"The Soul City Institute for Health and Development Communication—a South African multi-media hea
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lth promotion project—together with the National Network on Violence Against Women, formulated an intervention to address domestic violence. Recognising that behavioural change interventions aimed solely at individuals have limited impact, the intervention was designed to impact at multiple mutually reinforcing levels; individual, community and socio-political environment. The intervention and its evaluation results are presented. Soul City successfully reached 86%, 25% and 65% of audiences through television, print booklets and radio, respectively. On an individual level there was a shift in knowledge around domestic violence including 41% of respondents hearing about the helpline. Attitude shifts were also associated with the intervention, with a 10% increase in respondents disagreeing that domestic violence was a private affair. There was also a 22% shift in perceptions of social norms on this issue. Qualitative data analysis suggests the intervention played a role in enhancing women's and communities’ sense of efficacy, enabling women to make more effective decisions around their health and facilitating community action. The evaluation concluded that implementation of the Domestic Violence Act can largely be attributed to the intervention. While demonstrating actual reductions in levels of domestic violence was not possible, the evaluation shows a strong association between exposure to intervention components and a range of intermediary factors indicative of, and necessary to bring about social change. This paper reports on the evaluation, discusses its limitations and challenges as well as lessons learned regarding multi-level interventions on domestic violence." (Abstract)
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"Tsha Tsha is an entertainment-education television drama series focusing on young people and dealing with love, sexuality and relationships in a world affected by HIV/AIDS. Audience research util
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ised by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) showed that episodes 1-13 achieved an audience share of 48.1% during the first broadcast and 47.4% during the rebroadcast in the 16-24 year age group. Episodes 14-26 achieved 48.4% share. This report describes the conceptual underpinnings of Tsha Tsha and presents results of research on audience responses to the first 26 episodes. Data collection spanned the period April 2003 to May 2004." (Executive summary)
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"The current discourse on globalization has many far-reaching implications not only for African economics and politics, but also for the vital question of how we communicate in a ‘global village’. African governments
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and their development partners often tend to extrapolate communication models from the developed world and apply them wholesale in local environments in Africa that are quite unique. This paper argues that such communication strategies often do not impact on the rural masses for which they are meant because they are not ‘contextualized’ to the local settings, cultural dialectics and worldview of the people. The bulk of the rural people are non-literate, poor and have little or no access to modern mass media such as television, radio, film, newspapers, the internet and email. The roll-out of modern media should continue to occupy centre stage in planning by African governments, development agencies and nongovernmental organizations, and these modern media should continue to be used to disseminate various campaign messages (HIV/AIDS awareness, immunization of children, maternal health care, poverty eradication, etc.) to the communities. But given the dearth of these media in many poor countries, the limitation of their coverage to the urban centres, and the costly equipment involved, a strategy that relies solely on them has its drawbacks. Communication planners should not overlook the significant role indigenous forms such as popular theatre, drumming, village criers, storytellers, orators, etc., have played – and continue to play – in communication among rural, poor communities. The paper illustrates the ways in which these media continue to be utilized in development communication in Uganda, for instance, because of the way they are embedded in the cultural ideology of the rural people." (Abstract)
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"The aim of this article is to introduce and analyze the case of the South Africa media NGO ‘Soul City – Institute of Health
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and Development Communication’ in order to discuss how an entertainment-education based communication strategy can contribute to a participatory development process. Firstly, I introduce the history and development of Soul City. Secondly, I provide a brief historical overview of the developments within entertainment-education in relation to the general discussions of communication for development. Finally I present Soul City’s communication strategy, the edutainment model, and analyze how Soul City contributes to the further development of entertainment-education strategies in both theory and practice. As so often seen before, practice comes prior to theory, and I thus argue that what Soul City is de facto doing is anticipating the theoretical advancement I wish to argue for referent entertainment-education (EE). The point I argue is that Soul City represents a third pathway in a field which traditionally has been divided between two major schools of thought: the diffusion of innovation-oriented theories and methodologies on one hand and the participatory theories and methodologies on the other. A new paradigm within communication and development is emerging." (Abstract)
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"What follows is a fascinating account of 50 experiments in empowering people— living in poor communities across the world—to seize control of their own life stories and begin to change their circumstances of poverty, discrimination
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and exclusion. Alfonso Gumucio spent nearly one year researching and interviewing sources for “Making Waves,” and has been actively involved in every phase of production. “Alfonso’s voice” is evident throughout this work, and it is a tribute to what makes him the ultimate communicator: he has the soul of the good poet and filmmaker that he is, combined with an unwavering sense of justice and fairness. Following the first introductory chapter—which explains the field of participatory communication for social change and how it is evolving—you will read 50 illustrations of the power of community decision-making and action. Many of the stories are about community radio. We hope you don’t find this tedious; but our research and conversations certainly suggest that community-based radio is one of the best ways to reach excluded or marginalised communities in targeted, useful ways." (Foreword by Denise Gray-Felder, page 1-2)
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"The essays in this book examine the current and potential impact of the ICT explosion in Africa. They focus specifically on gender issues and a
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nalyze the extent to which women's needs and preferences are being served. The authors underscore the need for information to be made directly relevant to the needs of rural women, whether in the areas of agriculture, health, microenterprise, or education. They argue that it is not enough for women simply to be passive participants in the development of ICTs in Africa. Women must also be decision-makers and actors in the process of using the new ICTs to accelerate African economic, social, and political development." (Publisher description)
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"This book presents a compilation of lessons learned by the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs and its partners over 15 years of developing and implementing family planning communicat
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ion projects campaigns in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Near East. An introductory essay provides an overview of family planning and communication worldwide and outlines the role of theory-based communication programs. The main part of the book presents lessons learned in the field about the process of designing and carrying out family planning communication projects. More than 60 lessons are presented, with descriptions and analysis of projects illustrating each lesson. A final essay explores the current and future challenges confronting family planning educators and other public health communicators." (Publisher description)
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"Action Magazine is a non-government donor-funded project based in Harare, which produces a magazine for schools targeted at top primary level using a 'popular publishing' format - with comic book elements, fun and games features, cartoons, etc. -
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to present health and environmental science material in a manner which is attractive and easily accessible to children. The magazine was distributed to every school in Zimbabwe and, more recently, to some other countries in the Southern African region. This evaluation assessed the use of the magazine in Zimbabwe and in Botswana. Issues examines included children's visual literacy and appreciation of the health education messages, as well as the broader impact of health and environment science information on schools, children and the wider community, especially the remote and disadvantaged rural communities." (Hans M. Zell, Publishing, Books & Reading in Sub-Saharan Africa, 3d ed. 2008, nr. 2014)
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"This review of the literature on educational radio covers reports on research from many areas of the world. Prepared as an internal report for the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and Educational Radio
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and Television (ERTV), it was intended to provide a basis for both fruitful discussions and more specific and practical local research. The topics reviewed are organized under seven major headings: (1) The Functions of Broadcasts (the potential of radio); (2) Ideas That We Can Implement (understanding radio, health education programs, pre-school children, learning to listen, and disabled children); (3) Educational Radio Formats (open broadcast, open broadcasts with print, radio campaigns, radio school, radio forum farms, the radio animation groups, radio-vision, and interactive radio); (4) Educational Radio Style (in holding children's attention, program presentation, learning materials, "interactive" radio, and humor); (5) Educational Radio Management (cost control, systematic instructional development, distributed learning, research design, formative evaluation, summative evaluation, research in ERTV and SABC, organization and utilization in SABC); (6) Educational Radio Target Audience (teenagers and young adults, children, the teacher's role in infant and primary schools, role of parents, the teacher/radio partnership, Radio Teacher Training Programme, and radio audience); and (7) Radio Classroom. Brief descriptions of several educational radio programs that were presented in a series from January to April 1974 are appended." (ERIC ED304096)
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"The second part grew out of the Symposium of Broadcasting Organization and Management held in 1984 at the request of UNESCO, The U.K. Overseas Development Administration,
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and the British Council, in which a group of directors of broadcasting organizations and permanent secretaries of ministries of information dealt with such masters of policy as shifting cultural boundaries, economic constraints, and technological change. Countries are limited to anglophone Africa; Wedell says that financial constraints prevented a bilingual meeting with colleagues in francophone Africa." (Eleanor Blum, Frances G. Wilhoit: Mass media bibliography. 3rd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990 Nr. 828)
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