Getting the Message Across : Reporting on Climate Change and Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific: A Handbook for Journalists (UNESCO, 2018)
This Handbook has been customized for journalists to tell the climate change story specific to the region. It explores the essential aspects of climate change, including its injustices to vulnerable communities, especially women and girls and least developed countries, and provides examples of best practices and stories of hope unique to the region. It can be used as a resource for journalists to understand the science of climate change, as well as helping journalists to improve their reporting of the environmental, social, economic¸ political, technological and other angles of the story.
The Handbook is part UNESCO’s International Programme for the Development of Communication’s Series on Journalism Education. The series aims to reinforce the capacities of journalists, journalism educators and their institutions to promote sustainable development, by enhancing the abilities of journalists to report on science, development and democratic governance.
The Handbook has been produced under the umbrella of a project supported by Malaysia. Its sister publication, Climate Change in Africa: A Guidebook for Journalists is also available as part of this series. With this book tailored for the Asia and Pacific, UNESCO urges journalists in the region to empower themselves so as to enhance the ability for citizens and their governments to find better local solutions in the face of the global problem of climate change.
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Lessons in Innovation: How International News Organisations Combat Disinformation through Mission-Driven Journalism (Reuters Institute, 2019)
This report examines how digital-born news media in the Global South have developed innovative reporting and storytelling practices in response to growing disinformation problems. Based on field observation and interviews at Rappler in the Philippines, Daily Maverick in South Africa, and The Quint in India, the authors show that all three organisations combine a clear sense of mission and a commitment to core journalistic values with an active effort to find new ways of identifying and countering disinformation, based on a combination of investigative journalism fact-checking, data and social network analysis, and sometimes strategic collaboration with both audiences and platform companies. In the process, each of these organisations are developing new capacities and skills, sharing them across the newsroom, differentiating themselves from their competitors, and potentially increasing their long-term sustainability, in ways the authors believe other news media worldwide could learn from.
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Dignity and humanitarian action in displacement (ODI report, 2019)
This report draws on the findings of a two-year HPG research project on ‘Dignity in displacement: from rhetoric to reality’. The goal of the project was not to define dignity, but to understand what it meant to affected people in different places, with different cultures and at different times. It explores how refugees, internally displaced people (IDPs) and returnees in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Colombia, Lebanon, the Philippines and South Sudan understand dignity, and whether (and how) they feel that their dignity has been upheld in displacement.
It then compares their understanding with that of humanitarian workers in these responses, analysing what this means for humanitarian policy, programme design and implementation more broadly, and the localisation agenda more specifically.
It suggests six recommendations for incorporating dignity into a humanitarian response including:
- Invest time and resources in listening to the affected population from the start of the response, and use this information to inform project design and implementation.
- Use more face-to-face communication, especially in the assessment phase of the humanitarian response, and pay attention to what means of communication are appropriate at each stage.
- To better understand the local culture and language, include anthropologists, sociologists, translators and others in the response, who can help in understanding the affected population and the dynamics of their situation.
- Invest in programmes that promote self-reliance, where possible, and encourage more participation by affected communities in project design and implementation.
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Civil Society & Inclusive Peace (Peace Direct, 2019)
Inclusive peace, or the idea that all stakeholders in a society should have a role in defining and shaping peace, is receiving widespread global recognition. Still, despite the progress made through the increased recognition of inclusive peace at the theoretical and policy level, it has proven difficult to achieve in reality. Peace Direct teamed up with the Inclusive Peace & Transition Initiative and the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict to explore the dynamics of inclusivity and peacebuilding in further detail in this report.
The report includes in-depth case studies from around the world, that help us to understand the strategies employed by grassroots peacebuilders to counter the challenges to effective inclusion in peacebuilding. From Nigeria to DR Congo, explore the case studies below to see what has worked (or not) in particular situations, and the successes, challenges and stalemates encountered on the pursuit to inclusive peace.
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