Empowering digital storytelling about migration: What was learned during the project?
“I have learned the actual meanings of diversity and inclusion, and much more about migration.”
The Digital Storytelling for Active Citizenship: Empowering Youth through Migration Narratives project brought together a group of diverse young people from Finland and Germany with a shared interest in exploring migration through storytelling. Some participants had personal experiences of migration, while others were drawn to the project out of curiosity and a desire to understand migration narratives better.
From the very beginning until the end, each participant had a duty to keep a learning journal, which was also created for personal reflection and keeping track on individual learning as well as for providing feedback for the project team. I must say, it was a privilege to read the journals through and to discover how much positive learning was achieved during the project.
Here’s my summary of the learning results:
Participants learned that migration is a dynamic phenomena and constantly changing: for example Europe has shifted from being a source of migration into a major destination. Only a small fraction of the world population is migrating, but the impact is being exaggerated.
Migration is a more complex phenomena compared to what’s reflected on the media. There are still significant challenges in providing non-biased reporting on migration and narratives like seeing immigrants as a problem or threat, remain strong. Participants also learned that there is a lack of diversity in migration narratives, which provides a narrower perspective on migration.
Promoting empathy, challenging biases, and enhancing journalistic knowledge were identified as essential steps towards creating more non-biased reporting and narratives on migration. Importance of combining fact-checked information with personal reflections to create powerful new narratives, were also brought up.
Participants improved their storytelling abilities and learned about story production from ideation to post-production stage, as well as gained more hands-on experience with media tools such as cameras, lights, and editing software.
Importance of active listening was well realized, as well as having concise, well-framed questions for interviews. Participants gained also confidence in interviewing, some even overcoming their personal fears during the process.
Participants' ability to analyze the media content more critically, to identify biases, and evaluate the credibility of migration-related stories was improved. Many of the participants shifted from merely consuming content to content producers, which also deepened their ability to critically reflect on and re-think media contents.
Coming together with different backgrounds and bringing in personal reflections on migration, not only created a bond between participants, but also deepened their understanding of migration narratives we adopt through media.
“It was a light for me! After that, I see people more differently and I always think about the world that each person carries behind their eyes, people are full of valuable stories and experiences, and seeing a subject from different angles has become more palpable to me.”