Media Development in Practice: Innovation for Dialogue

"...ongoing [digital] transformation is creating enormous opportunities. But it also brings huge challenges, problems, and side effects, and can impact public discussions in negative ways. Without further innovation, the harmful effects will outweigh the opportunities in the long run."

In a world where open public dialogue is facing many challenges, this publication by Deutsche Welle (DW) Akademie looks at how to strengthen public dialogue on issues of public interest online. It does so by highlighting four case studies from across the globe that all take very different approaches to increasing the visibility of underrepresented topics and to creating opportunities for all voices to be heard. The goal of the publication is to give inspiration for further innovation in media development.

As explained by DW Akademie, "Although the digital transformation offers people new opportunities for interacting and participating, it has not, contrary to initial hopes, strengthened their ability to equally participate in the public dialogue. Not everyone can exercise their rights to freedom of expression and access to information. There are various reasons for this, including a lack of resources or knowledge of how to deal with digital media, and state regulations or shrinking markets for independent media." The report cites a number of reasons as to why the public sphere is shrinking. They include, among other things, the fact that special interest groups with influence and money, often with minority views, are increasingly driving public discussions; the fact that social bots are being used as "weapons" to amplify misinformation and propaganda, deviate political debates, and disrupt elections; and the fact that discussions are often dominated by emotions rather than facts, as social media algorithms favour emotions that drive higher engagement with their users and result in greater advertising revenues.

According to DW Akademie, "If societies fail to develop new approaches and find new solutions to offset the harmful effects of digital transformation on our public sphere, these negative tendencies will have a greater impact and social cohesion will be at stake." For these reasons, fostering innovation to improve public dialogue in the digital sphere is an important mission for media development. Innovation in this field is described as measures that will ensure that societies are able to "take full control of their public discussions using an infrastructure that serves the public instead of private interests. They should be able to define for themselves the issues they deem relevant, instead of algorithms which are optimized to increase advertising revenues. They have to create digital public spaces without barriers and protect them from restrictions and manipulations."

The report shares the following four case studies, which seek to achieve some of the above objectives. Each case study includes lessons learned, and Innovation for Dialogue takeaways.

1. Ecuador: Indigenous communities write their own narratives on Wikipedia - Ecuador's indigenous population of around 1.1 million (out of the country's 16.4 million inhabitants) is seriously under- and misrepresented on the internet, both in terms of quantity and quality, often leaving public dialogue about their history and current social, political, and cultural challenges one-sided. In an experimental seven-month pilot project (September 2018 - March 2019), a group of indigenous journalists, community reporters, language activists, and leaders participated in a process to create new entries or revise and rewrite existing entries on Spanish-language Wikipedia about their own history, culture, and traditions, thereby correcting false or misleading representations of indigenous peoples.

2. Moldova: Using hackathons to develop tech-based solutions for fighting disinformation - In Moldova, the run-up to the 2016 presidential election was characterised by "a large-scale disinformation campaign, often with the participation of politically affiliated mainstream media outlets controlled by oligarchs that spread erroneous statements without confirming facts and smeared pro-European candidates". Election monitors concluded that several media outlets violated not only the electoral code but also journalism ethics, resorting to denigrating some of the candidates, spreading disinformation, manipulating public opinion, and presenting hate speech as being based on religion. DW Akademie, together with the Independent Journalism Center, brought together software developers, programmers, journalists, designers, bloggers, civic activists, and media consumers for a three-day hackathon in July 2016 to foster new ideas and novel approaches and to create solutions. The hackathon, titled "Fifth Power" had as its goal "to improve the ability of media consumers to critically perceive the media's messages, to filter information using web or mobile applications and other innovative IT [information technology] tools."

3. Uganda: A network of community reporters sheds light on underreported local issues - About 95% of people living in remote areas in Uganda have access to radio, and it is the only source of information for many. However, most media content is directed at urban groups and has only limited relevance for rural audiences. Furthermore, many of the large FM stations broadcast their content in English, making it impossible for large parts of the population to access. From 2014 to 2020, DW Akademie paired up with CEMCOD (Centre for Media Literacy and Community Development) to design a solution that helps rural radio stations cover hyperlocal news stories at no cost by building up a network of 120 community reporters in remote parts of Uganda. These reporters use their mobile phones to report on issues that affect their communities but were previously ignored by mainstream media companies.

4. Middle East: Fostering innovation in journalism education to better prepare future journalists for digital challenges - Following the Arab Spring in the early 2010s, demand for quality information has continued to grow in the Middle East. Audiences are seeking to move beyond the misinformation and propaganda that dominated state-controlled and state-influenced media, and they are looking for ways to actively debate public affairs online. DW Akademie, together with one of its Beirut-based partners, the Maharat Foundation, invited a diverse group from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Morocco to engage them in a creative process with two main goals: (i) to build long-term innovation capacities with the participants, especially the university educators, by introducing them to the concept, methods, and mindsets of human-centred design and (ii) to reimagine journalism studies in the Middle East. Participants were expected to use the skills acquired to develop working prototypes for new learning experiences for their students that would better respond to the digital and economic challenges and do it in a much more engaging and inspiring way.

These are just a few examples of the projects DW Akademie and its partners are involved in. The process of finding innovative solutions to public dialogue is ongoing and a key part of the DW Akademie media development strategy.