Used deliberately, entertainment can be as effective in realizing political,
social, and economic aims as conventional tools of persuasion.

-- H. Fischer and S. R. Melnik ( 1979, p. xiv)

During the early decades of research on the entertainment-education strat-
egy, the main question pursued by scholars was to determine the effects on
audience individuals. Policymakers were unconvinced that investment in
entertainment-education was sound. During the 1990s, little doubt remained
about whether entertainment-education had an effect. Instead, scholarly at-
tention turned to how entertainment-education has its effects in creating
knowledge, changing attitudes, and in influencing individuals to adopt family
planning, HIV prevention, and other behavior changes. In recent years,
scholars have found that an entertainment-education message often serves
as a catalyst for interpersonal peer communication, which in turn leads to
behavior change in other audience members.

This chapter traces the evolution of the entertainment-education strategy
during the past two decades, with special attention to the important role of
social modeling, self-efficacy, parasocial interaction, and media-stimulated
peer communication in stimulating behavior change. We particularly utilize
findings from research on the effects of Twende na Wakati in Tanzania and
on Tinka Tinka Sukh in India. ²

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