Audience Involvement and Entertainment Education

This article examines the relationship between the effectiveness of entertainment-education programmes and audience involvement. The author constructs a multistage, multidimensional model for the analysis of audience involvement. Evidence from an Indian radio soap opera, Tinka Tinka Sukh (TTS), which focuses on health and gender equity issues, is used to examine the proposed model.

Background

The author suggests that early entertainment-education research focused primarily on whether this strategy had positive effects, and concentrated on documenting overall changes in audience knowledge, attitudes and behaviour, but it did not seek to fully explain the processes involved. The purpose of this study is to strengthen theoretical constructs related to audience involvement and assess its role in altering the knowledge, attitudes and behaviour of target groups. Audience involvement is defined as the, "degree to which audience members engage in reflection upon and parasocial interaction with, certain media programmes, thus resulting in overt behaviour change."

Reflection can be either critical or referential, while parasocial interaction can be cognitive, affective or behavioural participation with the media source – the following typology explains these categories:



Reflection

• Referential reflection is the degree to which an individual relates the media programme to their own life and problems;
• Critical reflection is the degree to which an individual distances themselves from a media programme and respond to by reconstruction and suggested plot changes.

Parasocial Interaction

• Affectively oriented interaction is the degree to which audience members identify with characters or characteristics of a media programme.
• Cognitively oriented interaction is the degree ton which audience members pay attention to a programme and contemplate its educational content once it is over.
• Behaviourally oriented interaction the degree to which individuals talk to, or about media characters and make concerted efforts to listen to the programme.

These characteristics of parasocial interaction have been operationalised into a set of 20 items for use in questionnaires by Rubin et al. (1985). This forms the basis of the survey tool to be used in the data collection portion of this survey. It is these parasocial interaction characteristics of audience involvement that the author suggests contribute to the intermediate effects that lie at the base of actual behaviour change. There are three specific intermediate effects under examination:

• Increased self-efficacy – people’s belief about their capabilities to exercise control over events that affect their lives.
• Collective efficacy – people’s belief in their joint capabilities to forge divergent self-interests into a shared agenda, to enlist supporters, and to generate resources.
• Increased interpersonal communication – this is important given the assumption that interpersonal communication enhances mass media.

The 20 items of parasocial interaction are used as specific indicators of the strength of these three intermediate effects among audiences of the Tinka Tinka Sukh programme.

Methodology

The research sought to answer the following four research questions:

• RQ1: What are the various dimensions of the construct of audience involvement?
• RQ2: Does audience involvement lead to increased self-efficacy by audience members?
• RQ3: Does audience involvement lead to increased collective efficacy by audience members?
• RQ4: Does audience involvement spur interpersonal communication among audience members?

The data was generated using a survey questionnaire that was mailed to approximately 600 TTS listeners that had been registered during pre-broadcast publicity for this radio serial. 224 responses were received (a 39% response rate). The author admits that the sample is not representative and was primarily composed of young, unmarried men.

Results

The specific results of the survey, which were analysed using several complex regression models, are difficult to detail without the full context and listing of the 20 items, and are precluded from this summary on account of excessive length. The author's conclusions provide a more succinct explanation of the result of this study. The author found positive answers to all of the aforementioned research questions and several linkages between the different intermediate elements were revealed.

When audience individuals displayed identification with TTS characters (affective involvement), they also equated the radio serial to their own lives (referential involvement). When audience members were attentive to the programme messages (cognitive involvement) they also were more likely to suggest plot changes (critical involvement). The author believes that high levels of audience involvement with the entertainment-education programming allows members to identify with and make judgements about the soap opera themes in terms of their own lives and perceived realities. Audience members construct, reconstruct, and deconstruct the messages contained in an entertainment-education intervention and make it part of their localised "popular culture."

In order for mass media programmes to be effective the author believes that learners should be involved in four processes: (a) defining and naming their own problems, (b) critically examining theses problems and their root causes, (c) creating a vision of a healthier system, and (d) developing social action strategies necessary to overcome limits and achieve their goals. These processes are part of the intermediate effects that are facilitated by audience involvement.

The evidence also revealed a strong correlation between self-efficacy and collective efficacy, and if the characters or communities in soap operas such as TTS demonstrate these types of behaviours, they can contribute to social change. There is also a clear overlap between mass media and interpersonal communication that is revealed by behaviour such as discussing media messages in social networks and this supports the idea of a linkage between individual and community efficacy.

Conclusion

The author concludes that both affect and cognition play a role in audience involvement and suggest that this is a complex process within entertainment-education, and requires more research.