Using Popular Culture to Inspire Behavior Change among Adolescents and Young Adults

Summary

Popular culture has a very strange yet interesting relationship with society. Sometimes it is the society that influences popular culture, while sometimes the society gets influenced by the same. The Urban Dictionary defines 'popular culture' as 'cultural activities or commercial products reflecting, suited to, or aimed at the tastes of the general masses of people.' It may include the art around us, movies we see, books we read, games we play and videos we watch. It influences fashion, language, business, culture, appetite, and lastly, behavior. As popular culture lays its footprints on a major part of the society, it will be a clever idea to strategically create a product, such as a web series, comic, fiction or movie, which will inspire positive behavior change. My idea is to inspire behavior change with the help of fiction (e-book with graphics for mobile phones), which I would like to name 'Sisterwoods'. In this case, the first challenge is to make the young masses familiar to 'Sisterwoods.' To do this, the characters in this story have to be made in a way that the general young masses can relate to. I can give an example of one such character that I have created, his name is Roach. Roach is someone who, like any young boy, has a dream to be the center of girls' attention. In order to gain the respect and affection of these girls, he makes sure to always keep a pack of hand made sanitary pads with himself.

Background/Objectives

In the 90s, there was a cartoon published by UNICEF,called Meena, which inspired and catalyzed behavior change among families who had a television in their homes. In today's era, it is difficult to introduce social and behavior change communication via television due to the emergence of private screens. But we can use private screens to our advantage because it will allow us to narrow down our strategies and direct them towards the individual. Thus, we can easily deal with taboo topics such as menstruation and sex, which the individuals will rather be uncomfortable to watch with their families.

Description Of The Big Idea/experience/innovation And Its Importance To The SBCC Field:

The big idea is to create a fiction in the form of an e-book called 'Sisterwoods'. The e-book will have colourful graphics to make it look attractive to the readers. A new chapter will be released every week. The book is about a group of children and adolescents who are orphans and live in a forest called Sisterwoods. They are away from any kind of urban influence. Some people from the nearby town often donate 'modern' items to them such as clothes, utensils and simple tools. However, they don't realise that these children are way more advanced than the ones living in urban cities, as in this forest there is no taboo, no violence, and no evil practices. In this forest, all the children and adolescents have love and empathy towards each other. The beauty of fiction is that it allows the writer to deal with two far fetched issues in parallel. For example, a character, Shornali is skilled at sewing Nakshikatha. Her character will allow me to portray and promote Bengali handicrafts. While she does the sewing, her husband is the one who handles the cooking in the houses. This will teach us that work is never based on

Discussion/Implications For The Field

Young people love to take fictional characters as their idol. This is the reason why DC and Marvel superheroes are such a hit among all ages. When a person sees a fictional character in a book or on screen do the right thing, they imitate them and want to become like them. In Sisterwoods, my aim is to create characters and place them in situations that will help the reader relate to them and get inspired from them.

Abstract submitted by:

Nujhat Khan - RedOrange

Arnob Chakrabarty - RedOrange