“The Internet is my window to the world,” says Fadil Najeeb, a young journalist from the Kurdish Network News (KNN) Channel in the Kurdistan Region in Iraq. “The webinar has opened that window and I feel like I am breathing for the first time again.”
Fadil is part of a group of 38 participants at the first-ever webinar between Iraqi media professionals and their counterparts abroad, which IREX organized this September in Erbil. The webinar, the first of a series between Iraqi media professionals and their colleagues in other countries, brought together journalists from the Cairo-based daily newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm [7] with Iraqi media professionals and students.
Nora Younis, the multimedia editor at Al-Masry Al-Youm and Fathy Hatab, the community manager together have more than 10 years of online journalism experience. They were able to speak with authority on the use of social media in an Arabic-speaking context and its relevance to the contemporary regional media environment. The Egyptian newspaper journalists and management described the challenges and constraints of migrating traditional media to online platforms and the use of social media tools to develop new markets and engage with their readers.
“Iraq media has been so isolated for so long,” Saman Omer, IREX’s regional media manager in Erbil, said. “The only model that we have is war journalism and as our country moves towards peace we need to be able to understand how media in other post-war countries deals with the complicated issues arising from rapid developments in technology and to move away from the stereotypes of conflict.”
The second webinar in the series took place October 26; it brought together academics from Erbil’s Technical and Administrative Institute and the Philadelphia-based Temple University [8]. This was funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Iraq office [9] and coordinated by Moustafa Ayad, a new media specialist and UNDP consultant, in collaboration with IREX Iraq, which worked with the Iraqi participants. The webinar was conducted via Skype and brought together eight faculty and 55 students in Erbil with Temple University’s Professor Susan Jacobson, an expert in new media and journalism practice; Professor Chris Harper, co-director of the Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab; and Assistant Professor Shenid Bhayroo, a former investigative journalist at the South African Broadcasting Corporation.
Much of the discussion focused on the ethical paradigms of new media, especially in a non-Western context. “Media development is a predominantly Anglophone science,” says Ayad. “IREX and UNDP are trying to encourage the development of Arabic-language centers of expertise so that universal rights to freedom of expression and access to information can be articulated in accordance with local and regional culture and norms.” “Webinars are an important tool to stimulate demand from media and civil society for better access to the internet, and to enable journalists from different countries to learn from each other,” says Omer.
Future webinars are being scheduled with Temple as well as with universities in Lebanon and Egypt, the US and the UK.
Jacky Sutton [10] is the Program Director of the IREX implemented Media and Technology for Community Development [11]Program with funding from the US Department of State, Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor [12].