"Adolescents in Mexico experience high pregnancy and birth rates. A collaboration with Grupo Televisa led to the development of an entertainment-education telenovela intervention, Overcome the Fear (OTF), which aired in 2020 to a national audience and addressed adolescent sexual and reproductive hea
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lth (SRH) topics. This study details the development and evaluation of OTF’s impact on adolescent contraceptive practices and parent-adolescent SRH communication in Mexico" [...] Conclusions: This study suggests that viewership of a high-quality entertainment-education telenovela informed by extensive formative research is related to adolescent health outcomes and to parent-adolescent SRH communication on a country-wide scale in Mexico. Entertainment-education remains an underutilized public health strategy, despite its promise to engage viewers and motivate healthful behaviors." (Abstract)
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"Ûiiti (‘the treatment’) is an Android phone app created by artist duo Greenman Muleh Mbillo, in Kenya, and Dani Ploeger, in the Netherlands. The work is a high-tech iteration of the 'nzevu', a ritual instrument of the Kenyan Akamba tribe. It transforms a smartphone from a networking technology
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with complex modes of interaction into a technology of transcendence with a minimal user interface. Through a constellation of symbolic imagery and the performance of repetitive sonic patterns, the work aims to evoke a heightened experience of the user’s immediate lifeworld." (Abstract)
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"This study forms part of the Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG)’s wider research on humanitarian ‘digital divides’. Drawing on existing literature, interviews with humanitarian practitioners and research with people affected by crisis in Venezuela and Uganda, it explores how the presence of soci
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al media in humanitarian crises intersects with efforts to make humanitarian aid more inclusive. It finds that, despite almost a decade of bold claims regarding the potential for social media to support humanitarian action, practical engagements among humanitarian actors are, for the most part, still on the starting block. Yet, given the steady expansion of internet access and smartphone use worldwide, social media is likely to play an increasingly prominent role for affected people in current and future crises. Consequently, it is not a phenomenon humanitarian actors can continue to side-step. Given the tendency of social media platforms to mirror and amplify existing dynamics of marginalisation, a specific focus on promoting inclusion will need to be at the heart of efforts to engage more deeply as part of fundamental humanitarian commitments to impartiality and to ‘do no harm’." (Executive summary)
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"The potential benefits of increased digitalisation to refugees, living in situations where access to information and spaces for communication exchange are of the essence, are yet to be realised. Uganda’s forced migrants, both those in refugee settlements and those self-settled in urban areas, hav
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e demonstrated their eagerness to get and stay connected to the internet through social media platforms, regardless of the challenging context. The internet connectivity available to them ranges from cellular networking, wireless local area networking to personal area networking technologies. As communications systems and networks continue to grow and new social media applications are developed, the lives of refugees and humanitarians operating in settings of asylum are in reasingly likely to be affected in dynamic ways. As Maitland (2020) reminds us, connectivity (and its risks) can help overcome or ameliorate some of the sources of vulnerability. The road ahead is paved with complexities associated with refugee protection and inclusion in humanitarian programming in a ubiquitous digital environment, further accelerated by the exigencies of social distancing due to Covid-19." (Conclusion, page 35)
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"Against the background of the COVID-19 crisis in Israel, the country’s ultra-orthodox population, the Haredim, were faced with seemingly insuperable dilemmas of compromising their religious standards for the sake of dealing with the virus. The government launched a public relations campaign to pe
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rsuade this public, but its success was qualified. This study examines Israeli governmental information policy towards the Haredi population during COVID-19." (Abstract)
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"In January 2022 the subsea volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai in Tonga had a major eruption which also cut the country’s communication lines nationally, between Tonga’s inhabited islands and the outside world. The damage led to a complete halt in international communication (a “digital darkn
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ess”) which meant that, in the period immediately after the outbreak, not much was known about the extent of the damage in Tonga. Due to very limited access to contact with both the authorities and the population of Tonga, it was only during overflights carried out by the Australian and New Zealand air forces that one could begin to map the extent of the damage and the need for assistance. The loss of digital communication lasted for five weeks and three days, and represents a unique natural experiment for how loss of data flows affects a society. The ways in which this situation was handled, and the services that were built, contain valuable lessons about digital vulnerabilities in the Global South, and how these can be accommodated." (Page 1)
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"Satellite applications are being developed by an increasingly complex web of supplyside stakeholders and are being applied across a range of use cases in the life cycle of a humanitarian emergency. However, there is a limited body of evidence to offer humanitarians guidance on where satellite techn
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ology generates the best outcomes for affected populations due to the identified barriers. Now is the time for public and private sector stakeholders to act in order to increase the use of and impact derived from satellite applications in humanitarian assistance." (Executive summary, page 8)
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"This paper experimentally tests the effectiveness of two short edutainment campaigns (under 25 minutes) delivered through Facebook Messenger at reshaping gender norms and reducing social acceptability of violence against women in India. Participants were randomly assigned to watch video clips with
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implicit or explicit messaging formats (respectively a humorous fake reality television drama or a docuseries with clear calls to action). After one week, the intent-to-treat effects of the implicit format on knowledge, gender norms, and acceptability of violence against women oscillated between 0.16 and 0.21 standard deviations yet impacts diminished after four months. By contrast, the explicit format was more impactful in the short term in increasing willingness to share video clips with friends and promoting online information-seeking behaviors. In the medium term, individuals who were exposed to the docuseries were 7.5 percentage points more likely to add a frame against violence against women in their Facebook profile picture, a public display of their disapproval of this harmful practice. The general lack of heterogeneous effects across social status indicators suggests social media as a potential medium for reaching different online populations, including vulnerable ones." (Abstract)
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"Esforços de síntese de evidências vêm apontando para o avanço das formas organizadas de desinformação e negação do conhecimento científico sobre a mudança climática global. Em vários países do mundo, há um forte debate sobre a difusão dessas narrativas no ambiente online e seus impa
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ctos políticos, sociais e econômicos. Neste trabalho, realizamos uma revisão de escopo aplicada às bases Web of Science e Scopus, a fim de mapear como a literatura acadêmica internacional vem descrevendo as relações entre o negacionismo da ciência sobre mudanças climáticas e o uso de campanhas de desinformação no século XXI, assim como as possíveis lacunas e apontamentos desses estudos para a agenda de pesquisas. Em todos os tipos de mídias estudados nos 31 artigos selecionados, foi identificada uma predominância de discursos contrários ao consenso científico sobre o tema, alavancada por campanhas de desinformação organizadas, inclusive, por atores governamentais. Observamos um crescimento significativo do campo nos últimos anos, assim como transformações estratégicas nas comunicações negacionistas tendendo a uma disputa maior da opinião pública sobre a ciência." (Resumo)
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"E-participation is the use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) or digital technologies to involve citizens in public decision-making with the goal of empowering citizens and for the benefit of society as a whole. It is part of e-governance, a term that refers to the use of ICTs in
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governance functions. Broadly, e-governance comprises government service provision (e-government); government information platforms and e-participation platforms through which public decision-making takes place. Developments in digital technologies have led to convergence of one or all of e-governance components. For example, with the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments publish health information online for their citizens. During particular campaigns, such as vaccination drives, government officers use their systems to contact people, collect data and provide the vaccination and follow-ups. The same system may be used to collect feedback on services received." (Introduction, page 1)
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"Development stories may explore national or international efforts to reduce poverty and inequality or improve health and education with a focus on their long-term impact or sustainability. Good development journalism should consider the perspective of those most affected and reflect their lived exp
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erience and agency while interrogating the structural imbalances and power dynamics at play. It will critically evaluate the processes and mechanisms involved in development, such as aid agencies and government programmes. This guide is created in the framework of the Freelance Journalism Assembly and is primarily intended to support freelance journalists in improving their pitches and chances of being commissioned and/or hired by news organisations and publishers. We know that editors receive a high volume of pitches and truly hope this handbook helps you prepare winning pitches that stand out from the crowd and can improve your stories on development issues." (Introduction, page 2)
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"National governments have played a key role in constructing the Covid-19 pandemic through their communications. Drawing on thematic, discursive and visual analyses of Covid-19 campaigns from 12 national contexts, we show how the pandemic has presented governments with unique conditions for articula
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ting and reinforcing nationalism and neoliberalism. The campaigns frame the pandemic as a force that brings the nation together and conjure up notions of national ‘solidarity lite’ while relentlessly authorizing the crisis-ready responsible citizen. In so doing, they reproduce neoliberal rationality by shifting the locus of responsibility from the state and social structures to the individual and re-inscribing gendered and classed notions of responsibility, care and citizenship. Mobilizing national neoliberal narratives enables governments to render the pandemic legible as a crisis while obscuring both the structural injustices that exacerbate the crisis and the structural changes required to address it." (Abstract)
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"Based on the experience of selected GIZ-implemented projects that were in the process of implementation during the time frame between 2020 and 2022, this guideline offers insights and lessons learned on the preparation and implementation of climate risk communication approaches. In addition, comple
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mentary publications from GIZ, partner institutions and communication science and related disciplines were consulted." (Page 8)
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"This note aims to help inform the planned development of a Disaster Preparedness Module for Indonesia’s PKH program [Family Hope Program, Program Keluarga Harapan PKH] and to provide lessons for other countries on the development of IEC (Information, Education and Communications) tools to improve
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disaster preparedness and climate resilience among social assistance beneficiaries. The note includes four sections which (i) highlight recent approaches to beneficiary education to support Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) goals and provide global experiences of how countries have leveraged their social protection (SP) programs, through beneficiary education and awareness, to improve disaster preparedness and resilience; (ii) outline existing IEC materials and tools used by Government agencies in Indonesia to improve disaster preparedness and resilience among the public; (iii) outline recommended content for Indonesia and other countries to consider including in beneficiary education sessions aimed at improving disaster preparedness and resilience of beneficiaries; and (iv) summarize the procedural steps to develop a new Family Development Session (FDS) module on disaster preparedness, building on lessons learned from previous module development for PKH’s FDS. While the content of this note is particularly targeted at Indonesia’s PKH program, it is hoped that the messages here can also help inform the integration of IEC tools and materials to support behavior change for disaster preparedness and resilience in other SP programs globally." (Page 4)
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"Los conocimientos reunidos en este libro son de utilidad tanto para periodistas especializados en ciencia y ambiente como para aquellos que trabajan en otras áreas y quieren sumar habilidades para reportear temas de economía circular, políticas públicas sobre la gestión de la basura y reciclaj
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e inclusivo [...] El libro reúne información de contexto, consejos, herramientas, técnicas y metodologías de trabajo que compartieron periodistas especializados en ciencia y ambiente, periodismo de datos y periodismo de investigación durante varios talleres organizados por la Fundación Gabo entre 2018 y 2021." (Introducción, página 7-8)
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"The environmental crisis and more recently climate emergency have driven news media outlets to create editorial brands that specifically cover these topics. To make itself heard in a market for environmental news that is increasingly dominated by global media outlets, La Nación (Argentina) has lev
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eraged its reporting on the topic by developing a novel editorial brand focused on environmental data journalism: “Proyecto Naturaleza.” Through the lens of data journalism and collaborative journalism, this article relies on methods such as participant observation and indepth interviews to understand the practices, norms, and routines adopted by La Nación to produce data journalism focused on environmental topics. The results indicate three specific pillars for such journalism: climate change, biodiversity, and audience participation. The team sets an agenda based on these topics in light of annual events or large celebrations, resulting in a calendar of proposed activities (the production of data stories or crowdsourcing actions). The data team holds meetings with different individuals and organizations from different sectors to identify distinct perspectives on environmental issues to discuss undertakings and collaborate as needed with these actors. La Nación also emphasizes involving audiences on a deeper level, ransforming their traditional role as passive recipient into active participant." (Abstract)
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"The research findings suggest that disaster and entertainment journalism currently may not contribute much to the audience’s awareness and commitment to ecology. Current coverage of environmental issues in Ukrainian news media as perceived by survey respondents reveals that news media may divert
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public attention away from real environmental problems, while those that threaten large-scale and often irreversible consequences are only seen to be taking second place. Respondents mainly received media texts of limited value, which did not provide comprehensive information, so they may have prevented an adequate understanding of complex environmental processes, phenomena, and events. Therefore, it is time to change the current situation. This study suggests that serious changes should be made in news media coverage of environmental issues in Ukraine. An important step in this context is to increase environmental science communication in Ukrainian news media, which means improving the scientific level of environmental content, providing the public with scientifically correct, reliable, relevant, evidence-based, and socially important information based on scientific findings and data." (Conclusion)
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"In response to this broader global context, the GAGE Jordan team developed a set of qualitative research tools to explore the experiences of adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic with regard to digital inclusion, with a focus on young people affected by forced displacement. These tools aim to ex
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plore how young people spend their days, how this has changed since the pandemic, and subsequently after improved access to devices (e.g. for beneficiaries of free tablets as has been the case for approximately 20,000 refugee children and adolescents in Jordan under an EU-funded UNICEF Jordan programme launched in 2021), and in particular what role digital technology plays in their lives. These tools are aimed broadly at understanding how adolescents are connecting with people, information and services, and how this has changed since the COVID-19 pandemic. They are also aimed more specifically at understanding how adolescents are accessing information, education and learning – and interacting with NGO programming – and how this has changed since the pandemic (and after the tablet distribution). While the tools were developed with a specific context in mind, we believe they can be easily adapted to other contexts in order to explore the extent to which young people’s right to digital inclusion is being realised, and to support evidence-informed programming and policy improvements over time." (Introduction)
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"This paper brings together the key findings of research into digital humanitarian action and inclusion, asking what the impact of new digital approaches has been on how inclusion is understood and operationalised in humanitarian action. The Humanitarian Policy Group undertook three thematic case st
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udies considering different technology areas: biometrics, geospatial mapping and social media. A total of 256 interviews were conducted with stakeholders and key informants, along with strategic engagement with the humanitarian and digital sectors. All the case studies drew on both global key informant interviews and country-level perspectives, including from the Rohingya response in camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, and interviews with refugees and aid responders in Jordan, Venezuela and Uganda." (Publisher description)
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