Fulbright Update:
In Soroca, applying peace journalism to young content creators
If you’ve been following my misadventures here in Moldova, you’ll know that I crashed and burned during my first attempt to teach peace journalism to a group of secondary school students. My presentation was too stiff, formal, and academic. (See previous blog for all the gory details). 

I was given a second chance by my colleagues at the Centrul Media pentru Tineri (youth media center), which organizes these fantastic workshops. This time, at a workshop in Soroca, I believe I did a much better job of connecting with the energetic youngsters.

CMT youth media/peace media seminar, Soroca

The key to my less-embarrassing presentation was shifting the focus slightly away from peace journalism (which is more applicable to those studying or practicing journalism) to peace media, a term I coined that more closely connects with the experiences of this youth group, and indeed media creators and consumers of all ages.

I defined Peace Media as  “When content creators, media consumers, and social media users make choices that can create an environment (online and in person) more conducive to peace.” This made it more applicable to and personal for the students, who after all create, consume, and disseminate/share information daily (hourly?), especially on social media.

The students and I then discussed the choices that they, as creators, consumers, and disseminators, can make that create an atmosphere more conducive to peace. These three choices regard:

1. Framing—How you tell the story. Peace framing is telling or sharing stories in a way that doesn’t sensationalize, glorify, or encourage violence, or present violence as the only alternative to conflict.
2. Word choices—Words matter. They can make angry people angrier, spread hate, stereotype, spread disinformation, further divide people (polarize), and make peaceful interactions less possible.
3. Image choices—The videos and pictures that students take, use, and share matter. Bad or fake images can mislead or confuse. Bloody, sensational images can create strong negative emotions, or can exploit and re-victimize those who have been traumatized.

CMT's Alex Ghetan opens the Soroca seminar

These concepts were derived from peace journalism, which discusses the choices journalists make, but were re-framed in a way that was more relevant to the student’s lives and experiences.

I finished my lesson with an exercise where the students edited a Tik Tok-style script to remove non-peaceful words, images (from a shot list), and framing.

The students seemed genuinely enthusiastic about this task, and seemed to take to heart my plea to take peace into account as they engage with media.

I appreciate the opportunities Centrul Media pentru Tineri has given me to work with young people, and look forward to my next road trip with the CMP team.