Social Justice Storylines: Effective Entertainment- Education in South Africa

Currently, South Africa has the leading number of HIV/AIDS cases worldwide, at over 5 million. One-third of women 25-29 years and more than a one-fourth of men between 30 -34 are living with the virus. Entertainment-education is one of the ways health and media professionals are promoting prevention and education. The rich oral tradition within Africa has long used entertaining songs and stories to pass on life lessons and moral concepts. Today instead of hearing stories through traditional means, such as cultural or familial practices, the largest producer of stories, come from mass media. Continuing in the narrative tradition, entertainment-education also incorporates dramatic stories to share health messages that purposely entertain and educate audiences about a particular issue, to bring about positive change in attitudes, norms, and promote social justice. In recent years South Africa has launched several media campaigns to address health issues. Entertainment-education has been widely used internationally to address such topics as, family planning, population control, and HIV/AIDS. This study will particularly look at the Soul City television program. The study found that Soul City program effectively modeled how to use a multi-method approach that was characterized by engaging social justice storylines, community support, and parasocial interaction from television viewers. The learning objectives for this session is to (1) identify characteristics of a socially relevant health storyline (2) show key strategies to better design messages that promote positive health behaviors and empower audiences.