No, no, no, not THAT one!
I meant the one below:
It’s going to be a long while before very many poor people have iPads, but there is already one TV for every 4 people in the world. I remember being in a remote village in Ghana with 30 people crowded around a TV set, so 1 in 4 implies a VERY big reach for TV already. In the words of one my favorite development economists, Charles Kenny in Foreign Policy:
In our collective enthusiasm for whiz-bang new social-networking tools like Twitter and Facebook, the implications of this next television age — from lower birthrates among poor women to decreased corruption to higher school enrollment rates — have largely gone overlooked despite their much more sweeping impact. And it’s not earnest educational programming that’s reshaping the world on all those TV sets. The programs that so many dismiss as junk — from song-and-dance shows to Desperate Housewives — are being eagerly consumed by poor people everywhere who are just now getting access to television for the first time. That’s a powerful force for spreading glitz and drama — but also social change.
Social change from soap operas? Kenny is referring to the research of U. Chicago Professor Emily Oster joint with Robert Jensen, which found in a rigorous study that the introduction of cable TV in rural India was associated with decreased acceptability of domestic violence, decreased preference for sons over daughters, and increased school enrollment for young children. Cable TV in India features mainly game shows and soap operas.
Similarly Eliana La Ferrara and co-authors found that soap operas reduced fertility in Brazil, a trend often associated with increased power for women. The soap operas portrayed much smaller families than what actually exists in Brazil. The research suggested the soap operas were pretty important, because parents were naming their children after the main characters on the telenovela in the year of birth.
More seriously, TV can spread health messages like hand-washing (which shot up in Ghana after a TV campaign).
Sorry, I have to go, it’s time to watch Law & Order.
17 Comments
I find this very interesting, because the overall picture of the research regarding violence in TV programs is that watching violent TV etc. does not result in more violent behavior among viewers. I wonder what the difference is. Perhaps people understand at some deep level that Robocop or whatever is “fantasy” but classify soap operas and the like as “real life” even when it doesn’t resemble the viewer’s own real life that much.
I think people relate to soap operas because they have the same problems in real life. So they know what it feels like when your husband cheats on you or your sister gets ill. Robocop on the other side is violent but people can’t relate because it’s unrealistic. That is why a telenovela has more influence than any action movie.
It also might be the case that television isn’t conditioning people, it’s just broadening their horizons. While neither stories about marauding vigilante robots nor unfaithful doctor-husbands are true, seeing the stories might give people ideas.
I’d hope ideas like limiting the size of your family or not putting up with getting beaten by your husband would catch on more easily than ideas like solving all your problems with violence. Or it might be that the former are more practical to adopt than the latter, or even more novel.
surprised social change through soapies seem intriguing to aidwatch. HRI has countless affiliates that do nothing except pay telenovelas script writers and “radio-drama” people to squeeze in this or the other message. which also explains the massive amounts of message-based dramas that no-one listens to/ watches, not to mention significant numbers of our affiliates boring people to death in villages with ground breaking “edutainment”.
i actually think we should demand a cut from premiere league and the desperate housewifes – by providing thinly veiled propaganda as the only entertainment alternative we help them gather viewers all over the “developing world”.
we also have a number of affiliates that “support local artists” by encouraging them to produce forever identical paintings and songs that fit our donors’ current artistic fancy.
Should i send you a 68 slides powerpoint? or would you find time to attend one of our tedious events with speeches from the Ministry of Culture and 6 minutes thank yous from the artists.
Fascinating, since I’ve never heard of this research but I have read about the Fiji study dozens of times. Framing bias among the Soc/Anthro set?
@zach I agree with that analysis
Mike@pvl, what Fiji study?
Related: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/06/superfreakonomics-book-club-emily-oster-answers-your-questions/
Haven’t we already been down this road re: mass media effects? In the 50s and 60s they thought radio would change the world, then TV, and now it’s internet/mobile phones (the silver bullet theory). media plays a role obviously but not a determining factor (see Communication for Development research).
Message to Bill:
Am curious to know if you have a position (or random thoughts) on social media and what effect you see (or foresee) it will have on devt/social change. I mean in terms of ultimate change/results…not just busy-ness.
IT phones that matter. 4.6 billion as of 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone
TV change isn’t that big. many developing countries have limited state run TV channels available. Satellite dish usage and informaiton is probalby a better indicator.
Phone penetration which has more impact and allows for feedback is the killer app. The average handset is now $35 in some countries. The price point for smart phones will drop rapidly which will change things faster than TV in terms of information, feedback etc.
information in info scarce areas is very empowering for selling, learning and organizing economically and politically.
We were talking in our Law and Development class about the American tradition of the judicial system as entertainment. Because these shows are so widespread, everyone knows their Miranda rights, for example. Similar programs suited to various jurisdictions would certainly help awareness and legal penetration.
Emk, you are right, I learned a lot about the law from Law and Order (some of it probably wrong!)
The currency redenomination exercise carried out by the Bank of Ghana using television (and radio) ads to sensitize the public was quite a hit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVbFJxWPfy8. As to whether people understood the reason behind the redonimination, I can’t tell– but in no time, the catchy phrase “the value is the same” became viral and many people understood the value of the old and new Ghana cedi wouldn’t change.
I am trying to use television for positive social change. This is the most condensed version of my idea to save the Planet & its Economy. Giving away green homes creating high paying green jobs those who win must help to build 3 homes & much more!…
http://behelpfulnothurtful.blogspot.com/
&
My 2 Minute Video Introduction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSOXHTrGvlA
No one should want for anything needed to survive or thrive. Apathy spreads like a virus. When we turn a blind eye to the oppression of others, it opens the door for our own oppression. There is a flip side to this coin, choosing to be happy, choosing to take action, choosing to be hopeful, choosing to be helpful, all spread like a virus.
Lets choose to evolve, choose to…
Be Helpful, Not Hurtful
Charles Hancock
PS. I also have a few other TV Show ideas that will inspire positive social change
Methinks both extremes in this argument are, well, too extreme. It’s obvious that TV molds some social norms. Who of a certain age doesn’t remember the crying Native American in the anti-pollution PSA of the 1960s? Culturally insensitive, but programmatically effective. But as with most social change, the role of TV depends heavily on the issues to be addressed. Teaching people something antiseptic like currency exchange is easy. Modeling behaviors in taboo areas, such as sex, is much less so. Take AIDS as an example. One reason Uganda succeeded was how deeply it personalized and localized the messages (you should like that, Bill – it’s a variant of Searchers.) By contrast, Botswana failed in part because it relied so heavily on mass media, which are by nature anodyne and generalized. Citizens began referring to AIDS as “radio disease,” not just because of the multiple announcements but also as a symptom of its abstractedness in their lives. (On this latter point, see Allen and Heald, J. Intl. Dev. 2004.)
. . .
Most excellent intro.
Radio remains the main source of information for a majority of the world’s population, so the iPad poke is accurate.
Journalists are generally well connected technologically, compared to the rest of any society, by nature of their job. They are also expected to keep audiences abreast of upcoming trends and threats.
In doing so, we shed shoe leather all over the face plates of old media, forgetting that trends don’t die, they fade away, a la political pamphleteering.
I like the follow up thrust of this article, that conventional received wisdom maligning television and the internet is not well placed.
My vote is for an article headline along the lines of “Paris Saves The World”.
How much of the current wailing and gnashing of teeth about corporate malfeasance builds upon a bedrock of so-called “womens magazines” and their endless expose of personal affairs?
. . .
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