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'It was as if the moon had landed on the Earth' - working through turmoil in Afghanistan

2021-12-16T12:33:14+00:00

Shoaib Sharifi is �� Media Action’s country director in Afghanistan and this year’s �� News Leader of the Year. He writes about how the team are responding to an increasingly grave humanitarian crisis.

On the morning of 15 August, I stood in front of my closet and chose one of my sharpest Western-style suits to wear to the office. To this day, I cannot explain why – except that nothing suggested that this day would be very different from the day before.

In the office, the workday began as usual, with preparation for a training session with humanitarian aid workers. But by 11 o’clock that morning, we heard the news that the Taliban had entered Kabul.

We could not believe it – it felt as though someone had told us the moon had landed on the Earth. It will take another year for us to digest these events.

What happens next?

My immediate concern was for the welfare of our team, particularly our female colleagues. Hours-long traffic jams in the streets made it difficult to ensure people’s safe return home; many resorted to walking, in small groups for additional security. Full of regret for having chosen this suit, which prevented me from blending in, I waited until nightfall for my own departure. There had been numerous targeted killings each day in Kabul before the Taliban’s takeover, with many journalists among them.

The next day we asked ourselves: what happens next? And we realised we were not prepared to stop working.

Shoaib Sharifi interviewing a doctor as part of our magazine-style health programme for radio. Credit: �� Media Action

The safety and welfare of colleagues was the first priority. But the other priority was our audiences. Many radio stations stopped broadcasting, out of fear, and we knew our audiences needed us more than ever.

No one was asked to come into work – but some did, at great risk, while others worked from home. In this difficult and dangerous situation, we have tried to focus on audience needs. Within the first few weeks, 2,000 health centres, including major hospitals, were closed down across the country.

We had been producing a radio health programme twice per month, focused on COVID-19 and broadcast on �� Afghan service and on 30 community radio stations, reaching up to 12 million people. Now, people were without meaningful public health services, so we increased our programme frequency to twice per week – once in Dari and once in Pashto. We enlisted doctors to help us in a new programme segment, Where There Is No Doctor – covering topics like how to nurse patients at home.

Skyrocketing mental health needs

All of �� Media Action’s work is based on audience research. In September, we were able to carry out research, mainly by mobile phone, to assess our audiences’ needs for health information. What came back was startling: 62% of respondents identified a need for mental health support. Stress, anxiety and depression had skyrocketed.

We created a question-and-answer segment for our radio programme, and asked our audience to send in voice messages with their questions and experiences, to be addressed with a counsellor on the next show. We were overwhelmed with hundreds of calls, from both men and women.

Amid all the hardship and risk, we have had this incredible feeling of being able to respond in an emergency with information that really matters. People are without incomes, without healthcare and without the information they need to make informed decisions. Where do they turn? In a crisis, radio is still the most important source of media for Afghans.

Shoaib Sharifi during a break from Lifeline training with local journalists in Kandahar. Credit: �� Media Action

We realised that we could reach more people if we used our Lifeline programming to train more community journalists to report effectively in a crisis. We worked around the clock to adapt training materials into Dari and Pashto - a month’s worth of translating, editing and subtitling in one week. We weren’t even sure anyone would turn up. But in our first session we were amazed to see 25 participants, including six women. We have further built these connections through WhatsApp groups: answering questions, helping with story ideas and interview questions, and assessing listener needs.

We have also carried on working with the humanitarian response community, conducting research and sharing our findings to help aid agencies respond to people’s needs more effectively.

Proud to serve our audiences

The last days and weeks have been a blur of constant work and worry. The humanitarian emergency is only deepening in Afghanistan, while security continues to be a grave concern. Some of us have elected to remain behind; we are also exploring a model where we work alongside some of our colleagues who have been evacuated from Afghanistan to the UK.

We don’t know what the future holds, but we are proud to be serving our audiences with the trusted information they so desperately need, and to help make the emergency response in Afghanistan as effective as it can be.

Learn more about �� Media Action’s work in Afghanistan or donate to our work through JustGiving (leads to a third-party site).

Continuing the fight against COVID-19 in Ethiopia

2020-11-13T14:38:10+00:00

Amid unrest and pandemic fatigue, our Ethiopia team is working to deliver trusted information about COVID-19 as well as inspirational stories about how people are coping. Our social media producer Annis Tefferi gives us the behind-the-scenes view.

I joined �� Media Action earlier this year as the pandemic was beginning, when we were just starting to understand the huge impact it would have on our work and on our society. Since then we have worked through a six-month national emergency, and adjusted under difficult circumstances to continue providing trusted health information in multiple languages in Addis Ababa, and in Amhara and Tigray regions.

Our work on COVID-19 is focused on three areas. The first is on the virus itself – how it is transmitted, how to protect yourself, symptoms and how and when to seek treatment, and how families and communities can best care for each other and cope in this difficult time.. We are examining the impact of COVID-19 on the lives of women and girls. And we are raising awareness about misinformation, to dispel and counter the dangerous rumours that circulate about COVID-19.

We are creating public service announcements, social media content and a new radio segment covering all these themes. We are also supporting partner radio stations in Amhara and Addis Ababa with our Lifeline training, so that they are better able to report on the pandemic, check their facts and share trusted information, and stop the spread of misinformation. Our hope is that these radio stations are better able to serve their audiences with what people need and want to know.

A man washes his hands in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Credit: Getty Images

Public interest media are essential in the pandemic to reach a wide audience with trusted information. Radio is still the most powerful format in Ethiopia, as many remote and rural communities otherwise have no access to media at all. Our support for our partner radio stations helps ensure these communities receive reliable information.

But in urban centres, Internet use is exploding, especially through mobile phones and among young audiences. We are proud that our new Facebook page, launched earlier this year, already has more than 11,000 followers, and we are working hard to make sure we can reach audiences and engage wherever they access information most.

The biggest problem we face now is that people are tired of hearing about the pandemic, and some are even beginning to forget about the importance of using face masks and physical distancing. The six-month state of emergency declared to control the virus has been lifted, although COVID-19 prevention measures remain in place and are required for people who run businesses that attract large numbers of customers.. The initial fear and panic seem to have passed. People are much more worried about their livelihoods, everyday social issues and security amidst the possibility of further unrest. It is almost as if the pandemic has been forgotten.

But we are still at risk. As of November, we have had more than 100,000 reported cases till November, although the figures may be underreported as people do not always have access to testing. In rural areas in particular, access to water is often difficult, so it can be hard to practice regular handwashing with soap.

As we pay more attention to the impact of the pandemic on people’s lives and livelihoods, and how they are coping, we continue to remind audiences across all of our outputs that COVID-19 hasn’t gone away, and that it’s still important to wash hands regularly, maintain physical distancing and wear face coverings. We constantly challenge ourselves to ensure all our stories are engaging and memorable to grab people’s attention! This is an exciting part of the job.

When we started off, we worked on a series of stories about ordinary people supporting the most vulnerable in their communities. One was about a woman who is highly vulnerable to COVID-19 because of a lung condition, and how a group of young entrepreneurs in Addis Ababa ensured she was able to stay at home while continuing to make a living by supporting her in a bead-jewellery-making enterprise. Her products were collected from her and sold online, with the proceeds returned to her to look after herself and her daughter. That was really inspiring, to see how people can support each other to get through this pandemic. I was touched by this story and to date it remains my favourite.

Filming the ride-sharing service for women, by women, in Addis Ababa. Credit: �� Media Action

Another story that I feel strongly about is a film about a new women-led ride-sharing company, whose drivers are also all women, and how they are working to keep drivers and passengers safe. This start-up success is a positive story of women’s economic empowerment at a time that is especially difficult for women and girls, because of disruptions to education and employment, and increased risk of domestic violence.

The ultimate joy and pride for me comes from the fact that my work will provide people with information that helps them and their families and communities stay safe, while dealing with the impact of the pandemic on their everyday lives.

It has been a challenging time to work in health communication but we know that it’s important to continue. It will take help from every part of our society to control the virus and our work is helping to remind people that they need to be aware of its impact, and to continue to protect themselves as best they can.

The Lifeline communication in the COVID-19 pandemic project is funded by Global Affairs Canada and running in Ethiopia, Indonesia, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

How coronavirus changed media training in Sierra Leone - for good

2020-07-08T13:53:30+00:00

People all over the world are having to adapt their ways of working in the COVID-19 pandemic, and we in Sierra Leone are no exception. But working amid limited internet connectivity and inconsistent power supply makes that adaptation even more challenging.

In a way, we were lucky - as one of the last countries in the world to be hit by the novel coronavirus, COVID-19. Still, when the first cases emerged and regional travel restrictions came into force, this came as quite an adjustment to our usual ways of working.

We’d been preparing a new training course for our radio partners on communicating in health emergencies. �� Media Action runs regular Lifeline programming training to help partners to engage with, connect and inform their audiences on health issues, should a crisis arise.

We usually run regular training sessions on communicating in health emergencies face-to-face

Suddenly, we were faced with having to deliver the whole course remotely – during a pandemic - when it mattered more than ever. �� Media Action has vast experience in Sierra Leone of training local journalists during the Ebola epidemic of 2014-15 – but that was delivered face-to-face. We’d never done anything like this via phone and internet connection – and neither had our partners.

It was daunting to say the least. Data coverage is improving but is far from perfect in Sierra Leone, particularly in more remote and rural areas. And with regular power cuts across the country, keeping mobile phones fully charged can be harder than in other parts of the world, but we all did our best.

As most stations don’t have fixed internet, we provided all participants with mobile phone data instead. Three platforms seemed the most appropriate to deliver the training: Zoom, WhatsApp and regular phone calls. But of course, there were challenges.

Turning on videos at least to say “hi” and see everyone’s faces definitely helped to build a sense of togetherness for the Zoom sessions. Often, we had to switch to audio-only after that, to accommodate the slow connection speed. But the training was still lively, vibrant and collaborative.

When there were serious connection challenges – and there were several! – we made phone calls to complete the training modules. Flexibility and creativity were key to finding solutions for each group – but the general experience gave both us and our participants ideas for the future.

We sent audio exercises, video demos and documents – all via WhatsApp, for participants to watch, listen or read ahead of time of the sessions on Zoom.

"I can’t say that its effectiveness surpasses our usual one-on-one meetings before the epidemic, but I strongly believe it’s a unique alternative for future production meetings and training sessions," said participant Kadiatu Tholley.

Kadiatu joined us from Advocacy Radio in Port Loko, one of the 31 different stations we ran the course with over an intense three-week period. At times it was challenging, but it was very rewarding. We know our partner stations are communicating better during COVID-19 right now, sharing content to protect vulnerable groups, so that audiences can better cope and adapt to protect themselves and their families. The role media plays in health emergencies is vital.

Now we’re drawing on what we’ve learned to help adapt other critical �� Media Action projects. Our project called ‘EAGER’ (Every Adolescent Girl Empowered and Resilient) aims for out-of-school adolescent girls to have significantly improved learning outcomes and have transitioned to education, training or employment. We support 18 partner stations across the country to produce their own local radio shows. With travel restrictions likely to continue for some time, our usual model of travelling between stations will remain on hold. But now we have learnt – and shown the stations – that remote support and co-production is not only possible, it even has benefits.

Even once travel restrictions are lifted, some of these new methods will remain – because we found that remote mentoring works. We certainly won’t stop all travel, but we will reconsider how much time we spend in the field – to develop schedules that are time-effective, cost-effective, and effective in their learning outcomes too.

The beauty of discovering this way of working is that it will allow �� Media Action to support more stations, more often. And by helping partners create more effective programmes, we’ll be better able to engage and empower audiences on vital development issues – even after the pandemic is over.

Mariatu and Victor are Journalism mentors for �� Media Action in Sierra Leone
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‘EAGER’ (Every Adolescent Girl Empowered and Resilient) is funded by UK AID from the UK Government – learn more here

�� Media Action delivers Lifeline programming in many countries around the world, you can learn more about this here.

Our COVID-19 handbook for media is available here and our guide for media on communicating in health emergencies is available in 13 languages here.

Audience research in the time of COVID-19

2020-04-17T15:43:14+00:00

Research team observing handwashing practices in Accham, Nepal in early 2019 to inform a recent WASH project

At �� Media Action, audiences are at the heart of everything we do. To understand our audiences and our impact, our work begins and ends with research – and this remains true even in a time of crisis.

As we respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, research helps us to understand our audiences’ perceptions and concerns relating to the disease, as well as what information they need to make decisions and keep their families safe. This in turn enables our production teams to produce trusted, clear and actionable media and communication content that reaches people – including vulnerable communities – at scale, stands out in a sea of competing information (not all of which is true or helpful), and ultimately saves lives.

But how can research teams continue their vital work when they’re working at a distance from production colleagues, when the pace of production is so fast, and when face-to-face field work is out of the question?

Adapting our pre-testing methods

It can be difficult to keep pace with the need for rapid programme development when it comes to producing COVID-19 communications content. But it’s not good enough to say ‘we don’t have time to test’. You might get a piece of content on air or online more quickly – but the impact may be lost if the tone isn’t culturally appropriate, language about physical distancing too confusing, or your call to action is not clear enough for audiences.

So our message is simple: wherever possible, ‘pre-test, pre-test, pre-test’.

There are ways of gaining quick feedback under lockdown. Whilst working from home, our research team in Myanmar recently conducted some pre-testing of one of our new COVID-19 public service announcements (PSA) with their friends and families. They found that respondents could recall the key information points from the PSA – about washing your hands and covering your face when coughing – and felt it was particularly engaging because of the traditional music and lively delivery, making it unique from more serious PSAs they had seen on other media platforms. They recommended that the production team continue with this positive, encouraging tone to engage audiences.

A scene from one of our COVID-19 public service announcements in Myanmar

Inspired by this example, our research team in Indonesia are also testing content with friends and family via telephone and social media, as well as getting back in touch with a group of young people who recently took part in qualitative research about climate change. They’re setting up closed Facebook groups through which they can pre-test content, such as short new radio dramas tackling COVID-19 misinformation and rumours, to receive rapid feedback. It’s a similar story in Afghanistan, where we’re using social media to recruit volunteers for online focus group discussions. We’re currently exploring new ways to pre-test, such as contacting respondents and playing content via mobile.

Utilising local networks and contacts

With field work limited by local restrictions on movement, we’re relying on our wide-reaching networks and contacts nurtured over the years to help us access respondents and continue our vital research – to ensure programming reflects people’s changing needs.

For example, in Zambia, we’re working closely with our national network of community journalists – developed through years of work strengthening community radio in the country – to help us understand the needs and concerns of hard-to-reach audiences. We’re looking to set up simple, safe and physically distant mobile surveys for them to run in their communities to help us understand how perceptions of, and concerns about, the pandemic differ across rural and urban areas.

Similarly, in Bangladesh, where access to Cox’s Bazar refugee camp is now restricted, our researchers are making regular phone calls to our network of Rohingya volunteers to continue taking the pulse of the community. We’re sharing the insights gained – including persistent, widely circulating COVID-19 rumours and how to counter them – through our longstanding ‘What Matters?’ bulletin in partnership with Translators Without Borders.

And in Cambodia, where our researchers had been in the midst of a panel evaluation for our popular youth project Klahan9 (Brave 9), we’re pivoting the focus of our research to include perceptions on COVID-19. The team is also exploring how to draw upon our network of Klahan9 youth ambassadors to tell us more about how they and their communities are experiencing the pandemic.

The �� Media Action Data Portal - an open source portal containing a wealth of our existing audience research

Revisiting our existing data and building partnerships

To respect our audiences, it’s important that we use our existing insights relevant to COVID-19 and not conduct research for the sake of it.

Many of our teams around the world have been looking carefully at our wealth of existing audience research (much of which is open source and available on our website and Data Portal), re-analysing the data to draw out new insights around media access and usage among vulnerable audiences such as older people or people with disabilities. We’re also pulling out useful data from previous projects around health and hygiene – for instance, barriers to, and enablers of, good water, sanitation and hygiene practices in Nepal, Kenya and Ethiopia.

Externally, we are building relationships with organisations across key sectors (including market research, academic and humanitarian) which are producing surveys and collecting useful insights on COVID-19 – such as ACAPs, Innovations for Poverty Action, Kantar and the International Survey on Coronavirus, for information relevant to our projects.

Cross-country collaboration

Despite restrictions around freedom of movement, researchers at our London headquarters and across our network of country offices are working more closely than ever before – sharing expertise, exchanging COVID-19 research tips and tricks, and comparing cultural insights through regular calls and online forums. And we’re supporting our country offices virtually from London to better analyse their digital performance and monitor online chatter about the pandemic – using tools such as Crowdtangle’s COVID-19 tracking to help production teams fine-tune their outputs.

Encouragingly, there are early signs that our work is paying off. Some of the COVID-19 PSAs produced by our Myanmar team, for instance, are achieving record levels of online engagement. The Ministry of Health has even asked to make this PSA (watched nearly 3 million times and shared by 46,000+ people) official, for broadcast through national TV partners.

The situation is changing rapidly. But we will continue to innovate and review research methodologies to ensure we’re providing essential insights to production colleagues, and best serving our audiences.

The COVID-19 ‘info-demic’: A view from Bangladesh

2020-03-18T11:12:22+00:00

Rumours, mis- and dis-information about COVID-19 are spreading rapidly around the world and can be almost as harmful as the virus itself. Hear from our Senior Project Manager in Bangladesh, Kate Gunn, about the latest developments from our new global communications initiative tackling the COVID-19 ‘info-demic’.

Proper hand hygiene is key to the COVID-19 response

From working on �� Media Action’s response to the Rohingya refugee crisis for the past 18+ months, I’ve seen firsthand how media and communication have the power to save lives.

The same is true in a health crisis. Trusted, accurate and timely information can help communities prevent or reduce the spread of disease, and guide those affected towards services and treatment.

This trusted information is needed now more than ever as countries across the world – including here in Bangladesh – take action against the COVID-19 pandemic and work to save lives.

There is so much misinformation swirling – from how the virus is transmitted, to where it has come from, to false rumours about its prevention and treatment. All of these can endanger people’s lives. I’m leading �� Media Action’s new project, in partnership with Translators without Borders, Internews and Evidence Aid, to deliver clear, fact-based social media content to counter this ‘info-demic’.

There is a lot of content already being produced by a range of development, health and humanitarian organisations and by government departments to dispel misinformation, including the catchy Vietnamese song and animated video “Ghen Cô Vy” which has even sparked a viral TikTok dance challenge. There are many enthusiastic community-level producers too.

Still from the Vietnam Health Ministry's video "Ghen Co Vy"

But while much of this content is really good, some of it we describe as “yes, but…” efforts: mixed messages which might reinforce behaviours that risk transmission of the virus, for instance, showing people in crowds on the street, standing too close together or shaking hands.

So our challenge is not only creating content that applies to our country, our region and globally, but also working to help others do the same.

In Bangladesh, from where we’re managing the project, the situation is changing rapidly. Our main challenge is to keep our public service announcements, video clips and materials (some of which you can see here) up-to-date with official government and World Health Organization advice, and also to meet the fast-evolving concerns and needs of our audiences.

An example of the content we're producing in Bangladesh around hand hygiene and coughing/sneezing etiquette

In Cox’s Bazar, home to vast Rohingya refugee camps, and in other areas of the country where media don’t reach reliably, we usually rely on being able to share our content face-to-face with people – such as in community events and listener groups. We also know that community outreach activities strengthen what goes out on mass media, because we can discuss and interact directly with our audiences.

But, under current circumstances, there is likely to be less opportunity for that. Outreach staff will become more constrained in the level of contact they can have with communities as regulations on social distancing take hold. This is a huge challenge which also puts already vulnerable audiences at risk – imagine living in a rural community right now and facing the spread of COVID-19, with no access to any source of information about what it is or how to protect yourself.

To help address this, we’re already working to make sure that front-line staff in healthcare facilities also have access to our content and receive basic training in how to communicate it, so that communities are still getting access to that vital trusted information.

With the situation developing so quickly, it’s hard to predict what will change tomorrow – let alone next week. But with our team’s experience in humanitarian response communication, and collaboration across our �� Media Action country offices, we are doing all we can to provide audiences with trusted, accurate and engaging content that can save lives.

Kate Gunn is Senior Project Manager in our Bangladesh office.

Our COVID-19 response work is funded by the H2H Network with the support of the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID). For more information, click here.

And if you’re a media professional seeking advice on how best to report during public health emergencies, check out our recent blog with top tips here.

How can media help? Research from six humanitarian crises.

2019-08-19T08:30:24+00:00

To coincide with World Humanitarian Day, �� Media Action has launched a new humanitarian microsite, which uses data from six of its humanitarian evaluations to build evidence on how media can help people affected by crises. This blog originally appeared on Evidence Aid.

�� Media Action has been broadcasting ‘Lifeline’ programmes to support communities affected by humanitarian crises since 2001.

Research is central to how �� Media Action works. Understanding the needs and priorities of the audience is crucial for developing good media content, and rigorous research helps us understand programmes’ impact. This dedication to audience research, even in crisis situations, was one of the things that really struck me when I started working at �� Media Action four years ago.

In 2015, the organisation decided to pull together data from four humanitarian project evaluations, to understand what role media can play for audiences affected by crises across the world. This synthesis involved recoding qualitative data from these evaluations into a research framework, which applies the OECD-DAC criteria (which are widely used in humanitarian evaluations) to media interventions.

We have now expanded what started as a report into a microsite, with data and videos illustrating humanitarian programming from crises in Lebanon and Jordan, Gaza, West Africa, Nepal, Somalia and Bangladesh.

For me, the most interesting finding is the similarity in how people affected by different crises feel about Lifeline programmes. People appreciated hearing voices of people like them sharing their experiences and solutions. Many said that the programmes made them feel more hopeful and less isolated. The synthesis has helped us understand what is most important to people affected by crisis, namely accurate, practical information; empathetic presenters who speak the language of the listener and represent their situation fully; and having a platform to voice concerns and hold government and aid agencies to account.

It has also highlighted challenges: while mass media is good at reaching many people quickly on a wide range of topics, it struggles to provide hyper localised information, such as the status of health clinics or where to buy building materials. This is where partnerships between local media and humanitarian partners are so important, and much of the evidence speaks to the importance of strong partnerships. For example, audiences say they trust information when they hear the same thing from different sources.

Coordination between media and humanitarian partners on the ground is crucial to achieve consistency, and programme makers are reliant on humanitarian partners sharing up-to-date, reliable information on air. The benefits of building trust between humanitarian and media partners before a crisis are discussed in the ‘preparedness’ case studies on the microsite.

Partnerships are important in research too. Sharing research in crises helps us to build the evidence on what role communication initiatives can play. For example, in the Rohingya response, similar studies carried out by �� Media Action and our partners Internews and Translators without Borders at different time points, have shown a steady increase in the proportion of Rohingya refugees who feel they have enough information to make decisions for themselves and their families – providing evidence that our consortium project is doing something right.

�� Media Action uses a research framework to guide our evaluation of humanitarian projects. This allows us to systematically build the evidence base for the role of media in a crisis. We hope that humanitarian and media partners will use and build on this framework, so that we can continue to develop our understanding of what does and doesn’t work during these crises, and work together to build an evidence base that will improve decision making in the future.

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