The turtle and the peacock : collaboration for prosocial change : the entertainment-education strategy on television
In the early eighties, a popular prime time drama serial Zeg eens A was being broadcast in the Netherlands. Health communication professionals who saw this series regarded it as an interesting setting in which to introduce and deal with health communication messages (see for example Bouman, 1984). At that time, however, collaborating with scriptwriters of popular television programmes was a problematic issue, due to the fact that health organizations had great reservations about using a popular medium like a tabloid, a gossip magazine, a soap opera or other drama series to communicate serious health messages (Dekker, 1985 personal conversation). Apart from their unfamiliarity with popular culture, health organizations feared losing their respectable image and, as a possible ultimate consequence, their funding. Although understandable, this showed an explicit tension between the goals of health communication and the goals of public relations and fundraising. Health communication professionals however saw that the messages of health organizations have to compete with thousands of other communication messages. If the attention of the target audience is to be caught and held, and more especially if that audience is not spontaneously interested in health messages, it is no longer sufficient to rely solely on the rationality of the message: other, more emotionally appealing and popular communication methods must also be brought into play. Some health organizations acknowledged this, but did not yet accept its consequences. Zeg eens A became the most popular Dutch drama serial of the eighties, but never carried a purposively designed and eloquently interwoven health message1
Thesis, Dissertation, English, 1999
s.n.], [S.l., 1999