In recent years, news consumption in the country has changed; in 2020, the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford found that for 73% of Chilean users, the most important news sources are social networks. Furthermore, the “Report 2024: News Consumption and evaluation of journalism in Chile” led by the academic and professor of the School of Journalism of the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso (PUCV), Claudia Mellado indicates that 55.3% of people evaluate the performance of national journalism as poor and 64.6% say Don’t trust the news most of the time. Faced with these figures, how can the media generate stories in a different way?
Within the framework of World Press Freedom Day, an event promoted by UNESCO, the Media Diversity Institute (MDI) organizes a round table to promote everyone, especially the media, to pay more attention to diverse points of view and voices local.
The panel “Rewriting Climate Change Narratives: Artistic Approaches to Inclusive Storytelling” will focus on how using different narratives can bring climate change stories to new audiences.
Panelists will include Boris van Westering, a climate journalism development expert from the Netherlands, Brazilian investigative reporter Karla Mendes, New Zealand documentary filmmaker and filmmaker Todd M Henry, Leshan Sikorei, a member of the Maasai community in Kenya, and Flavia Liberona. , Executive Director of the Terram Foundation.
During 2023, Boris van Westering was working on three stories together with journalists, artists, designers and researchers to generate narratives that account for the consequences of climate change in a different way than the media traditionally does.
“The reason I started is because I observed that the media is covering climate change from a very traditional perspective,” the expert explains to The counter.
Through interdisciplinary cooperation, they presented from the point of view of a peregrine falcon how climate change affects their migration route and they are threatened by illegal hunting and trafficking in North Africa; Also, a spatial experience that explains the forest fires in Morocco and how the climate crisis affects women farmers in the Jordan Valley through interviews done in animation.
“I wanted to see how we can, along with art and design, join with journalists on specific climate investigations to make sure we can think together how to tell the story differently and include different perspectives. And also extend the life cycle of the story through an artistic installation in an exhibition so that the narrative does not stop with the article, but continues through the art,” she adds.
In this sense, van Westering believes that currently “newsrooms do not have an active strategy in their editorial policy. “They just don’t think about climate change, culture and art as intersectional elements.”
The MDI panel will explore innovative and artistic approaches to covering climate change, highlighting the importance of diverse perspectives from vulnerable and marginalized groups in shaping the narrative. With this, MDI opens the space for a new way for journalists to report on environmental issues and the climate crisis, and promote integrative action.
The executive director of the Media Diversity Institute, Milica Pesic, indicates that the panel promoted by the organization is relevant given that “those most affected by the climate crises should have a more prominent role in telling their stories, they should stop being just an illustration of data in the media and become agents of social change. “UNESCO has chosen the right place and time to talk about journalism and environmental problems.”
When artists and #journalists join the forces we hear the voices of those hardest affected by #climatchanges. #minorites #women #indigenouspeople. Artist @borisvwestering@MDI_UK#arij23 pic.twitter.com/ldyPPhAUiS
— milica pesic (@milicapesic) December 3, 2023
“We all think we know how devastating climate change is, but are we journalists capable of really conveying that message to decision makers? There seems to be a fatigue, we know that climate change is terrible, but people no longer really read the articles,” he points out.
“The media and journalists can improve the information ecosystem on the climate crisis and enable inclusive climate action. But that requires the media to get out of its bubble and reconnect, truly, with disengaged audiences and marginalized communities,” adds Boris van Westering.
The Institute for Media Diversity panel will take place on May 4 from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., local time in Santiago de Chile (UCT-4). Check more information here