Entertainment and Education

Entertainment-Education and Social Change introduces readers to entertainment-education (E-E) literature from multiple perspectives. This distinctive collection covers the history of entertainment-education, its applications in the United States and throughout the world, the multiple communication theories that bear on E-E, and a range of research methods for studying the effects of E-E interventions. The editors include commentary and insights from prominent E-E theoreticians, practitioners, activists, and researchers, representing a wide range of nationalities and theoretical orientations. Examples of effective E-E designs and applications, as well as an agenda for future E-E initiatives and campaigns, make this work a useful volume for scholars, educators, and practitioners in entertainment media studies, behavior change communications, public health, psychology, social work, and other arenas concerned with strategies for social change. It will be an invaluable resource book for members of governmental and non-profit agencies, public health and development professionals, and social activists.

Since the mid-1970s a shift in perspective has occurred on the relationship between TV and young viewers. Researchers, parents, teachers, policymakers, and consumer advocate groups have shown increased criticism of televisions's role as social educator, babysitter, agent for mass consumer socialization, and perpetrator of questionable social values, morals, and mythical human behaviors. Educators intersted in understanding the complex and wide-ranging contrversies about the influence of television on children will find much in this edited collection to clarify their understanding of the empirical research, educational practice, and national policy issues raised by the relationship between TV and children.

This comprehensive treatment in an historical framework examines the ways in which television extends postsecondary educational and training opportunities. The book focuses on the applications of technologies to relevant needs and problems, such as the ever-growing demand for continuing occupational/professional education and training. The study covers early successes and failures, the telecourse as a teaching method, new instructional uses of television, and the future of television use in higher education. Those involved in education, occupational training, and communications will find essential information in this book.

The impact of public narratives has been so broad (including effects on beliefs and behavior but extending beyond to emotion and personality), that the stakeholders in the process have been located across disciplines, institutions, governments, and, indeed, across epochs. Narrative Impact draws upon scholars in diverse branches of psychology and media research to explore the subjective experience of public narratives, the affordances of the narrative environment, and the roles played by narratives in both personal and collective spheres. The book brings together current theory and research presented primarily from an empirical psychological and communications perspective, as well as contributions from literary theory, sociology, and censorship studies. To be commensurate with the broad scope of influence of public narratives, the book includes the narrative mobilization of major social movements, the formation of self-concepts in young people, banning of texts in schools, the constraining impact of narratives on jurors in the court room, and the wide use of education entertainment to affect social changes. Taken together, the interdisciplinary nature of the book and its stellar list of contributors set it apart from many edited volumes. Narrative Impact will draw readership from various fields, including sociology, literary studies, and curriculum policy. Providing new explanatory concepts, this book: *is the first account on the psychology of narrative persuasion and brings together the relevant conceptualizations from within various sectors of psychology together with the major issues that concern cognate disciplines outside of psychology; *focuses on understanding the mechanisms that underlie the power of public narratives to achieve broad historical and social changes; *offers breakthroughs to the future: the role of "presence" in virtual reality narratives; the role of "zines" in females' fashioning of their selves; and the central role of imagery in transportation into narrative worlds; *explains varying roles of emotion in narrative immersion; and *addresses the growing blurring of fact and fiction: mechanisms and implications for beliefs and behavior.

At last, a collection in one volume informing the citizenry about a phenomenon that has existed for nearly a quarter century: community television represents our single source for media access in the United States. With more than 2,000 community groups providing some 15,000 hours of original programming each week--more than the annual output of ABC, CBS, and NBC combined--Community Television compares and contrasts broadcasting and grassroots cablecasting in the form of public, educational, and government (PEG) access. Fuller describes community television in terms of its history, its technical characteristics, and its legal, economic, political, and social concerns, highlighting the work of more than 150 related organizations and local television efforts from 100 cities and towns. She analyzes how competing exigencies and emerging communication technologies might threaten access in the future. Students, scholars, and professionals in television, communications, and public policy will find this reference a definitive one.

Offering the first book-length exploration of network television's relations with advocacy groups, Kathryn C. Montgomery presents a comprehensive picture of the impact of organized pressure on prime-time TV. She vividly describes, for example, how the Catholic Church campaigned against Maude's abortion on the TV show, Maude; how outraged actors mobilized a national protest against the portrayal of blacks in the TV miniseries, Beulah Land; and how the Moral Majority waged a sophisticated campaign to "clean up TV," by threatening to boycott advertisers. Exposing the inner workings of network television as no other book has done, Montgomery's study demonstrates how behind-the-scenes struggles have shaped the images, messages, and values that enter people's homes every night. The book also raises critical questions about television's role in our society and its responsibility to the American public.