Fostering Reproductive Health through Entertainment-Education in the Peruvian Amazon

Published in Communication Theory in May 2002, this study presents the case of a Peruvian Amazon radio-novela (radio soap opera) which demonstrates the ways in which social change is provoked by the interactions between a mass media campaign and local practices. The study is informed by the social constructionist theory of technology, which posits that meanings, significance, and use of technology are shaped in socially specific ways and are subject to socio-cultural constraints of a given space and time. The multi-method approach was employed to capture the process by which the radio-novela listeners in riverine communities in Loreto, Peru constructed meanings and generated social change. The study specifically describes the listening patterns of the radio programme and their implications to reproductive health practices and the local gender relations. The study found evidence of increased dialogue and interactions about women's health issues fostered by the radio soap. The study also highlights the challenges faced by adopters of new health practices, raising questions about how entertainment-education can sustain long-term social change.

Evaluation/Research Methodologies:

Loreto, an ethnically diverse and remote department of the Peruvian Amazon, suffers from economic poverty, lack of health services, and very high infant mortality and fertility rates. International and community-based organisations working to improve living conditions in the region designed an entertainment-education campaign addressing rural, indigenous women of reproductive age to promote pro-social behaviour on women's health issues, family violence, reproductive rights and safe motherhood.

The campaign employed mass media and interpersonal communication strategies from 1997-1999. The mass media component involved the production and transmission of a radio soap opera ('Bienvenida Salud!') three times a week for 30 minutes. The broadcast featured live interviews, popular music, contests and raffles, listener letters, testimonials, and news reports from communities. The project's interpersonal communication strategy consisted of community activities faciliated by a network of female "promotoras," or peer educators selected among local women. The promotoras, in collaboration with the project staff and women in local communities, produced radio-novela scripts, didactic murals, manuals and community histories. They also functioned as a feed-back channel between community members and the radio drama producers.

The evaluation used multiple methods, including audience surveys, focus groups and in-depth interviews, participant observation, content analysis of listeners' letters, and inputs from trained peer promotoras. Focus groups and participant observations took place in 5 communities with promoters convening radio-listening groups. The survey, conducted after the second year of the broadcast, collected information from both listeners (n=290) and nonlisteners (n=324). Sixty-three percent of the respondents were women of reproductive age.



Key Findings/Impact:

Survey results indicated that 60% of the radio listeners listened to the soap opera more than once a week. The researchers found that the reception of the radio drama developed into a communal and social activity rather than a private listening practice in many communities. Battery-powered communal radios, purchased collectively, were placed in locations where people could have access. Typically male leaders controlled the equipment and community members voted monthly to decide on programming selection. Although the radio equipment was almost always controlled by male community leaders, men and women usually formed separate listening groups. Twenty-three percent of listeners in the survey reported traveling outside their homes to listen to the programme.

Awareness of family planning methods was high among respondents even before their exposure to the radio drama. However, the study found that the soap opera was instrumental in triggering dialogues on reproductive health issues among community members. More than one third of the listeners reported sharing information from the soap opera with other people. The modes of communication included educational advice, sharing of real-life stories, and jokes.

Participant observations and interviews revealed that the radio project sometimes provoked oppositional reactions from male community members, who perceived activities fostered by the media campaign as a threat to their masculinity and power. However, women, facilitated by the promotoras, often counter-resisted male intervention by making arrangements for alternative locations to listen to the soap opera.

The authors concluded that entertainment-education is an effective communication strategy for attitudinal and behavioural changes, but it is so only to the extent that the project design and evaluation methods take into consideration local knowledge, practices and other local socio-cultural structures.