Abstract
Objective: Health practitioners and popular mass media have unprecedented potential to come together social betterment. Popular media, guided by social science research, can serve as an advocacy for social change. The entertainment-education (E-E) communication strategy is very useful to achieve such win-win collaborations that can benefit society. This paper analyzes the E-E approach which, while relatively new in Japan, has been purposely utilized effectively with demonstrated results in many countries over the past three decades. We explore the possibilities of applying the E-E approach to the Japanese public health context.
Methods: This paper reports the definition of E-E, its history, recent trends, and research perspectives, drawing upon the literature on E-E, including Singhal's latest writings and on the topic, and conversation and discussion between the two authors.
Results: Simply put, E-E is about strategically utilizing the power of stories to change established social scripts. Over its history of more than 40 years since “Simplemete Maria” in Peru in early 1970s, the E-E practices and research have expanded and deepened with accumulated evidence.
Discussion: Considering the media environment, we conclude that the application of E-E in the Japanese context is possible, and that collaborating with local media and utilization of games might especially yield tremendous impacts. We hope that many scholars and practitioners in Japan get interested in E-E strategy that could create an environment of public discourse where complex social problems could find creative resolution, and that its research and practice can lead to the betterment of the society.
