International Development Aid Turns to TV Melodramas to Promote Social Messages
By Barbara Duncan (bjdnycla@aol.com)
After decades of publishing pamphlets, designing posters and broadcasting short public service announcements, some development communication specialists are turning to television melodramas or "soap operas" to promote important social and health messages.
A recent international seminar in Berlin brought together key development communication groups that are responsible for helping approximately 40 poor countries to address social issues through radio and television melodramas. Leading organizations include several German development groups and international broadcasting services and the U.S. based Population Communications International, which operates an aid program entitled Soap Operas for Social Change.
Using role models to introduce new ideas or behaviors, the mostly family-centered dramas are used to promote AIDS prevention techniques such as use of condoms and responsible sexual behavior, to encourage education of girls, to reduce discrimination and violence against women and to reduce the number of teenage pregnancies. The development communication experts caution that investing entertainment programs with social messages has to be done subtly and in a way compatible with the character of the role model, or the program can become didactic and lose credibility with the audience.
Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF, conducted an international on-line chat in March with young media activists from 17 countries about ways to use the mass media to educate children and adults about child rights. One of the first suggestions from a chat participant in Zambia was to use "true life stories and features and TV dramas." (www.unicef.org/noteworthy/voy-feature/mediachat.htm)
TV as entertainment and social change agent
According to a comprehensive article in the Los Angeles Times by Carol J. Williams (Entertained into Social Change, April 24, 2001), "Germany, as one of the top media powers in the developed world, has become an incubator for ideas on how to spread democratic values through entertainment." Dietrich Berwanger, head of the TV training department for Deutsche Welle, Germany's international broadcasting service, believes that there are as many viewers in developing countries as developed because TV watching is still a family or communal activity, making up for the fewer sets per capita.
He points out that, "Television in the developing world isn't only for entertainment and it's not regarded as a waste of time. It's seen as an engine for social change and development."
Putting disability messages into the mainstream
Rosangela Berman-Bieler, a journalist and disability activist from Brazil, a leading country in television production for both itself and other countries, confirms that soap operas are an integral part of family life in Latin America. The format used in that region, unlike in the USA, is that a soap opera will have a predetermined life of about six months, following a number of characters or, often an extended family, through a particular story line. The most popular ones will be watched by families together at night and discussed and analyzed with the family and co-workers the next day.
Ms. Berman-Bieler reported that Brazilian disability advocates watch closely for any character who has or develops a disability and then meet with the producers to negotiate how that character will develop and that the disability aspects and issues are handled in as realistic and positive way as possible. So far, they have managed to increase the on-camera time of a young man with Down syndrome who was playing an office worker, an actor who had undergone a brain injury, and several significant roles for actors using wheelchairs.
In this way, Berman-Bieler believes, Brazilians have gradually been introduced to the realities of life with a disability. She commented, however, that it is necessary to negotiate anew each time with the various producers as there is always the tendency in soap operas to sensationalize a disability or, worse, introduce an overnight cure for a permanent condition.
In the USA, one of the longest-running family dramas with a disabled character was Life Goes On. Broadcast for several years during the 1990's, it featured Christopher Burke, an engaging young actor with Down syndrome. Similarly, the U.S. producers consulted with organizations for people with cognitive impairments to make sure Burke's character was presented in a realistic and positive manner. It is difficult to gauge the effect of this type of show, but it did provide the first national exposure to issues such as sexuality of people with intellectual impairments. Another soap opera, The Young and the Restless, featured Chris Templeton, a physically disabled actor, as a positive role model for 11 years.
Gauging impact
One reason it's difficult to gauge the impact of these shows in the U.S., is it is hard to find anyone who admits to watching soap operas regularly, although the advertisers who count heads and households will tell you that millions and millions do. According to the LA Times article, it was easy to determine impact in a recent St. Lucia program as the producers were forbidden to use the word "condom." So they used "catapult" instead and now, they claim, it is hard to find someone in St. Lucia who doesn't know that catapult means condom!
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