Population Communications International: Its role in family planning soap operas

Abstract

In order to motivate people to use available family planning (FP) services Population Communications International (PCI) uses entertainment mass media to promote the small family ideal open family communications and enhance the status for women (to bolster their ability to decide to use FP). In this work PCI emphasizes the importance of understanding and working with the cultural context in which family size decisions are made. In order to reach large numbers of people social marketing campaigns must emphasize the personal benefits of limiting family size and of child spacing as well as the relative safety of modern contraceptive methods as compared to frequent childbearing. PCIs Mass Media Communications Program trains television producers and writers in developing countries in the Miguel Sabido methodology for promoting social development through entertainment serial dramas (soap operas). This methodology based on the theory that people learn new attitudes and behaviors by observing them and their consequences in others and then by trying them involves the development of fictional characters who are "good" and are always rewarded who are "bad" and are always punished who are "uncertain" and act as identification characters for the audience and who evolve from "bad" or "uncertain" to "good." Members of the audience bond with these characters and follow a clearly understood process of vicarious identification. A secondary effect occurs as the audience is stimulated to discuss the dramas with friends and neighbors. The use of serial dramas to combine motivation and information has led to significant impacts in such social development areas as literacy reproductive health family communications and family planning in Mexico Kenya and India. The essential components of such a program are to 1) attract a large audience 2) emphasize cultural archetypes and stereotypes 3) represent emotions 4) promote socially desirable values and 5) promote a vehicle for social learning. PCI has longterm plans for programs in India Latin America Pakistan the Philippines Kenya Nigeria Tanzania and China. Unless people are motivated to adopt small family norms humanity will be faced with the traditional methods of limiting population: war starvation and the maltreatment of women and children.