Elevating Youth Voices Using Multi-media Programming: Supporting Indonesia's Millennial Generation to Understand and Engage on Critical Sustainable Development Choices for Their Future

Abstract for Preformed Panel Presentation from the 2022 International SBCC Summit in Morocco:

"This evaluation assesses a multimedia project including a 20 episode TV drama #CeritaKita (Our Story), which aired on Surya Citra TV (SCTV) between June and August 2022, and accompanying digital media content, which reached an estimated 24.5 million people. The drama aimed to make climate change, green growth, and environment issues more relevant to youth in Indonesia through the depiction of a neighbourhood where young characters, their families and lives are intertwined with the climate and environmental difficulties they experience. Through a multi-method evaluation including a process evaluation, a quantitative survey, a randomized controlled trial, social media analytics and qualitative research, the evaluation examines the impact of programming on audiences' knowledge, discussion, attitudes, motivations and behaviours in relation to climate change, green growth, and environment issues. It showed that nearly half of the drama audience engaged with the content regularly. The experiment - with people randomly assigned to watch the TV drama and discussion show - found that the programming had a significant and positive impact on: knowledge - viewers knew more about the environmental impact of human activity, for example how beef farming contributes to water shortage or how food waste produces Methane; discussion and willingness to share environmental posts and follow relevant online influencers; policy support - for example support for the Indonesian government climate pledge and appetite for more media coverage of sustainable development. However, it did not influence people's climate related risk perceptions nor their intent to get involved in local environmental action (clean-up/tree-planting)."