Media academy unleashes peace journalism passions
(THESSALONIKI, GREECE)—Passions, the academic kind, were on display this week during my peace journalism presentations at the international summer media academy (THISAM) sponsored by Aristotle University.

We had a discussion about how peace journalists should commemorate the past, especially painful or contested events. I then tasked the participants (undergraduate and graduate students and young professional journalists) to come up with a plan on how they would advise Greek media commemorating the 50th anniversary in 2024 of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. One emotional participant said she could not be objective about this, since the invasion displaced her family. I understood what she was saying, and mentioned to the group that it’s important that we all acknowledge our biases. Other participants said that they would avoid bloody images and sensational wording when commemorating this anniversary. To these sound tactics I added the advice to remember the past but not dwell on it, and to look forward rather than only looking backward. (For more on remembering the past and memorialization, click here.)

Our discussion about media and refugees triggered another passionate student who said she’s mad about the way media marginalize refugees and the way refugees have been treated by governments. We discussed the tragic sinking of the refugee boat off of the coast of Greece, and the dearth of coverage this received compared to the contemporaneous implosion of the submersible exploring the wreck of the Titanic. (See blog). I quoted several passages from a story noting the one can’t discuss marginalizing migrant lives without considering racism and xenophobia. My passionate student, and others, agreed.

There were a number of other fascinating sessions at THISAM. These include:

--A presentation by David Simon of Yale University on reporting genocide and mass atrocities. He analyzed media coverage of the Rwanda genocide, and explained the “responsibility to protect” tenet of international law. Simon gave several ideas about how to practice what he called “atrocity prevention journalism.” These include highlighting genocide risk factors; supporting national barriers to genocide; spotlighting possible triggers of violence; and victim-centered storytelling.

--Thomas Miller from George Washington University discussed visuals, narratives, and frames. He shared photos of refugees, and asked the audience to assess if these pictures were sympathetic to refugees’ plight.

--Renate Schroeder (European Federation of Journalists) and Yannis Kotsifos (Journalist Union of Macedonia) discussed media monitoring tools in Europe, as well as the pending Europe Media Freedom Act, which is under consideration in European parliament.

For the complete THISAM program, click here.

It was an honor to teach alongside such distinguished colleagues. The participants were excellent—inquisitive, engaged, and attentive.

Even though it’s 100+ degrees (F) here, I’d do it all over again.

Canadian documentary project is peace journalism exemplar
(THESSALONIKI, GREECE)—I’ve officially been inspired, and that’s not easy to do.

Prof. Aphrodite Salas

Here at the International Summer Media Academy (THISAM), we heard an enlightening presentation by Prof. Aphrodite Salas from Concordia University in Canada. She presented details about a groundbreaking documentary project she and her students completed with an Inuit community in Inukjuak, Canada, which is 1,472 km from Montreal. In partnership with the indigenous community, they produced two 12-minute documentaries, one in the voice of an elder detailing the group’s mistreatment at the hands of the Canadian government, and the other about a hydroelectric project that will end the community’s dependence on environmentally-unfriendly diesel fuel.
(See  https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/inukjuak ).

These documentaries, and the process used to create them, are the essence of peace journalism. The films give a voice to the voiceless, telling stories using their authentic voices, while offering a counternarrative to traditional stereotype-perpetuating reporting about Inuit communities. Prof. Salas calls the process “story sharing” instead of storytelling, and emphasizes its collaborative nature. She said she was in touch with Innavik leaders for two years before filming ever started, working to build trust and the partnership necessary to produce the films. She calls this jointly created reporting “co-generative journalism.” I call it good reporting, and exemplary peace journalism.

Prof. Sherri Hope Culver

The 30 or so THISAM participants from around the world, students and a few journalists, have heard so far several presentations about new technology, Chat GPT and artificial intelligence, image manipulation, and so on. Also, Prof. Sherri Hope Culver from Temple University discussed media literacy. She presented useful media literacy questions that news consumers should ask, including who and why the content was created and whether the content contributes to tolerance and understanding. Finally, Prof. Signe Ivask from Estonia discussed how the rise of technology plus the chaos in the world (like Covid) have created an information disorder. She led an interesting discussion about fact checking.

The full THISAM schedule can be found here.             

THISAM continues this week in Thessaloniki. I’ll be proving the gathering a peace journalism orientation, and run them through a few exercises as well. Stay tuned for details.

THISAM students listening to, but not viewing, an in-class podcast.

 

Conference probes media trends like PJ, constructive journalism
(THESSALONIKI, GREECE)--Worldwide, the challenges faced by media are similar. The latest research on these challenges, and how they can be overcome by media, were at the top of the agenda at the Global Media and Culture conference today.

Prof. Panagiotou at Media Conference

Prof. Nikos Panagiotou of Aristotle University, the sponsor of the conference, laid a foundation for the days’ discussion. Among the insightful statistics he cited: On average, consumers spend 8 hours and 10 minutes daily on digital media; and social media consumption rose 61% between 2012 and 2020. He also laid out challenges for the media, including news avoidance by audiences (53% avoid news altogether or turn the channel when news comes on) and negativity bias in news reporting. Dr. Panagiotou finished by discussing antidotes to what ails media, including collecting better audience data and changing media delivery models. These improved methods, of course, could include peace journalism.

I presented research I conducted on peace journalism content in Russia-Ukraine war reporting. I analyzed the words used in thousands of stories, looking for usage that would indicate either PJ or its opposite, traditional journalism.  I found that traditional war language (missile, attack, killing) outnumbered PJ/peace language (reconciliation, treaty, negotiation) by 5 to 1. (For more details on the study, see my previous blog).  

Other conference presentations included:

--Prof. Christoph Schmidt, who enlightened the attendees about constructive journalism, which he defined as “yes we can journalism” that includes elements that empower audiences. He discussed his survey of international media leaders on CJ, who indicated their preference for CJ-style stories that present information of “high importance” to society. These practices, according to those surveyed, makes CJ media more sustainable than traditional media.

--Profs. Cheng Chen Ching and George Athanasopoulos, who discussed their study about how well university students in 4 countries understand fake news. The takeaway: students everywhere lack an operational definition of fake news, leading to a wide divergence of often poorly informed opinions. Especially interesting were statements made by Chinese students during the study’s focus groups. These statements include:
“There is no fake news. If you believe it, it’s true.”
“Propaganda is actual, factual news.”
“Russia must have had a justified reason to start the war.”

--Evlambia Angelou, who presented about translation in journalism and its important role in building meanings for audiences.

--Ionnia Georgia Eskiadi gave data about the movement from social media to immersive media (social gaming, virtual worlds, etc.), especially among young people. She said this has strong implications for new providers, although traditional media have largely failed to make a large impact yet in this area. (The NY Times has dabbled in virtual reality, Eskiadi noted).

Conference attendees included students, academics, and journalists from South Korea, Kosovo, China, the Netherlands, U.S., Canada, Serbia, and Greece.

Click here for the full conference program.

Migrant, sub deaths spotlight media's skewed priorities
When it comes to June’s twin tragedies of the implosion of the Titan submersible (5 lives lost) and the loss of a boat carrying migrants off of the coast of Greece (600+ lives lost), the media lost all sense of proportionality, and fairness to the victims.

The five submersible lives lost included three wealthy businessmen, a billionaire’s son, and a deep sea explorer. The 750 on the fishing boat were poor migrants primarily from Pakistan and the Middle East, trying to reach Europe. An estimated 100 survived.

While these tragedies are in no way comparable, the press reported about them as though the five lives lost far outweighed the hundreds of drowned migrants. A Google News search for the month before and after both tragedies (6/7 to 7/7) showed 15,800 hits for “Greece Migrant boat,” but an overwhelming 234,000 hits for “Titanic submersible.” (Similarly, “Greece refugee ship” had 7,930 news hits, while “Titan submersible” got 187,000). 

“We saw how some lives are valued and some are not,” Judith Sunderland, acting deputy director for Europe at the group Human Rights Watch, told The New York Times. “I don’t think it was wrong to make every effort to save (the submersible). What I would like is to see no effort spared to save the Black and brown people drowning in the Mediterranean.” The Times also reported comments from former President Barack Obama, who said of the submersible, “The fact that that’s gotten so much more attention than 700 people who sank, that’s an untenable situation.” 

I agree with the president. The  ratio of almost 15 Titanic submersible stories to 1 migrant boat story reflects something deeply wrong with traditional media that values only Western, white lives while ignoring or marginalizing others. Part of the problem as well is that reporting about migrants (unless they are from Ukraine) often suffers from “compassion fatigue” since, sadly, deaths among migrants are commonplace. No matter how routine, we must never forget that each incident of this type is still a tragedy.

Peace journalism offers a better approach to reporting about migrants by, first, giving their stories equal or greater weight when merited by the facts. Better migrant reporting humanizes individuals while providing context that illustrates larger statistics or trends. A peace journalist would reject language or images that rely on or reinforce stereotypes, racism, sexism, or xenophobia, and instead offer counter-narratives that debunk stereotypes, challenge exclusively negative narratives, and provide background about the desperation that drives individuals to risk their lives boarding overcrowded boats.