Measuring and Characterising Audience Engagement with the C'est La Vie Programme in Francophone West Africa

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

"C'est La Vie! (CLV), is a health-focused series produced in West Africa, broadcasting much of its content on social media, in addition to television and radio. CLV content is shared on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. It measured and characterised audience engagement by collecting and analysing a sample of public YouTube comments on CLV Series 2. The methodology used a self-selected sample of viewers who left unprompted comments. As well as quantitative analysis of metadata, qualitative data was coded for two broad domains: 1) entertainment, including characters mentioned and narrative engagement; 2) health topics, including gender, and sexual and reproductive health (SRH).Viewers frequently mentioned characters by name and identified with them. Overall, more comments focused on entertainment aspects of the series, such as discussing characters and storylines, than those related to health theme domains, where SRH featured most often. The theory-informed approach to analysis drew on robust evidence that demonstrates the importance of entertainment and engagement along the path to behaviour change.The use of social media platforms to disseminate content is an important strategy for health interventions: platforms such as YouTube also permit collation and analysis of publicly available data to allow researchers to assess audience exposure and engagement and understand how people interact with online health content. CLV's observational study provides evidence, methodology and applications of online data for programme evaluation, particularly by defining constructs drawn from narrative engagement theory. Future work could measure audience engagement over time to help attribute programme exposure to targeted change."