Culture-Specificity of HIV/AIDS Media Materials: A Media Analysis and Comparison of the Film Projects "Eschageada Ukimwi Datoga" (Datoga, Let's be Aware of AIDS) and "Watu Wa Watu" (People For People) from Tanzania

This 117-page Master’s thesis deals with efforts to produce and apply culture-specific HIV/AIDS media materials as part of HIV/AIDS prevention research and intervention programmes. According to the paper, entertainment-education (EE) materials have been playing a central role in HIV/AIDS information, education, and communication (IEC) approaches. However, approaches in the production and application of IEC materials have changed enormously over time, along with a parallel shift of focus of scientific methodologies and strategies in HIV/AIDS research and prevention interventions, from individual behavioural change to social change agendas. The paper proposes that media and EE materials can be an important part of social change, reaching a large number of people, raising public awareness, and increasing knowledge. However, without linking it to networks of interpersonal or face-to-face communication (discussion and dialogue in small groups), people are not likely to change their behaviour.

According to the author, a comparison of 2 films produced in Tanzania, Eschageada Ukimwi Datoga (EUD) and Watu Wa Watu (WWW,) on a descriptive-analytical level highlights basic differences and similarities concerning their background, objectives, contents, and film methods. [Editor's note: The Dagota are a semi-nomadic pastoralist culture of Tanzania.] The production of EUD as a community-based intervention and HIV/AIDS education campaign is based on long-term ethnographic research with adequate funding. WWW, as an amateur documentary of a sensitisation festival, was produced in a more spontaneous and experimental fashion, without external funding for initial preparation or final realisation. However, both films emphasise the concept of community participation, mobilisation, and involvement of beneficiaries towards community empowerment and cultural change. Both of them attempt to reflect and stimulate local discourses on HIV prevention, produce local knowledge and education material (culturally tailored messages), create local cultural competence, and strengthen cultural pride by deploying local messages.

The paper suggests that both films address the meaning of HIV/AIDS as a health threat with disastrous consequences in a more local and national, but, also, international context, and the importance of community empowerment and socio-cultural change. The writer states that both EUD and WWW, as intervention strategies with many components, could be said to build on the cultural value system of the intended communities, to reflect attitudes and norms embedded in the culture, as well as behavioural preferences and expectations of community members. For example, EUD presents the message of HIV/AIDS within the traditional system of sexual meaning both in speech and in play and in a way that is consistent with Datoga identity, their cultural environment, and world view. This is similar to how different individuals and (peer-) groups, with their self-created songs, speeches, drama, and performances in WWW, reflect the general sexual and cultural discourse in the population, crucial elements of culture-sensitive approaches. Thus, both EUD and WWW meet both the semantic and pragmatic-instrumental criteria for cultural sensitivity. On this ground, EUD and WWW are arguably compatible with the objectives of scientific health promotion and have the potential to "reach their intended audience", to be "understood by those who are reached", and to be "accepted by those who understand".

The paper also suggests that the entertaining component of EUD and WWW, based on creativity and the participation of local talents as role-models and actors (drama, song, dance, etc.), endorses the argument of potential effectiveness in terms of culture specificity, since messages not only trigger cognitive but also emotional responses in the viewer. The author also adds that combining and integrating traditional and modern IEC materials (i.e., mass media and interpersonal communication) with participatory methods is inherently culture-sensitive and constitutes a powerful strategy to involve and mobilise people on a long-term basis.

The author concludes that both EUD and WWW are based on aspects of "culture-specificity", and have significant potential as effective HIV prevention and intervention tools. Both films contain HIV/AIDS messages and information on HIV/AIDS to be discussed, deepened, and shared in dialogue so as to actually be adopted and translated into action. Moreover, they are an expression of cultural pride and cultural competence both being of intrinsic value and, at the same time, a remedy for "colonial and post-colonial inflictions on cultural identity and dignity and the bottom pillars for a self-conscious future life that can claim its human rights and freedom from external oppression". However, further research is needed to show the films' effectiveness in terms of message acceptance, emotional responses, and changes in the direction of knowledge, attitudes, and sexual behavioural practices in the intended populations through pre- and post-exposure studies, in order to render evidence to the arguments in favour of both interventions.