Abstract

To counter impulse-driven hate behaviour, there is an ever-growing need for an easily absorbable method of education to impart not only media literacy, but also a basic Psycho-literacy for audiences to become more resilient to their own reflexes to fear and insecurity. Radio La Benevolencija HTF (RLB) runs a long term “inoculation” project that has used Entertainment Education media interventions, connected outreach activism and accompanying action research during 17 years of continuous, ongoing broadcasts of 3 long-duration Radio Dramas in Rwanda, Burundi and the DR Congo, reaching audiences of over 20 milion people. The drama’s fictional settings overcome reactance by provoking self-critical moments of realization when judging other’s fictional realities. The Interventions are built around a simple psycho-“vocabulary” of reactions to fear, loss of identity and trauma developed by Professor Emeritus Ervin Staub (UMass), and stimulate audience members to active bystandership against incitement. Regular evaluations show considerable impact, recently allowing the NGO to transpose best practices learned to the online video gaming environment in Europe during the past 2 years. RLB’s experiences provide a glimpse at the possibilities of extra-curricular media education. This article will provide a critical look at the methodology used, especially at the often overlooked problem of reactance and how to tackle it, problems encountered in funding long-term media education and the adaptation issues of spreading universal know-how in different contexts.