Leveraging Edutainment and Social Networks to Foster Interethnic Harmony

Abstract
Interethnic tensions pose a significant barrier to the socioeconomic advancement of minority groups. This paper investigates the effectiveness of educational entertainment in promoting interethnic harmony. We carried out a cluster-randomized experiment involving over 3,300 households across 120 polyethnic villages in Bangladesh. We find that disseminating information through a documentary film designed to educate the ethnically dominant Bengalis about the ethnic minority Santals in polyethnic villages increased the ethnic majority's altruism and solidarity toward minorities. Using emotion-detecting software to analyze facial expressions during the film viewing reveals that empathy played a significant role in this process. Additionally, we find that targeting network-central households with the intervention generated large positive spillovers on other households within villages, including those of the Santals. We further corroborate these findings through a separate casual work field experiment and through administrative data on police complaints and arbitration complaints to village counselors. Our findings highlight the power of edutainment and social networks in promoting interethnic harmony. Joint paper with Abu Siddique and Yves Zenou.