Big Picture Digital Journalism

Opening news stories to public participation in sub-saharan Africa
Context and Issue: 

In developing African countries, the quality of journalists’ output is often severely limited by the cost of accessing sources and the unavailability of large and up to date data sets. Traditional ways of gathering testimonies and data have both spatial limitations as well as networking limitations.  However, new technological tools and practices, combined with the growth of mobile device ownership, open the possibility to have better representation of community voices and perspectives in the public sphere.  Giving these tools to local journalists and media can empower civil society and allow its organisations to become aware of new ways to promote social justice and other key issues.

Project's activities: 

The Big Picture Digital Journalism project includes three activities: a Crowd-sourced Journalism Training Program; Crowd-sourced journalism Project Support and Community of Crowd-sourced Journalism Practitioner Platform.

  • The Crowd-sourced journalism project support activity is used as a selection process for trainers and journalists, and to identify and support the publication of existing or emerging crowd-sourced journalism projects.
  • The training program activity increases the quality of supported digital journalism projects, feeds into the online community platform activity, below, and maximizes the overall multiplier effect of the project.
  • The online community platform activity allows the publication of trainee crowd-sourcing project ideas, whilst supporting remote mentoring activities and offering a durable knowledge platform which helps to increase the quality and quantity of crowd-sourced journalism projects through methodological expertise and peer-support.
Participants and Beneficiaries: 

The participants are 10 Journalism Trainers and up to 50 Journalists from up to 5 target countries. The final beneficiaries are the millions of citizens in target countries in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Central African Republic and Cote d’Ivoire.

Outcomes: 

Big Picture Digital Journalism seeks to improve modern journalism excellence by increasing the availability of expertise in crowd-sourced journalism approaches and increasing the number of journalists with the skills to leverage crowd-sourcing approaches to contribute to press freedom and democracy.

The use of crowd sourcing enables peer-to-peer production and distribution of information in the form of cheaper, bottom-up channels of communication. Journalists, therefore, develop projects that leverage citizen participation through ICTs in order to enhance the information ecology across wide range of social issues.

"We are honored to be one of the IPI News Contest winners. Training Sub-Saharan Africa journalists to harness Crowdsourced journalism techniques and help them bring their projects to fruition is a fantastic opportunity to create more citizen involvement in key issues and contribute to the use of innovative and compelling forms of journalism.”
Jun Matsushita, Head of Innovation and Technology, Internews Europe
“The project was backed by a well-known organisation, promotes innovation and will provide journalists in different countries in Africa with the tools needed to face the new era of online media in their countries. The key quality we were looking for is the ability to meld these elements together, supported by a well-structured and clear proposal”
José Otárola-Silesky, Grants Officer, IPI

PROJECT NEWS

 
2011.11.28
> Big Picture Digital Journalism
> Innovation & Technology

Internews Europe awarded IPI News Innovation Grant

Internews Europe has been confirmed as one of just three winners in the International Press Institute’s (IPI) News Innovation Contest with its Big Picture Digital Journalism project. By beating off stiff competition from more than 300 other applications, Internews Europe asserts leading, global expertise in the field of innovation and technology for sustainable international development.
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Central African Republic, Governance And Human Rights, Health, Humanitarian Response, Innovation & Technology, Media Professionalisation