Using Television Drama to Promote Electoral Corruption Reporting: An Evaluation in Northern Nigeria

Abstract We evaluated an edutainment intervention to encourage electoral corruption reporting in northern Nigeria via a live broadcast of a popular Hausa-language TV show, which aired October–December 2022, shortly before the February 2023 presidential elections. We incorporated behaviorally informed anticorruption messages into the scripts of the TV drama to encourage its tens of millions of viewers to report instances of electoral corruption. We used a randomized encouragement trial design, sampling over 6,000 participants across northern Nigeria through pre-recorded phone surveys. Watching the show caused a statistically significant increase in the perceived helpfulness and frequency of reporting, but we could not detect changes in knowledge of how to report or reporting behaviors.