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The Newest Form of Educational TV: Soap Operas
Posted on August 23, 2004
The Festival film Novela, Novela looks at the Nicaraguan soap opera Sexto Sentido as it tackes issues of domestic abuse, reproductive rights, safe sex and alcoholism. This driving force of this homegrown soap opera is not to sell products but to promote life-saving ideas and rights.
Other countries are discovering how social issue media can take on the guise of popular drama and the The BBC The Observer examines this growing media phenomenon known as "edutainment."
Soap and Charity
Whether it is fighting Aids in Cambodia or increasing harvests in Kenya, aid agencies have a 'magic weapon' in their armoury: popular drama
Jo Monroe
Sunday August 08 2004
The Observer
THE BBC's latest medical drama, Taste of Life, may prove to be one of the most important programmes in the corporation's history. Set in a busy hospital with a young cast of sexually active doctors and nurses, it doesn't exactly sound ground-breaking, but former EastEnders producer Matthew Robinson reckons his new soap has the potential to change lives. Taste of Life, you see, isn't set in a fictional town in the South-West or an inner London teaching hospital, the drama unfolds in Phnom Penh and isn't meant just to entertain, it is designed to save viewers' lives.