Can peace radio shift social cohesion? Experimental evidence from a one-off narrative exposure in rural Sierra Leone

Conflicts between farmers and herders are a growing source of violence across West Africa, yet rigorous evidence on effective peacebuilding interventions in such settings remains limited. This paper examines whether a brief, one-off exposure to a peace-oriented radio narrative can shift intergroup attitudes and cooperative behaviour in Sierra Leone’s Falaba District, where farmer–herder tensions are recurrent. We embedded a randomised audio prime into a household survey of nearly 2,000 respondents, assigning participants to listen either to an eight-minute segment of a locally produced peace drama or to a placebo health narrative, and measured outcomes immediately afterwards. We find null average effects: the treatment produces no detectable changes in generalised trust or altruistic behaviour and only small, non-robust improvements in tolerance towards selected outgroups. Exploratory analyses find some variation in estimated effects by gender and tribal identity, though most subgroup patterns do not survive correction for multiple comparisons and are treated as suggestive rather than confirmed findings. The results overall suggest that brief narrative exposure is insufficient to shift intergroup attitudes on average, and that low-dose peace messaging should not be expected to substitute for sustained programming.

Policy relevance

Our null average effects caution against expecting measurable impact from low-dose peace messaging without sustained engagement or complementary programming. The exploratory subgroup analyses further suggest that audience composition may matter: the same message may be received differently depending on listeners’ social position, reinforcing the importance of pre-testing content with diverse audience segments. These findings speak to efforts to build inclusive partnerships for sustainable peace (SDG 16 and 17) and to the growing policy interest in scalable, community-based approaches to farmer-herder conflict reduction across West Africa and the Sahel.