Scholarly Insights: Reducing Prejucide and Conflict

Elizabeth Levy Paluck (2009), “Reducing Intergroup Prejudice and Conflict Using the Media: A Field Experiment in Rwanda”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96(3):574-87.

This research seeks to understand the mass-media’s role in shaping prejudiced beliefs, norms and behavior. A yearlong field experiment in Rwanda tested the impact of RLB’s radio drama Musekeweya, featuring messages about reducing intergroup prejudice, violence, and trauma in 2 fictional Rwandan communities. Compared with a control group who listened to a health radio drama, listeners’ perceptions of social norms and their behaviors changed with respect to intermarriage, open dissent, trust, empathy, cooperation, and trauma healing. However, the radio program did little to change listeners’ personal beliefs but did change social norms.