Ebola and the Reimagining of Health Communication in Liberia

Abstract

The Ebola Virus Disease outbreak in West Africa started in late 2013. It was one of the worst in the history of infectious diseases in the world, devastating many communities in affected areas in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. A response to the outbreak in Liberia took the form of edutainment (Edutainment simply refers to any material, method, or process that is intended to both educate and entertain. See Colace et al. 2006) through film and song to raise awareness about the disease. This chapter presents a case study into how Liberian artistes utilized the platform of film and music, not only during the epidemic itself, but also in the aftermath, to tackle the spread of the disease and influence public perceptions about it. These creative productions enabled communities to do a number of things –show resilience in the face of fear and devastation, contain the spread of the disease, and simultaneously keep people entertained. What this chapter attempts to do is to draw out the extent to which these productions can be seen as a re-contextualization of health communication within the Liberian local context. Employing an in-depth analysis of these media content and their creators, this chapter demonstrates how the outbreak provided an opportunity for health communication to be approached from a different angle within the Liberian context. It helps us to think anew about health communication and how these context-defined edutainment materials were appropriate tools to use to confront the realities of the disease and to contain it.