Animation as a Science Communication Tool in Timor-Leste

The Challenge and the Communication Context

Situated at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, Timor-Leste occupies a total area of less than 6,000 square miles and has a population of just over 1.2 million people. At least 70% of Timorese rely on subsistence farming for their livelihood. A large proportion of them are food-insecure due mainly to the prevalence of slash-and-burn farming techniques and the generally low yields obtained from traditional crop varieties (Lopes & Nesbitt, 2012). The adoption of improved cultivars, along with agronomic practices that maximize their yield, offers the most promising path to increased food supply in the short term.

Pursuing this option, however, means dealing with a challenging communication environment. To date, no comprehensive communication system has been developed to diffuse agricultural technology improvements in Timor-Leste beyond the appointment of an agricultural extension officer in each of the country’s 442 villages. Even then, little attention has been given to communication approaches appropriate to farmers in remote communities (Bevitt, Octaviana, de Araujo, Nesbitt, & Erskine, 2016). Here traditional beliefs in respect of agricultural practices are strongly held and media access is limited. While most Timorese speak Tetun (an official language along with Portuguese) to one degree or another, at least another 16 languages are spoken in different parts of the country (Macalister, 2012). More importantly, rates of illiteracy are high. The World Bank estimates that around 36% of adults over 15 years of age were illiterate in 2015 (http://data.worldbank.org).

Animation as a Development Communication Tool

Animation essentially involves the “artificial creation of the illusion of movement” to present visual information in dynamic form (Wells, 1998, p. 10). Animations can be created in a variety of ways including from drawings, cutouts, puppets, or clay figures. The animation technique referred to in this article involves the drawing of characters to “enact” a story line through movements alone (no dialogue) in a setting made to look as familiar as possible to the target audience.

This form was chosen for trial because information provided predominantly in text form is inaccessible to low-literacy audiences. Static diagrams and images (e.g., as on leaflets and banners) can increase comprehensibility but only if the viewer understands the conventions required to “read” them (e.g., when to interpret arrows as representing direction, as distinct from time sequences or causality). Animations are said to be much easier to understand as they are pictorial and can direct the viewer to key information in ways less likely to be misinterpreted (Berney & Betancourt, 2016). Videos showing actual people (otherwise known as live-action videos) can do the same, but the clarity of the messages can be weakened due to the physical appearance of the “actors,” their facial expressions, and nonverbal behavior and backgrounds—all of which can unintentionally distract a viewer from what the video is meant to present.

That said, there is relatively little published research on the use of animation for development purposes, and most of what exists is the work of members of the leading group advocating the technique—the University of Illinois–based Scientific Animators Without Borders (SAWBO). SAWBO seeks to employ new information and communication technologies in developing countries to deliver low-cost instructional animations pitched at low-literate audiences (Bello-Bravo et al., 2011). Apart from the advantages of animation proposed above, SAWBO argues that animations are an engaging communication tool because they can employ entertainment to capture and maintain interest (Bello-Bravo, Dannon, Agunbiade, Tamo, & Pittendrigh, 2013); are easily transmitted and accessed on cell phones, tablets, and Internet-capable computers (Bello-Bravo, Nwakwasi, Agunbiade, & Pittendrigh, 2013); and can be shared via social media to a far greater extent than information provided through traditional media channels (Bello-Bravo et al., 2011).

There has been little independent validation of these claims, however. Certainly the effectiveness of animation in Timor-Leste was unknown prior to this trial because the approach had never been employed as a science communication tool in that country.

Production of the Animation

The animation trial was conducted in cooperation with Seeds of Life (SoL)—an Australian government–funded development program situated within the Timor-Leste Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. SoL’s principal objective was to ensure that 50% of farmers in Timor-Leste had adopted and were routinely using higher yielding varieties of five basic crops—maize, sweet potato, rice, peanuts, and cassava—by the end of the 5-year program in 2016 (AusAid, 2010). When I proposed a trial of animation to SoL, the request came back to base it on agronomic practices that would maximize the results from higher yielding varieties of maize.

The animation was prepared by final-year students in the Bachelor of Animation and Visual Effects program at Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia. A large component of the professional development of these Charles Sturt University students involves them undertaking pro bono work for not-for-profit groups. The animation could thus be provided free of charge to SoL in return for feedback on its effectiveness as a communication tool.

Four students worked on the animation under my direction. None of them had ever visited Southeast Asia—let alone Timor-Leste—and only one came from a farming background but this was in grazing and broad acre farming. As animation is taught over 200 miles away from my own campus, all communications were conducted via videoconferences (three in total, each less than an hour in duration) and e-mail. Briefing notes that I prepared for the students about subsistence farming in Timor-Leste and what the animation was meant to convey were kept to a minimum (three A4 pages). This was to maintain focus on the clarity of the key messages to be delivered and not predetermine too much of what the students themselves would propose.

The initial script they submitted was based on a series of points about preparing a garden, planting it, harvesting the crop, and potential pests. Many of these details were inaccurate—reflecting the students’ lack of knowledge about farming. The script also failed to coalesce into a narrative. These problems had been anticipated and were easily addressed. I suggested a story line in which a male farmer is perplexed to find his female neighbor has a better crop than he. She shows him the “secrets” of success (new agronomic practices), and the two then gather and store the harvest together (a further set of new agronomic practices). Such a story line would create a tension in the narrative and a resolution—both of which have been shown to grab and hold audience attention in live-action videos (Ladeira & Cutrell, 2010). This plot line was also culturally sensitive: The woman’s importance as a source of information would be acknowledged but in a way that did not demean or disparage the male character, and the two would eventually work as equals to produce a bumper harvest.

The students quickly made the necessary corrections to the script. Subsequently, they simply sent questions to me via e-mail and provided me with links to running edits posted on a website internal to the university. This proved a simple and straightforward process that took very little time or effort on anyone’s part. The first post, for instance, was a screen shot of the proposed central “characters” in the animation: the male farmer and the female farmer. It required only a few suggested changes in appearance to get both to look convincing as Timorese farmers.

The production process demonstrated that an animation could be made off-shore yet still “look” and “feel” local to its intended audience. This significantly reduces the cost of producing live-action videos in country or producing videos off-shore that look foreign when shown locally. There are also significant cost (and logistical) benefits over another communication approach I had trialed previously for much the same audience: using participatory theater to engage with farmers (McGillion & McKinnon, 2014).

Packaging the Messages

In conceptualizing the animation, I considered several elements as crucial. First, the behavior of the characters had to be presented in a way that was respectful of Timorese and mindful of the important role their women play in farming. This was necessary to ensure the audience could empathize with the characters and their “story.” Second, the animation had to capture and hold the attention of viewers: It had to reflect the authentic experience of Timorese farmers, be fast-paced, and contain elements of humor. These were important features in terms of engagement with/interest in the narrative. Third, attention had to be focused on the action (which contained key messages) rather than on dialogue (talking about the action). This would ensure key messages were accurately disseminated and easily understood.

Twelve key messages were distilled from a 40-page booklet on maize guidelines designed for use by extension officers. These messages included optimal spacing for rows and plants, the need to fence fields, and weeding, drying, and storage instructions. These were packaged into a 4-minute narrative divided roughly into 1-minute sequences. In the first, a young male farmer is shown wondering why his maize crop is not as productive as that of a female neighbor. The woman then demonstrates appropriate row and plant spacing, seeding, and weeding techniques. She does this by turning data (e.g., measures such as 70 cm) into visually displayed anatomical measures (from shoulder to fingertip for an average-sized Timorese woman). In the second sequence, the two farmers work together to cultivate and harvest the crop (using recommended agronomic practices), after which, in the third sequence, the male is shown drying and storing the harvest appropriately. The last sequence presents each of the key messages in a written Tetun overlay so literate viewers (extension officers, children of farmers) have a summary of the information.

Once the animation was deemed complete at the Australian end, it was made available via a general-access website to Sol’s research staff in Timor-Leste for final editing suggestions. There it was reviewed to ensure that all messages would be presented with appropriate clarity and precision. Suggested changes (23 in all) were communicated to the students and made within a matter of days. The final cut can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/109073628.

Use and Evaluation

SoL decided that continuing constraints on cell phone services among remote farmers in Timor-Leste (appropriate phones, 3G coverage, and the cost of downloading videos) worked against distributing the animation through a publicized information and communication technology approach. Instead, the animation was initially used in workshop training sessions for extension officers, shared among Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries staff and on social media, and uploaded to the SoL website. It was also shown during film nights commissioned by SoL and conducted by a Timorese company specializing in screening free short movies and features in outdoor venues in remote locations. These film nights were conducted in 9 of the country’s 13 districts and attended by a total of more than 23,000 people. Each night, before the main feature, the animation would be screened along with two instructional live-action videos—one on gender and another on the national seed system.

Evaluations are extremely difficult in Timor-Leste, especially where literacy levels are low, because reading out questions to respondents and recording their answers is both labor- and time-consuming. As well, assessing the actual impact of an animation on viewers’ behavior is even more challenging. Interest sparked by an animation may wane or it may require other interventions—such as follow-up contact with an extension officer—before it leads to any desired action. For this reason, SAWBO’s preferred method of assessing the impact of an animation is to seek feedback from development staff employing the tool (Bello-Bravo, Dannon, et al., 2013).

In interviews I conducted in August 2015 in Timor-Leste’s capital Dili with two SoL staff, it was reported that the animation worked extremely well in training sessions as it was highly popular and extremely useful in sparking debate. In the limited surveys that were done on film nights, the feedback was that respondents generally preferred the animation to the live-action videos and found the information it presented easier to follow.

A more comprehensive end-of-program report by SoL compared various channels of communication employed during the life of the program. These were judged for their effectiveness on the basis of staff experience implementing communications, ad hoc feedback from farmers, and results from what surveys SoL did carry out. Overall, the animation’s use of pictorials to relay messages was considered highly suited to low-literacy viewers, the narrative it presented was clearly engaging for audiences, and viewers with suitable devices could replay the animation providing potential for strong impact. But the report concluded that the relative lack of video-capable phones among farmers and the lack of training among extension officers in how to use animation as a source for agricultural information rendered the tool an “inefficient channel” for the time being (Bevitt et al., 2016, p. 175).

Discussion and Conclusion

This situation is likely to change very quickly. Timor Telecom’s monopoly on the telecom sector ended in 2012 when two new operators were licensed and began competing (and driving down prices for cell phone services) the following year. According to the research and consultancy company BuddeComm, Timor-Leste’s cell phone market—already the country’s fastest growing communication medium—almost doubled in the 12 months to June 2015 (https://www.budde.com.au). As smart phones become more generally available in Timor-Leste and/or extension officers are trained in how to use animation in the field (e.g., by showing them on tablets in order to generate discussion), a clearer picture of animation’s value as a communication tool will emerge. The results of this trial suggest that further research along these lines is warranted not only in Timor-Leste but also in other countries challenged by low literacy and limited mass media reach.