In 2017, Global Voices and Rising Frames started the Reframed Stories project, an ongoing, participatory digital storytelling initiative that works with community members to analyze data around media representation.
At the Reframed Stories project, we believe that stories about communities must be told by the community itself. All too often, these stories are distorted or not included in media coverage which only serves to deprive community members of their voices. We wanted Reframed Stories to be a space where indigenous communities could analyze media coverage and use this data to reflect on the ways they are portrayed in the media.
The future of Reframed Stories
These new media tools can be powerful allies in the fight for representation in media ecosystems. Through the participant comments from the members of the Sarayaku and the Shuar Nationality, we can see that new communication tools, such as Media Cloud, have the potential to help communities participate in conversations about their representation and reflect on possible ways to respond to this coverage. In doing so, bridges between communities can be built, fostering collaboration and strengthening existing efforts. These bridges become even stronger thanks to the Global Voices’ Lingua project, which translates stories to more than 45 languages. Posts from the first Reframed Stories series reached a global audience through their translations into Spanish, Russian, Malagasy, French, and Chinese.
Inspired by what we learned from this experience, we are now looking forward to working together with Indigenous and First Nations peoples in Canada. We also hope to provide existing collaborators with what they need to continue using Media Cloud in the future.
Media Cloud, a tool for media analysis, allowed for a deeper exploration of this coverage. The Media Cloud tool helps to analyze media coverage by highlighting keywords used by different media sources around chosen topics at specific moments in time
We are working towards making this tool available so that more communities can learn about their representation in the media. If you are interested in finding out more information, please contact us. We would love to help you find new ways to tell your own stories!
To read more of Belen Febres-Cordero's article, please click here.
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