This incisive Handbook critically examines the role and place of media and communication in development and social change, reflecting a vision for change anchored in values of social justice. Expert contributors discuss and evaluate the roles and outcomes of media and communication for social mobilization, media mobilization, community mobilization, advocacy, participation, empowerment, capacity-building, resistance, networking, and action for progressive social change. Chapters explore communicative actions involved in social, economic, political, and cultural integration and the transformation of individuals, communities, places, and societies in the processes of development and social change. Outlining the genealogy and history of the field, the Handbook investigates the possible new directions and objectives in the area. Key conclusions include an enhanced role for development communication in participatory development, active agency of stakeholders of development programs, and the operationalization of social justice in development. Comprehensive yet accessible, this Handbook will be a key resource for students and scholars of media and communication, political science, development studies, social work, critical education, community organization, and anthropology. It will also be of value to professionals working in associations and organizations dealing with development and social change.

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.

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.

Arvind Singhal and Everett M. Rogers have developed this unique volume focused on the history and development of entertainment-education. This approach to communication is the process of designing and implementing a media message to both entertain and educate to increase audience members' knowledge about an educational issue, create favorable attitudes, and change overt behavior. It uses the universal appeal of entertainment to show individuals how they can live safer, healthier, and happier lives. Entertainment formats such as soap operas, rock music, feature films, talk shows, cartoons, comics, and theater are utilized in various countries to promote messages about educational issues. This book presents a balanced picture of the entertainment-education strategy, identifying ethical and other problems that accompany efforts to bring about social change.

Positive Deviance (PD) is an approach to social change that enables communities and organizations to discover the wisdom they already have, and then to act on it. The premise of PD is that in every community there are certain individuals or groups whose uncommon practices or strategies enable them to find better solutions to problems than neighbors and peers who have access to the same resources. PD is led by people in the community who help identify and spread the successful practices. Ideas for change are more likely to be accepted and adopted when they are based on existing local wisdom than they are when outside exports try to impose them. This book tells the remarkable story of how a people-centered approach to organizational and social change, accompanied by sound scientific and technical expertise, yielded positive quality outcomes for ordinary citizens, health care institutions and their patients, and society in general. This work draws upon the collective wisdom and experience of infection control practitioners, doctors, public health authorities, nurses, social and organizational change practitioners, health care administrators, patients and front line workers. Additional benefits of use of the PD process to fight infection turned out to be improved workplace relationships, healthier and more resilient organizational cultures, and expanded networks of people in many fields and geographical locations who shared ideas, resources and the inspiration of their own contributions to saving lives. "The Positive Deviance movement is changing the landscape of how we achieve transformation and change in systems." Peter Block, Author, Community: The Structure of Belonging. "Inviting Everyone....chronicles the astonishing achievements possible when people truly work together and are aided by pioneering processes like Positive Deviance." Nicholas Wolter, MD, CEO, Billings Clinic. Contact info@plexusinstitute, org for volume discounts.

Some girls in conflict-ridden Northern Uganda resort to transactional sex to have a mat to sleep on at night. And with the prospect of earning more money in a day than their parents might make in a month, many girls in East Java, Indonesia fall into work in the sex industry. Children face sexual exploitation worldwide, especially when they have little support to avoid them, have few skills that give them options, and little sense of their own value and possible alternative futures. The Positive Deviance approach to social change finds solutions to common problems in the behaviors of positive outliers-those who defy the worst odds in the face of seemingly intractable problems and present social proof that local and actionable solutions to those problems are equally available to their peers. This monograph documents two child protection projects implemented by Save the Children using the Positive Deviance approach.

Promotion of healthy behaviors and prevention of disease are inextricably linked to cultural understandings of health and well-being. Health communication scholarship and practice can substantially and strategically contribute to people living safer, healthier, and happier lives. This book represents a concrete step in that direction by establishing a strategic framework for guiding global and local health practices. Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, the volume includes state-of-the-art theories that can be applied to health communication interventions and practical guidelines about how to design, implement, and evaluate effective health communication interventions. Few books have synthesized such a broad range of theories and strategies of health communication that are applicable globally, and also provided clear advice about how to apply such strategies. This volume combines academic research and field experience, guided by past and future research agendas and on-the-ground implementation opportunities.

AIDS is now the leading cause of death in Africa, where twenty-eight million people are HIV-positive, and where some twelve million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS. In Zimbabwe, 45 percent of children under the age of five are HIV-positive, and the epidemic has shortened life expectancy by twenty-two years. A fifteen-year-old in Botswana or South Africa has a one-in-two chance of dying of AIDS. AIDS deaths are so widespread in sub-Saharan Africa that small children now play a new game called "Funerals." The Children of Africa Confront AIDS depicts the reality of how African children deal with the AIDS epidemic, and how the discourse of their vulnerability affects acts of coping and courage. A project of the Institute for the African Child at Ohio University, The Children of Africa Confront AIDS cuts across disciplines and issues to focus on the world's most marginalized population group, the children of Africa. Editors Arvind Singhal and Stephen Howard join conversations between humanitarian and political activists and academics, asking, "What shall we do?" Such discourse occurs in African contexts ranging from a social science classroom in Botswana to youth groups in Kenya and Ghana. The authors describe HIV/AIDS in its macro contexts of vulnerable children and the continent's democratization movements and also in its national contexts of civil conflict, rural poverty, youth organizations, and agencies working on the ground. Singhal, Howard, and other contributors draw on compelling personal experience in descriptions of HIV/AIDS interventions for children in difficult circumstances and present thoughtful insights into data gathered from surveys and observations concerning this terrible epidemic.