Popular Media as Entertainment-Education : Communication Strategies and Social Impact of the TV show Skam

The present paper examines how a popular TV show can serve as an effective Education-Entertainment (EE) tool for social change. Paralleling the elements outlined in academic studies of EE development programs with the case study of the Norwegian high-school drama “Skam”, I will argue how the participatory elements in its conception (extensive interviews with teenagers, the target audience), and in its reception (audience participation through the use of transmedia, reflection through fan culture communities) correspond to the definition, scope, and impact of Education-Entertainment programs that focus on empowerment and social change. The focus is particularly on societal and cultural impact, as opposed to individual behaviour change. Likewise, the show’s impact is considered beyond the traditional EE considerations of assuming a diffusion model based on emulation of individual behaviours, and knowledge transfer. Instead, the paper outlines ways of measuring the impact of such a programme in accordance with current theoretical directions, arguing for a more complex interpretation of the effectiveness of EE, one based on subtle cultural influence, audience interaction and communication. A popular television series can serve as a sophisticated Education-Entertainment tool when it is based on a participatory process, it is focused on empowerment, enables individuals to identify societal structures of inequality, and fosters reflections, exchange of ideas and even community. Showing the effectiveness of this approach expands the opportunity for social change into life habits like entertainment consumption. The modern mundane act of watching a TV show can become a site of social change, or rather a seed. When participative and specialized input goes into media creation, and the output is in dialogue with its audience, who engages in reflection, in exchanging ideas and meanings, new possibilities emerge in the collective psyche, and that ultimately becomes the actual site of social change.