loveLife's UNCUT: Storytelling as a tool for behaviour change

UNCUT: prevention through storytelling

Revisiting HIV prevention:

Storytelling as a
communications
strategy for behaviour
change among young
people


UNCUT…
• SA’s largest youth magazine with a
bi-monthly print run of 485 000 copies

•Distributed through 5 newspapers
and directly to 376 clinics, 142 franchises,
69 outlets, 18 Youth Centres and
distributed by loveLife volunteers in more
than 5 000 schools

• Placed in the top 10 newsprint brands by
Markinor/Sunday Times Top Brands Survey


Why focus on youth as target audience?

In South Africa, infection among youth account for
about half of new adult infections – driving the overall
epidemic in SA

“The best prospect for changing the course of the HIV
epidemic is in substantially reducing new infection
rates among successive cohorts of 12 – 17 year olds”
(Harrison & Steinberg, 2002).


UNCUT magazine:
Provides practical knowledge – but more
importantly provides opportunities for
identification and role modeling through
storytelling as an impetus for readers to act on
knowledge gained for behaviour change


Teenzines can be employed in the:

“construction of everyday knowledge through
which the reader makes sense of themselves
and their everyday world intelligible”
(Dawn Currie, 1999).

“Stories are recognizable patterns, and in those
patterns we find meaning” (Rose, 2011)


WHY STORYTELLING?

“Narrative communication can break down
cognitive resistance to behaviour change
messages” (Houston et al., 2011)


“Open communication about sex and sexuality is an essential precondition
for sexual behaviour change, backed up by comprehensive services and
support programmes…”

As such, loveLife‟s introduced two PRINT publications to
add to this conversation about teen sexual behaviour
(and its link to HIV) - but also to provide answers to the
questions it would raise…


S’camtoPRINT*: Launched in 2000 to provide sexual health messaging

* S’camto = let’s talk about it


Examples of practical sexual
health messaging:


thethaNathi:* Launched in 2001 to offer
sexual health messaging and reinforce
loveLife‟s motivational messaging

*thethaNathi = talk to us in Xhosa


S’camtoUNCUT (2004):

“Innovation with sass, sexuality
with intelligence, knowledge with
compassion”

Paid growing attention to issues
beyond teen sexuality and safe
sex messaging – issues that
impacted on youth and their
outlook on life, which in turn
impacts their behaviour…

STEP 2:“Think that being poor means being helpless. Those who
are still trapped in poverty may think their situation is hopeless.
But even if you’re hungry, there’s a lot of future you can control.
Find a way to go to school, know where you want to go in life, wait
til you’re older to have sex, stick to one partner, always use a
condom. These are real ways to improve your future prospects. No
guarantee, no short cuts…(Five Easy Steps to Screwing up the
Future, Issue 3, March 2004)


… This coincided with loveLife‟s overall shift
to paying greater attention to the external
drivers of HIV and tolerance of risk in its
programming


The sticking point in the epidemic is not a lack of knowledge but a
tolerance of risk (Pettifor et al, 2004) because of the perception of limited
opportunity.

Culture theory proposes that limited choice and low social solidarity
characteristic of highly unequal societies such as South Africa predispose
to high-risk tolerance (Thompson, Ellis & Wildavsky, 1990).

Young people are frustrated by the limited choices
and constraints they experience in their day-to-day
lives. They feel they are ‘living in the meantime’ and
are resigned to their situations.


To align with this shift in
strategy, UNCUT gave more
scope to the first person
narrative in sections specially
created to build young
people‟s sense of identity,
purpose and belonging – and
give them a greater VOICE


It is through the use of “interpretive repertoires” that texts
become meaningful to readers (Hermes, 1995)

Repertoire of practical knowledge vs.
repertoire of “emotional learning and
connected knowing”


Repertoire of practical knowledge


“Knowledge is not a sufficient condition for behavior
change” (Freimuth, 1992)

The challenge: To get young people to turn practical
knowledge/information into creative action to overcome the
vortex of disempowerment and aimlessness in which they
find themselves in the present.


Stories can be useful as repertoires of “emotional learning and
connected knowing” which is “about „learning‟… and „recognising
yourself in stories and articles‟”…

Youth as storytellers can be used to
expand the repertoire of “emotional
learning and connected knowing” by
acting as role models readers can
identify with


“Stories can help listeners make meaning of their lives…
and listeners may be influenced if they actively engage in
a story, identify themselves with the storyteller, and
picture themselves taking part in the action” (Houston et
al., 2011).


UNCUT uses the perceived similarity or “homophily” between reader and
storyteller to demonstrate to youth that better lives are possible if action is taken
to bring about change.

To take action and know what action to take –
young people must first know who they are and
what they believe in (self-identity) and value
themselves (self-worth) – especially in the context
of a society that continues to define youth as
problems rather than assets and frequently silences
youth voices.


Sections through which youth share stories to explore various aspects of self:

Belief & Value Identity, Pride & Aspiration


Generation Chat: Parents and youth tell
both sides of the story


Importance of youth as role models:

“most
Bandura‟s social learning theory states that

behaviours are learned from
modelling” i.e vicarious learning
from others is a powerful teacher of
attitudes and behaviours


The power of youth storytellers:
• Authentic characters or „real‟ people

• Have “direct experience” of the same issues faced by reader

• This “direct experience” lends credibility to the storyteller and
makes “effective messengers of information” (Chou et al., cc)

In this way, narrative communication offers unique advantages over
traditional expository or didactic communication in the context of
promoting desirable health behaviors (Chou et al.)


Storytelling to foster a sense
of belonging – both locally &
globally to a movement of
young people finding own
solutions/opportunities to
their problems
Global ID section: Sharing voices of youth
from across the world to share own stories
– good and bad – of growing up and
overcoming challenges


Act of reading = traditionally an isolated event

BUT
Common for youth to read UNCUT together or as
part of classroom discussion i.e. reading stories
becomes a communal act allowing for
interpersonal communication


We are living in a heightened stage
of Ong’s “second orality” –
like primary orality, second orality has
generated a strong group sense – but
immeasurably larger than primary oral
culture (Ong, 1982)


Furthermore, UNCUT stories integrated with new media e.g. loveLife’s
mobile social network MYMsta…

Readers encouraged to join or start groups around
the stories they have read i.e storytelling becomes
more sophisticated with potentially no end –
connecting youth in a greater network of
opportunity and peer-to-peer education through
their own narratives


“a new type of narrative is emerging, one that‟s
told through many media at once in a way that‟s
nonlinear, participatory and above all, immersive.

This is „deep media‟: stories that take you deeper
than an hour-long TV drama or a two-hour movie
or a 30-second spot will permit” (Rose, 2011)


By

THANK YOU SIYABONGA
By: Esther Etkin, est.etkin@gmail.com
Cape Town, South Africa

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