GMF 2009 Symposium

Posted by Team Laos on July 28, 2009 under Radio, View all | Be the First to Comment

On “Global Media Forum 2009”, carried out in Bonn by DEUTSCHE WELLE, DW-AKADEMY hosted a symposium titled “Re-Inventing Journalism? Journalistic Training in the Social Media Age“. On Thursday’s session, Dr. Helmut Osang, head of DW-AKADEMIE Asia Division, gave a report on the intentions and the design of DW-AKADEMIE projects in Laos.

Dr. Helmut Osang:

Abstract (by S. Didszuweit):

Poor conditions
More than 27% of the population of People’s Republic of Laos (Lao PDR) live with not more than 1$ per day. Some 78 million “Unexploded Ordinances” (‘UXO’) keep threatening everyday life, remains of massive US bombardments during the so called “Secret War” and the war in Viet Nam. Laos ranks 164th of 173 states on Reporters Without Borders’ “World Press Freedom Index” and is regarded “not free” by Freedom House. The leading communist party is using media only “to link the people to the party, deliver party policy messages, and disseminate political ideology”. All major media is either state-owned or -controlled and delivers mainly “protocol news”. Lao media still suffer from self-censorship although the constitution grants Lao citizens freedom of speech and information. A media law did not exist until 2008.

Promising prospects
On the other hand, there is considerable economic agility and growth, especially in transfer-areas like Savannakhet, where newly built roads and bridges connect Thailand in the west with Viet Nam in the east. Together with a relative independence of the provincial sector in decentralised Lao PDR and accompanied by ‘beacon-projects’ supported by UNESCO, UNDP, SIDA, DW-AKADEMIE and others, a shift towards more audience-oriented community-radio formats has begun. This shift can also be seen in discussions among media professionals about the role of the media in society, and the public call for “good reporting [that] must focus on issues relevant to people’s daily lives”.

Laos is one of the 60 focus countries of Germany’s bilateral development co-operation policy. DW-AKADEMIE, national partner Laos National Radio and the affiliated province station currently co-operate on the development of new radio formats in the southern Savannakhet province.

DW-AKADEMIE Team Asia: Supporting Media Development in Savannakhet province
From the national broadcasters’ experience, people had turned away from Lao media. This perception was supported by several surveys from international donors and researchers. Starting with nothing but the desire to win back the audience’s attention, a new project was outlined. After several years of dropping isolated training courses, we came to realise more and more that mere training without including transfer is nice to have, but next to useless. And that a strong link between training, implementation, day-to-day practice and ultimately changed programme output needs to be established.

First step was to better understand the status quo and the mechanisms of media market in Laos, and in Savannakhet in particular. This led to realising one goal: the importance of making people’s voices heard in future programmes, rather than just passing along government statements. Only then could we start considering concrete ways of reaching this goal. Since 2009, a team of DW-trainers and young Lao reporters work co-operatively on the conceptualisation and implementation of a daily one-hour morning-show in Savannakhet. It was not until the current project-phase that training-modules have been introduced. Yet, we still concentrate on fostering the understanding of our role in a media market, which develops alongside the ongoing economic growth and possible political detente.

A prosperous relationship between media and audience depends on dialogue
It is the project design and the ideal behind it, what makes it special. The whole process of preparation, conceptualisation, implementation and evaluation is participative and accountable in character. Rather than implementing externally planned patterns we focus on our partner’s and the audience’s needs. It is now possible to pause at any given time within the process, sit back and reconsider some -or even all- aspects. Of course all of us imply success, but targets might turn out to be inconvertible along the way. Yet, we are not as focussed on results as that we would regard this possibility as failure. In contrary: Not just any progress made, but also the sheer process of co-operation means success by definition.

Documentation + Communication = Docommentation
DW-AKADEMIE has set up the Weblog “Supporting Media Development in Laos” in order to deepen both accountability of the complete project cycle and the participation of all partners (and hopefully the audience, too). It combines the possibility to document every single step of the project with several ways of modern communication: Comments, eMail- and Twitter. This helps trainers, reporters, audience and everybody else to learn about and from the project as it grows and participate in shaping the process of media development. Beyond the actual launch of the planned morning-show, even in future projects, this open “docommentation”-tool helps to understand how we succeed or fail.

Social Media in the making
To make use of Web 2.0, Open Source and Social Network applications appears to be self-evident nowadays. In accordance with the ideals of these continuously developing phenomena, we remain in ‘perpetual beta’. As Tim O’Reilly says: “Users must be treated as co-developers” to form “a world in which ‘the former audience’, not a few people in a back room, decides what’s important”. DW-AKADEMIE and partners feel confident that this approach empowers all stakeholders (including DW-AKADEMIE) to constantly learn from each other. In other words: Fostering a participatory architecture is the key tool to reach MDG 8, a global partnership for development.

Helping people get their voices heard means supporting democratic development.

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