acompañame broadcast in Mexico by Televisa
August 1977-April 1978
180 episodes achieved average audience
viewing ratings of 29%
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Not as high as the 35% audience ratings of the
most popular telenovelas in Mexico
562,464 women visited clinics and adopted
contraceptives while show was on the air, up 33%
over previous year
2,500 women volunteered with Mexican National
Plan for Family Planning -- promoted by the show
Evaluation questions
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Why was Acompañame as popular as it was,
and why was it not more popular?
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What about the programming made it
successful, and what limited its success?
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Why did it become a model for similar
programming around the world?
Key elements
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timing
degree of audience identification
quality of acting
viewing context
novelty of the programming
to what extent the product was culturally
shareable
Question 5
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Brainstorm in small groups for 5 minutes on
what cultural/economic aspects affected the
popularity of shows like Acompaname from
1969-78?
Timing:
Decade that both Simplemente María and
Acompañame aired, 1969-1978
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television audiences expanding rapidly
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urban migration, class struggle salient
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women were entering workforce
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popular culture changing
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changing structure of the family
shifting gender roles
birth control was becoming popular
divorce more acceptable
single motherhood
Acompañame
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But…
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What aspects of the storyline might not have fit
with the culture?
Acompañame
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Personal and social appeals were missing
Lead character was not socially mobile
Simplemente María
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A content analysis shows the advancement of
women to be the single most common theme in
the series.
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18 episodes of the series classified according to:
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immigration, marriage, differences between social
classes, the advancement of women, definitions of love,
sons as vehicles of promotion, the personality of Maria,
the personality of Esteben, the personality of Teresa, the
mystique of money, and suffering.
The central themes, in order of prevalence, were:
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the advancement of women, class differences, the
personality of Maria, marriage and definitions of love.
Advancement of women
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Possibly, Maria held wider appeal because she
confronted social as well as personal
conflicts -
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romantic frustrations,
abandonment by a man,
raising a child alone,
poverty,
struggle to move up the social ladder.
Future research
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Saruchi Sood outlined various recommendations for future
research:
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Research on audience involvement could refine the elements of
audience involvement (e. g., researchers could hypothesize about the
relationship between identification with characters and the prosocial
and antisocial qualities exhibited by the characters in a media program)
Because the process of audience involvement is important to
understand, the antecedents and consequences should also be analysed
(e. g., exposure to a media program).
Research is also needed on the affective nature of messages and the
responses they generate, as well as the cognitive process through which
information is processed by audiences.
Research efforts should focus on the influence of culture on patterns of
behavior
Reading
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http://www.jhuccp.org/pubs/sp/21/chp6.shtml
Research Panel: "Challenges in
Entertainment-Education Theory"
Monkey See, Monkey Do
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Lawrence Kincaid
Peter Vaughan
Saruchi Sood