Coming: “Why don’t you ask us?” - discussion tour in Latvia with a journalist from Iraq

On October 11-13, 2017 Haneen Jameel, a journalist from Iraq, will visit Latvia for a discussion tour “Why don’t you ask us?” to meet with young journalists, students, NGO activists and other interested parties and discuss migration and refugee related topics and their representation in media.

Meetings with the journalist are happening as part of the project “Better news media” in order to give the opportunity for journalists, youth, youth workers and teachers to get to know the story of Haneen – her professional work in Iraq, why she needed to leave her country as a refugee, her integration story in Finland and how refugee stories are represented in European media.
Main events of the discussion tour are:

• October 11th, 14.00 meeting with students at University of Latvia, Faculty of Social Sciences
• October 12th, 19.00 discussion at Kaņepe Kultūras centre
• October 13th, 10.00 meeting with students and teachers at Gulbene Gymnasium

During the tour meetings with representatives of local NGOs working in the field of migration, refugee support and human rights are planned to exchange experiences and best practices.

Project „Better News Media” is aimed to raise media literacy among young people and promote journalists'; awareness of the problem of refugees to combat racism and intolerance. Project is implemented from September, 2016 – December, 2017. Association “Humana People to People in Latvia” implements the project in Latvia, cooperating internationally with association “Mondo” from Estonia and “VIKES” from Finland.
Project is financed by EU programme “Europe for Citizens”.

Additional information:
Silvija Pūpola
NGO “Humana People to People in Latvia”
hpplatvia.com
+371 26424291, silvia.pupola@gmail.com

Social media campaign in Latvia "Viltus.lv"

Since 4th of July, 2017 multiple youngsters in project “Better News Media” have implemented and realized social media campaign “Viltus.lv” with the main aim to raise media literacy among young people and promote journalists' awareness of the problem of refugees to combat racism and intolerance.

During the campaign youth work group has made three video interviews – with the executive director from Baltic Media Excellence Center Rita Ruduša about media literacy and fake news, Bashar about fake facts and with Adibis from refugee camp “Mucenieki” about refugees lives and the way how it is portrayed on social media. Also there are two articles. The first one is based on the video that is published on “youtube.com” and filmed by the politician Artuss Kaimiņš in which he showed his unfounded intolerance about refugees living in Latvia. The second article is about news monitoring regarding refugees that shows the total picture in Latvian social media. During the project “Viltus.lv” team participated in the conversation festival LAMPA and Dzīvā bibliotēka (Living Library) where the question about refugees being portrayed on social media was discussed with Latvian society.

Active campaign period will end in September, 2017, but campaign and all other necessary information will be available until year 2018.

Check out web of the campaign: viltus.lv 

and Facebook.com page: https://www.facebook.com/viltuslv/

conversation festival LAMPA

Living library in Riga

Living library in Riga

Living library in Riga

Campaign to have better journalism on migration in Finland

#BetterNewsMedia was very active in Finland in spring 2017.

After the Winter School in Pärnu, the Finnish group of students and journalists started a campaign with the title #BringUsBack. Their idea is to challenge Finnish media houses to employ and use more journalists with refugee background as freelancers. The campaign was launched with a video in May. As of today, it has reached around 1400 people.



An international seminar was held in Helsinki on the 24th May, with 79 participants, who hailed from Finland, Germany, Mexico, Iraq, Somalia, North Caucasus, Portugal, Urugay, United Kingdom, Afghanistan, Egypt, Lithuania and Czech Republic. The keynote speaker was Ms. Elva Narcía from Mexico, and the other speakers were photojournalist Niklas Meltio, journalist Haneen Jameel and journalist Wali Hashi.

The lively discussion tackled difficult themes of representation and quality of western newscasting on the so-called developing countries and the refugee crisis.

A discussion tour with a similar theme went around universities where journalism is taught. “Why don’t you as us?” was the theme, and journalists Mohamed Ibrahim from Somalia and Haneen Jameel from Iraq discussed with students of journalism. We had 32 participants in Tampere on the 19th April and 31 in Turku on 10th May. A third discussion was held in Jyväskylä on the 29th September, and gathered altogether 39 participants.

The journalist students were very active in the discussions and wanted to know for example how they could work together with refugee journalists and what kind of stories remain untold.

In Tampere, we had also live video casting, organised by the Union of Journalists in Finland. This reached additional 809 people.

Jameel and Ibrahim were joined by a journalist from Afghanistan, Hussein Kazemian, in World Village Festival on the 28th May, where our journalist panel gathered more than 200 viewers. This was the main event in the discussion tour, and perhaps the first time for many Finns to encounter journalists who have come to Finland as refugees.

We also had indirect impact, far more than expected:

Speaker’s tour visited The National Broadcaster Yle’s radio programme Kultakuume (gold rush), which reached approximately 90 000 listeners. We also featured in World Village festival radio, which reached another 400-500 listeners.

Social media presence was very active. World Village Facebook posts reached 2 200 people, the international seminar 2 100 people and the speaker’s tour 2 400 in Tampere, 7 600 in Turku and 2200 in Jyväskylä. Vikes’s 1 050 Twitter followers very actively engaged, and dozens participated in discussion using the #BetterNewsMedia hashtag.

Forum theatre performance on hate speech

In Estonia, at Telliskivi Creative Centre's birthday (22.4.2017), MTÜ Foorumteater prepared and performed a forum theatre play on how to discuss the issue of refugees at home and among family without using hate speech or fuelling conflicts between different opinions. 

This was part of campaign activities in Estonia.

Thanks to all participants who shared their opinions! 

Social media winter school

One week-end in February youngsters from four different countries gathered in Pärnu, Estonia to discuss about media ethics, fake news and the effects of social media. Together they planned future social media campaigns on media ethics and refugees.

Participants commented their experience:

People from different backrounds came together to tackle the issue of negative media coverage of refugees through campaigning. Never forget to be more critical, analytical and open minded whilst consuming information. Look for the diversity in the media! #BetterNewsMedia

Call for applications: Media/Campaigning Winter School in Pärnu, Estonia, 16-19 February 2017

Do you want to use media as a campaigning tool? Would you like to increase the media literacy of young people?

If yes, then take part in Media/Campaigning Winter School in Pärnu, Estonia, 16-19 February 2017!

We bring together 50 young people (media or journalism students, bloggers, youth workers) from Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to jointly work on a campaign tackling how refugees are portrayed in the media. The campaign will be run in the spring in all of these countries.

Training will be in English and run by campaigning experts from Finland, Estonia and Latvia.

There is no participation fee, travel, accommodation and food expenses will be covered by organizers.

Please fill in this this online application by the 20th of January.

More info: 

Irma Mets

irma@mondo.org.ee

More info about BetterNewsMedia project:  http://betternewsmedia.blogspot.com/

Media mapping about refugee narratives in Estonia, Latvia and Finland

From 26-27 November NGO Mondo's meeting room was filled with bright young people from Estonia, Latvia and Finland. They had done media mapping in their countries to investigate how the media has portrayed the refugee crisis and how the public has reacted to it. The participants also tried out a social media campaigns related with refugee issues in the social media.

The presentations are available to view here.

What we have heard from discussions and presentations was that young people care about how to stop the polarization of society and how to ensure media's independence.