Our impact
In a one-year experimental study published in 2009, Paluck showed RLB’s significant successes in shifting perceptions about social norms among its audience.
Findings from the study indicate that regular exposure to Musekeweya led to a 10-percentage-point decrease in individuals advising their children to marry within their own group. Listeners also exhibited greater trust towards others, challenging the notion that trust is naïve. Additionally, audience members were more likely to voice their opinions when they disagreed with something and showed less tendency to blindly follow authority.
The soap opera also fostered increased empathy toward marginalized groups, including prisoners, genocide survivors, the poor, and political figures. Lastly, it’s audience was more likely to believe it’s important to speak about trauma.
Although exposure to RLB’s program did not lead to measurable changes in its audience’s personal beliefs, it did change its perceptions about social norms, which lead to a measured change in behavior.
After ten years of RLB work, with an expansion to Burundi and the DRC, Kogen & Price conducted an assessment of RLB’s impact and an evaluation of its work’s adaptability.
Like the earlier report, this study found that RLB’s audience showed a positive change in attitude toward trust, dealing with trauma and intermarriage, as well as the danger of scapegoating, active bystandership, and the understanding of complex truths about the past. Furthermore, a change in behavior amongst RLB’s audience was measured: its audience was more willing to hear the other side of the story, less willing to blindly follow authority, willing to attend reconciliation activities and more often discussed the topics RLB’s programs revolve around.
The ten-year evaluation also underscored RLB’s success in adapting its work to the contexts of Burundi and the DRC. Its education-entertainment radio dramas reached an impressive 70-90% of their target audience. As one of the few organizations actively addressing hate speech in the Great Lakes region, RLB serves as a vital complement to broader peacebuilding initiatives.
Over the past five years, RLB’s Media for Dialogue (M4D) program has yielded similar results. Aiming to reduce the instrumentalization of identity, increase media pluralism and the dissemination of reliable information, and improve inter-community cooperation and cohabitation, M4D was found to be a relevant and coherent program with a well-tailored mix of interventions, fit for its different audiences. It was a highly adaptive program, with good cooperation with formal and informal partners, leading to M4D largely reaching its targets in a conflict-sensitive and cost-efficient way. Similar RLB’s other programs, M4D has shown measurable impacts, with clear behavioral and attitudinal shifts among its target audience. Moreover, the program generated valuable spillover effects, as participants shared their newly acquired skills and knowledge within their communities, further amplifying its reach and influence.