Media Theory: Entertainment Education and Development Communication (W7-P3) Fa18

Entertainment education (EE) is part of a larger concept called development communication.

With this type of development, we are working with the development of nations.  As such, it can be argued that EE theories are more sociological theories and not individual level theories.  However, given the EE set of theories includes Bandura's social learning theory and other psychological theories,  EE can fit in the individual level theories as well.


Development: "purposive changes undertaken in a society to achieve what may be regarded generally as a different ('improved') state of social and economic affairs"(Hernández-Ramos & Schramm, 1989).


Development projects typically focus on certain areas/issues of a society (e.g. agriculture, health, nutrition, family planning, women's empowerment, etc.)




Development communication: the use of communication technology and principles to aid in the development of a society.

The idea of presenting a development message within a fictional program is the type of development communication that is called entertainment education.  

• Entertainment Education is "the process of purposely designing and implementing a media message both to entertain and educate" (Singhal & Rogers, 1999, p. 9).
• Entertainment education is "the intentional placement of educational content in entertainment messages" (Singhal & Rogers, 2002, p. 117).
• "Entertainment-education (E-E) is the process of purposely designing and implementing a media message to both entertain and educate, in order to increase audience members’ knowledge about an educational issue, create favorable attitudes, shift social norms, and change overt behavior (Singhal & Rogers, 1999; Singhal & Rogers, 2002)" (Singhal, Cody, Rogers & Sabido, 2003, p. 5).

Before looking more closely at the theoretical frameworks behind EE, let's first see some examples.

The World Bank is a multinational organization that uses entertainment education in their work.  See the video below for examples and background information.

If you are interested in seeing other examples of entertainment education media projects from around the world, I'd recommend Entertainment-Education Inspirations.


Now, let's gets some history and insight on the founding father of entertainment education, Miguel Sabido.
Miguel Sabido is the person on the left in the video still image below.  Who is the person on the right?
Play the following video from 0:00-2:43.  

Share this post with others. See the Twitter, Facebook and other buttons below.
Please follow, add, friend or subscribe to help support this blog.
See more about me at my web site WilliamHartPhD.com.