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Description
According to the Media Freedom Rapid Response ‘Restricting media freedom in Poland’ report (2020), media freedom in Poland is currently facing its greatest challenges since 2015. Weakening citizen journalism has a destructive impact on media independence and pluralism. At the same time, in the report ‘Protection from Discrimination in Poland’, the Ombudsman draws attention to the need to bring the topic of discrimination into the mainstream of public debate and to change public awareness of this phenomenon. This project deals with the role of the media in observing and describing existing problems concerning human rights violations and discrimination against excluded groups and minorities. It aims to increase the sensitivity of both those creating and those receiving journalistic content. We will launch a School of Solutions Journalism, which will equip novice journalists (mainly from the Wielkopolska Region) with tools that will help them create reliable materials on discrimination and human rights as well as verify institutional activities in this area. At the same time, we want to deepen journalistic social sensitivity and draw attention to the potential of the solutions journalism. We will conduct a social campaign dedicated to a selected issue raised during the School of Solutions Journalism. A group of trained volunteers will conduct anti-discrimination media education workshops for pupils in schools in the Wielkopolska Region. We will develop scenarios for such workshops and make them available as downloadable publications. We believe that the increased interest of young journalists in human rights, discrimination and social exclusion will result in higher number of valuable publications on these topics and at the same time help tackle fake news.
Summary of project results
The project was a response to the growing polarization in the media, spreading disinformation and hate speech. Its aim was to equip young journalists with the tools they need to critically view reality and create quality journalistic materials - this helped solve the problem of superficial and unreliable materials in the media and, consequently, increase trust in the media.
As part of the project, we implemented six activities that reached over 400 people directly and over 60,000 indirectly. The project focused on the role of the media in observing and describing existing problems in the field of human rights violations and discrimination against excluded groups and minorities, and its aim was to educate critical creators and recipients of media content.
The activities in the project were of three types - on the one hand, we organized the School of Solutions Journalism in Poznań, addressed to young people interested in writing and human rights. In addition to a series of workshops, participants of the School, under the supervision of professional tutors, created journalistic materials. 10 materials were created, half of which were included in the publication "It works! An anthology of young journalism of solutions", and 5 materials were published in local or national media, for some authors as a debut.
The next activity was anti-discrimination media education workshops conducted by previously trained volunteers. The workshops conducted by volunteers concerned five media-related topics and were based on original scenarios, then made available on our website.
The third activity was a social campaign regarding the activation of seniors. The campaign under the slogan "More fun in the club" encouraged older people active in senior clubs to become their ambassadors in their local communities.
As part of institutional support, we created a new strategy for the Association, organized dedicated training for members and volunteers, and equipped the office with the necessary equipment.
As for the results of the project, young people who took part in the School of Solutions Journalism gained knowledge about what solutions journalism is, about journalistic workshops and tools that journalists can/should use, sources that help verify data, about human rights violations in Poland and around the world, about the situation of excluded groups in Greater Poland. The two-stage survey completed by the participants before and after the end of the School (22 people completed it before, 19 after), which consisted of 7 questions related to the above-mentioned issues, shows that 84 people increased their competences in all these areas. %, the greatest increase in knowledge concerns knowledge of solutions journalism.
Another result is a greater number of materials in the media regarding excluded groups, human rights, anti-discrimination - journalistic materials were created as part of the School of Solutions Journalism, some of which were published in national and local media, and for some people the publication was a journalistic debut. Moreover, and very importantly, we have noticed that the School''s graduates, on the one hand, have started writing and publishing more, and, on the other hand, they are trying to weave elements of solutions journalism into their texts.
Just as the competences of content creators have developed, we can observe an increase in media competences among the recipients of journalistic materials, i.e., in the case of our project, among students of schools in Greater Poland.
As for the results of the social campaign regarding the activation of older people, it increased awareness and changed the perception of senior clubs as attractive places with a lot going on. We have noticed a change in attitude among the seniors who belong to the Clubs - many people in conversations with us declared that they would promote the Clubs more among their friends, neighbors and family.