Media Against Hate: Video contest – Announcing the “Favourite 5”

Media – in all their forms – play a crucial role in the shaping of identities, in the promotion or inhibition of dialogue, solidarity and recognition. Which strategies and tools can empower counter-narratives and challenge mainstream perceptions of refugees, of migration, of marginalised groups in general?

The Media against Hate campaign invited professional journalists, community media practitioners [including Social Platform’s Helen Joseph] and media students in Europe to document how their daily work helps fight discrimination and counter hate.

Participants from across the European Union sent their videos, including Italy, Germany, Poland, Spain, Greece, Austria and Czech Republic. Entries were evaluated for originality, impact, clarity of message, cinematography and educational potential. The jury commented that “It was difficult to choose, as contest entries demonstrated countering hate and discrimination from a variety of well-informed and relevant perspectives.”

On the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, March 21st 2017, the Media Against Hate campaign is happy to present the selected “Favourite 5” videos:

The producers of the “Favourite 5” videos will be invited to participate to the Media against Hate workshops in 2017 and to the final conference in March 2018 – where they will meet their jury.

Solomon are a group of people with different backgrounds that, through media, aim to promote an alternative perspective of the local community. The core team consists of talented people who live in Athens, Greece and originate from many countries. One of their projects is the Inclumedia Lab, where tandems of immigrants who are willing to become journalists or used to work as journalists in their home countries pair up with local students of journalism.

The video “I am a humanist. Hate is not for me” was produced by a group of students of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Warmia and Mazury, in Olsztyn, Poland. The students of the Department are studying history, philosophy, journalism, philology or international relations and are thus called “humanists”. The second Media against Hate international Media Literacy workshop will take place in Olsztyn on their wonderful academic campus, on June 8th and 9th 2017.

Termini TV is “the only online channel in the world specialized in narrating life stories from train stations”. They explore the edge between travel and migration, travelers and migrants. Francesco Conte is also one of the mentors of the Council of Europe Div-A Diversity Accelerator project.

Okto.tv is Vienna’s community television station, training over 1000 volunteers yearly as video journalists, moderators and studio producers, and engaged for an inclusive and intercultural society.

Michal Majzner is an industrial project engineer and civic activist. He has co-founded several volunteer initiatives, including Prague Maidan, “President, leave!” and Refugee Stories (“Příběhy uprchlíků”). Refugee stories records refugees’ stories for a Czech audience, through volunteer visits to nearby Dresden. The core of the project is built upon the We Can organisation, in cooperation with Umweltzentrum Dresden.

Two more videos received an “honourable mention” for the educational intent of the producers (Vincenzo Agosto and Gustavo Gomez).

Full article.