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C4D Network attend Roundtable with Maimunah Mohd Sharif (Executive Director, UN-Habitat)

Jackie Davies, C4D Network, attended the Oxford Urbanists, ThinkCity, and the Oxford Sustainable Urban Development Programme Roundtable event with Maimunah Mohd Sharif, the Executive Director of UN-Habitat. Held in Oxford, UK earlier this month attendees had the opportunity to give their feedback and share ideas about how the UN can promote inclusive urbanisation.

Oxford Urbanists detailed the event: Ms. Sharif gave an opening speech relating her Malaysian background, growing up in a rural settlement, and coming to the UK for her studies to be a professional planner in her expanding role in local government. She discussed what she hopes to achieve as Executive Director of UN-Habitat, including the role of Oxford in expanding opportunities for wider participation by young people and academia in developing “true value” from urbanisation.

She also shared her nascent attempts to refine the agency’s vision and mission, and gauged from attendees what are the key recommendations that should be taken into consideration with regards to future trends in urbanisation, particularly with regards to social inclusion issues.

‘Has media forgotten the social value of sports?’ Overview of World Radio Day celebrations, SOAS, London

Our C4D Network Co-ordinator, Samuel Perez Ramirez, gives an overview of the World Radio Day celebrations held on 7 February at SOAS, London.

UNESCO’s annual World Radio Day was celebrated this year on February 7th at SOAS University, London. The theme this year was “Radio and sports” and the event focused on the under-representation of women, BAME communities, and LGBTIQ+ communities, and disability sport in the UK mainstream media.

The event was co-hosted by SOAS Radio, and ConnectSport, with support from the SOAS Centre of African Studies, Communication for Development (C4D) Network and Roundhouse.

The first part of the event was a ‘Radio Fair’ –  where different organisations had their stalls and the public had the opportunity to come and have a chat and learn about the work of the organisations and their ideas about radio, sport, development or communication in general. Organisations that participated in the fair included Insightshare, K2Kradio, Live Sports FM, Street Child United/World Cup and FBB (Football Beyond Borders) Productions, as well as our C4D Network stall.

The second part of the event was a panel discussion with Michelle Moore, a former athlete and advocate of sports for social change; Emma Wright, a Senior Accounts Director (Sport) at Hill+Knowlton Strategies, Inc; Leon Mann, interviewer, sports consultant, and film-maker, and Jason Bourne, presenter and journalist at talkSPORT radio, moderated by Simon Lansley, CEO at ConnectSport. The topic for discussion was has the media forgotten the social value of sport and is there is a lack of representation of certain groups and communities in the mainstream media.

All the speakers agreed that there is a lack of diversity, as well as stereotypes faced by some groups and communities when it comes to sport and mass media. Men’s football takes a good portion of the time on the TV, radio and newspaper while other sports and women, LGBTIQ+ community, BAME and disability sport have little media coverage.

Some of the speakers talked about sports governance and the responsibility the government has in changing the situation by giving more visibility to those underrepresented groups and communities, as well as influencing at leadership levels and the quota’s governance.

Another key point of the panel discussion was the main roll we (all) play as consumers. The speakers focused on how changing our way of consuming information from the media – with a new focus and ethics that represent all those who haven’t been fairly treated so far in sport – would bring a change of the media mainstream content and give a fairer representation across mass media.

The speakers also exchanged observations about what would be the best communication channel to reach those who are not aware of the situation of under-representation of women and other groups and communities in sport. Social Media seemed to be the preferred channel and because sport is a reflection of society, calling people out on social media could have a big impact on changing attitudes and behaviours.

To summarise, all the speakers agreed that we have a moral responsibility to change and that by rising our voices and creating a big social movement, sport will experience a considerable change and women, BAME, LGTBIQ+ communities and disability sport will have a bigger positive social impact, ending discrimination and creating a more inclusive sport culture.

Panel discussion photo credit: SOAS Radio

World Radio Day London event 2017: ‘Radio and Global Transitions’ (overview and panel discussion recording)

On 10 February we joined forces with SOAS Radio and the Centre of African Studies to co-host the ‘World Radio Day London 2017: Radio and Global Transitions’ event – an exciting event with stalls and interactive exhibitions representing community radio and communication & development organisations, speakers and a panel discussion. Attendees came from across the UK and those not able to make the event could join us ‘virtually’ through SOAS Radio’s live broadcast and interviews.

The event began with the trade fair, featuring stalls from Radio Active, Children’s Radio Foundation, Development Media International, SciDev.Net, Radio Souriat (Syrian Women’s Radio for Peace), InsightShare, London International Development Centre, Refugee Radio, and the Radio Garden .

Workshops led by Roundhouse Radio and Whistledown Productions also ran throughout the afternoon. David Prest led a session on the different forms of radio documentary, and Max Graef and Niccy Logan examined the more practical side of the production process and discussed their own experiences of working both in London and abroad.

The evening panel discussion included talks from Carlos Chirinos from New York University/SOAS, Dr. Caroline Mitchell from University of Sunderland/Transnational Radio Encounters, Stephen Silverwood from Refugee Radio, and James Deane from BBC Media Action. They spoke on the topic: How is radio representing global transitions? Discussions ranged from learning from the use of local music artists for behaviour change during the Ebola Crisis, to the Radio Garden project, the use and aims of participatory radio, and the changing role of radio over the past three decades.

Further listening and reading

Click here to read the keynote speech from James Deane, BBC Media Action in full.

World Radio Day 2017 Podcast Series: In the build up to the World Radio Day Event 2017 the SOAS Radio Team interviewed community radio, representatives of communication for development organisations, radio industry professionals and academics on this year’ theme of ‘Radio and Global Transitions’ in a series of podcasts available via: https://soasradio.org/speech/podcasts/world-radio-day

Listen in full via SOAS Radio to the World Radio Day 2017 London panel discussion ‘Radio and Global Transitions’ https://soasradio.org/…/world-radio-day-2017-panel-radio-an…

Photos of the event can be viewed via the SOAS Radio Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pg/soasradio/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1419229048129214.

Report: Newton Tech4Dev Network Launch – ‘Crisis Work & Digital Opportunities’, 25-26 November 2016

A Workshop Programme – including the full names of all those mentioned in this piece – can be found here: Newton Network 2016 Launch Programme

The November 2016 workshop to launch the Newton Tech4Dev Network took ‘Crisis Work & Digital Opportunities’ as its theme: a topic which sparked a stimulating mix of ideas on innovations and their challenges from around the world.

Philippe Stoll’s (of International Committee of the Red Cross) keynote address set out the close relationship of crises and digital opportunities: the fact that there is faster 3G connection in Somalia than in the UK, he pointed out, shows how technology can thrive in a struggling state. Within this trend, he identified three key concepts that would return throughout the day. Digital disruption, disintermediation, and transparency – all of which are culminating in a “participatory revolution”.

Thomas Tufte (University of Leicester) reflected on how this disruption manifests as a “game-changer” for the communications for development field itself as the pervasiveness of media in everyday lives transforms the targeted, situated audience into a networked, mobile audience.

CDAC Network (Communication with Disaster-Affected Communities) focused on peoples’ technological needs as they move through a crisis, presenting the benefits of combining “analogue and digital” and translation on the level of dialect. Finn Rasmusen showed evidence of this in the work which International Media Support is supporting with Radio Rozana – produced by Syrian journalists and broadcast to civilians and refugees both online and via satellite.

An afternoon on the topic of ‘Humanitarian Labor’ ranged across the implications of this sector for local aid workers – who can “get the same use-and-discard treatment as the software they’re using”, suggested Ong (Uni. of Leicester) and Combindo (De Salle Uni.); for international aid workers – navigating “moral labor”, proposed Fechte (Uni. of Sussex); and for philanthrocapitalists’ exercising power remotely: “funders can undermine the control of aid workers in ways you don’t expect”, highlighted Bunce, Scott and Wright.

The first day closed with a panel on ‘Digital Sweatshops’. Much digital work that appears autonomous was exposed as algorithmically driven (Wood, Oxford Internet Institute), which other panelists scrutinized for its implications in the “World class…?” Philippines context (Soriano, De Salle Uni. & Cabanes, Uni. of Leicester) and in the context of gender and sexuality (David, Uni. of Colorado).

Day 2 turned towards interventions, responses and participation. An opening panel considered sectoral interventions from three strikingly different angles: private aid, whereby tour operators charter boat-fulls of European tourists to conduct needs assessments after typhoon Haiyan (McKay, Keele Uni.); digital payment systems, whose “huge unrealized potential” – for economic efficiency and transparency – is being tapped in crises, such as iris scanning for refugee identification in Jordan (Bower, Bower & Partners); and faith-based organisations, particularly Iglesia ni Cristo in the Philippines, who were shown to use crises to strengthen their evangelistic mission of “religious worlding” (Cornelo, Ateneo de Manila Uni., & Teehankee, De La Salle Uni.).

Professors of Volcanology and Environmental History provided fascinating new perspectives on community adaptations to natural disasters. Branney (Uni. of Leicester) showed how volcanic eruptions are entirely predictable, while Bankoff (Uni. of Hull) explored how disaster sub-cultures emerge among residents living with repetitive disasters in their daily lives. These scientific and anthropological approaches were balanced with Lallana and Soriano’s (De La Salle Uni.) policy perspective, on responsively redesigning disaster governance and management in the Philippines.

The C4D Network (Davies & Bartholomew) launched the final session of the day, showing the range of individuals and institutions across their global network who are participating in this sector, and emphasizing the importance and means of collaboration between them. Touri (Uni. of Leicester) responded with an exploration of agency and empowerment in in food networks, before Matule and Moyer (Uni. of Leicester) proposed a response to marginal voices’ lack of participation– their “routine exclusion” from – environmental decision-making.

Testament to the liveliness of conversations across the two days, the Newton Network Launch concluded with productive discussions about funding. These pragmatic discussions, as well as connections made over the two days, suggest that many of the ideas generated over the workshop can be translated into promising further action and conversations.

Photographs of the event can be found here, courtesy of Patricia Routh Photography

Report write up: Katie Bartholomew, C4D Network

 

IAMCR Conference 2016: Communication for Development highlights

Report back from the the 2016 IAMCR Conference by C4D Co-ordinator Katie Bartholomew

With over 1,000 participants, each engaged with Media Development research and practice, the 2016 IAMCR Conference was buzzing with discussion and activities. The theme of this year’s conference – ‘ Memory, Commemoration and Communication: Looking Back, Looking Forward’ – gave rise to a packed schedule of lively and diverse papers. The ‘Participatory Communications Research’ section was particularly relevant to our network focus on Communications for Development.

Relevant highlights included…

Thomas Tufte (Ørecomm research group and Roskilde University, Denmark) looked at the nature and mediation of embodiment and experience within a new generation of social movements.

Sarah Cardey (Reading University, UK) presented a paper on ‘gendering innovations’, analysing how development communications use gender frameworks – and how they don’t use them, pointing out that the social change theory of change doesn’t include gender theories.

Rafael Obregon (Chief of C4D at UNICEF) explored how the ‘Scaling Up Nutrition – SUN’ programme demonstrates how social mobilisation can work top-down, such as through global farmers’ coalitions, as well as from the grassroots – which is a challenge within an institution setting, where project aims might be mis-aligned.

Susan Abbott (CIMA) and Winston Mano (University of Westminster) presented findings from their pre-conference ‘Media and the Development Challenge’, hosted by University of Westminster earlier in the week – of which you can read the full report here.

Martin Scott (University of East Anglia), delivered a couple of papers: firstly, on the dynamics of humanitarian news journalism; and secondly, on his contribution to a book – launched at the conference – entitled ‘The External Image of Africa: Conclusions from the New Research Anthology’. Martin discussed how not to write about writing about Africa.

Jessica Noske-Turner (RMIT, Australia) spoke on the challenge of evaluating C4D projects, using the example of the Pacific Media Assistance Scheme’s (PACMAS) small-scale innovation fund.

Jonas Agerbaek (of Roskilde University, Denmark) was elected Vice-Chair of the Participatory Communications Research section for the next 4 years, and delivered a paper on ‘grounding democracy theory in the practices of NGO driven communication for development’.

 

After a busIMG_3507y Friday of conferencing, C4D Network joined forces/shared poppadoms with CIMA (Centre for International Media Assistance) at a curry house meet-up. There was plenty of vibrant discussion between those working in media development, and those working in communications for development… and those in between – perhaps most of us! – as we reflected on the fuzzy boundary between these two fields, and how they can best work together. A satisfying way (for mind and stomach) to celebrate a successful conference. We look forward to IAMCR 2017 in Cartegena, Colombia!

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