Document details

Media Interventions and the Syrian Crisis: Can We Do More?

Creative Impact and Experience Lab (CIEL);FilmAid (2018), 72 pp.
"[This publication] seeks to create a deeper understanding of the role of media interventions as strategic drivers of impact on the ongoing Syrian crisis. In exploring the impact of media interventions in this context, we conducted a landscape scan and a review of programs and approaches conducted by FilmAid, the nonprofit organization that collaborated with us on this paper. The landscape scan indicates the prevalence of awareness raising activities, with an emphasis on the goal of sustaining or increasing funding. The landscape of projects on Syria is not particularly diverse. Our analysis indicated first, a need for increased transparency in funding and program evaluation, and second, that there is a gap and opportunity in the field for community-centered and impact-driven communications. We analyzed FilmAid’s programs in Kenya and Jordan to understand how entities in the landscape might fill the market gap on community-led narrative. FilmAid’s work in Kenya is ongoing and the organization’s participatory approach has allowed the organization to build a profile as a trusted organization. By engaging the population in media creation in combination with strong media and audience-focused expertise, FilmAid has been able to increase knowledge on topics such as health, education, gender and cash-transfers. Based on interviewee insights on the use of strategic narrative interventions in conflict and crisis situations, particularly in long-term displacements and effective community- and impactdriven media interventions such as those in Kenya, we drew out guidance on what media interventions can offer to Syrian refugees as the crisis deepens and becomes a protracted complex emergency." (Executive summary)