Education in Afghanistan

Unicef website screenshot

Unicef’s website has an encouraging story about some of the efforts to educate young girls in Afghanistan. The girls often have to fight against those around them who do not think they should be educated but they are prepared to quote the Koran to underline their right to education.

The Bangladeshi organisation BRAC runs some of the schools. Their use of videos as educationa tools underlines the importance that broadcast material can have in teaching. That is why the AIB included the “Best children’s factual programme/series” and why we are supporting the work of our sponsor, 1GOAL

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2009 AIBs

The involvement of radio and TV broadcasters from throughout the world, the range of factual topics covered and the quality of the finalists are highlighted in this video of last year’s international media excellence awards, the 2009 AIBs

There is still time to enter the 2010 AIBs – for full details go to the entries page on the website.

You can also see other videos from the Association for International Broadcasting on our YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/user/AIBLondon

Changes in climate change perceptions

Two interesting studies have recently been released showing US and UK public perceptions of climate change after the recent “climategate” email leaks from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and controversies over mistakes in the 4th IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report.

In the US, the Woods Institute for the Environment have carried out their 5th annual survey.   74% of respondents in a 100o person telephone survey responded yes to the question “Has the Earth’s temperature probably had been heating up over the last 100 years?”.   The figure is down slightly from last year, when it was 75%, and has declined each year from the first survey in 2006 when it stood at 85%.  The analysis showed that the recent fall was due to those who are sceptical of climate change scientists reacting to cold weather in the last two years.

Note how this figure of 74% compares with the 63% figure found by Gallup for US citizens who are aware of climate change and believe it to be due to manmade changes (see our previous blog post).   It seems to suggest a large majority of Americans who think the earth is warming believe that it is humans who are causing it, with the majority of sceptics not believing in global warming at all.

The Woods Institute survey, led by Josh Krosnick, also showed that despite the recent controversies, trust in climate scientists had actually risen slightly over the last year.

The newly published Ipsos Mori poll carried out with Cardiff University paints a similar picture of belief in the UK.  In 2005, 91% of those surveyed thought that climate change was happening and this has now reduced to 78%.  With 58% replying that they had noticed changes for themselves, it shows the power of personal experience and that we are reaching a stage where a majority have some relevant experience to back up any studies by experts.   However, 40% of respondents thought that the seriousness of climate change is exaggerated.

Overall, the studies show a smaller fall in belief in climate change than might be expected after the recent high profile controversies over the accuracy and independence of published results and also after recent cold weather that has caused headlines to change from “global warming” to “climate change”.

Climate change cop-out or pragmatic approach?

The Hartwell paper was published this week by a group of 14 academics from USA, Canada, UK, Germany, Finland and Japan.  It proposes that the failure of the UN Copenhagen summit (COP15) to enforce meaningful targets and the lack of noticeable progress from the global agreements and targets on reducing carbon emissions actually provide an opportunity to address concerns on climate change in different ways.

The authors argue for the expansion of measures that are popular and pragmatic, offering energy security and also aiding human dignity by providing the poorest with safe, available energy.  They point out that a majority of human activity that forces climate change is not due to carbon emissions but other causes, such as the loss of tropical forests, black carbon and the emission of other greenhouse gases.   These causes can be addressed in ways that do not generate the controversy of capping carbon emissions.

The proposed approach suggests incentives for investing in alternative energy sources, which speaks to the desires of many nations to increase their energy security, and for helping underdeveloped countries to use more effective energy – for example by providing more efficient stoves for the poorest to dramatically reduce the 1.5 million annual premature deaths due to soot which is addition would cut the effect of “black carbon” on warming and on the melting of glaciers.  The BBC’s “Costing the Earth” programme this week looks at this in some detail and examines the practicalities of such approaches.

The report switches the focus from CO2 emission targets and this has been criticised by other leading figures in the field such as Bill Hare, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, as reported in Nature’s Climate Feedback blog.

In discussing how to put their proposals into practice, the authors suggest funding via an hypothecated carbon tax, which they claim will be low.  But it is not clear how low this would be and any tax would seem to counter their argument that their approach would be more popular than the current emission caps and carbon trading.

Whether practical or not, the paper opens up other strategies for changing the damaging by-products of humanity’s energy usage.    The question is whether these  are useful additions or alternatives to current approaches or whether they would mainly damage the efforts to focus on carbon reduction.  The proposals are likely to prove additional distractions to such efforts as the American Power Act, as noted in Discovery’s article on this bill by US Senators Kerry and Liebermann

Views on climate change across the world

The new People’s Choice award in this year’s AIBs is very exciting for a number of reasons.  It is the first time we are asking the general public to vote for awards, which allows the shortlisted entrants to gain a wider exposure for their programmes, as viewers will come from throughout the world, including many countries where the programmes are not currently broadcast.  The voting process will also use social media to gain interest and attention, providing another example of the sort of audience engagement and participation which is becoming more and more important to broadcasting in the 21st century.

In addition climate change, the subject of programmes in the People’s Choice award, is a highly topical subject which provokes fierce debate and raises issues which could have a dramatic impact on the way that all nations live.  Different countries, and even different tribes and regions within countries, risk being affected in different ways.  For example, the indigenous people of the Amazon risk their lands turning into dry savanna (see here for how our sponsor, ADB, is helping the Surui tribe) while the coastal regions risk more flooding.

Because of the differing risks, as well as different political viewpoints, the range of views on climate change is enormous and the challenges of exploring and explaining the science are great.  We hear about the fierce debates in the US Senate ; India and China are signing up to the Copenhagen accord;  a survey in Africa shows that many Africans blame God and not global emissions for climate change; countries as diverse as Mongolia, Saudi Arabia and Madagascar show increasing awareness by joining in Earth Day celebrations.

We are eager to see the submissions for the People’s Choice award to see how broadcasters from throughout the world are tackling this contraversial issue which raises such passion and which is so important to all of our futures.

Promoted Tweets and Broadcasting

Twitter, the service for online messages that are limited to 140 characters, has not had a clear plan for gaining revenue up until now, despite attracting tens of millions of users who post 50 million messages every day.

But yesterday the company announced “Promoted Tweets”, which are basically adverts. Initially they will be on search results, so that the first result displayed for each search may be an advert. Adverts will start out as normal Tweets posted by the advertiser and when they appear in other people’s search results they will be labelled “Promoted by…” so you will be able to identify them.

Depending on the initial success of this initiative, Twitter has plans to put Promoted Tweets in other places, such as on websites related to Twitter and even to the Tweet stream of individual users. Full details of Promoted Tweets can be found in the Twitter blog here .

Twitter has proved itself to be a vital source of breaking news (for example, during the Iranian election demonstrations or after the earthquake in Haiti) and there is now even a website dedicated to the best tools for using Twitter in journalism and media. So Promoted Tweets represent an interesting new opportunity for factual broadcasters and programme makers. It allows them to reach an audience that is interested in current events and active in reporting.

But the use of Promoted Tweets has to be handled carefully since their announcement has not been well received by Twitter users. TechCrunch report that 71% are against their introduction. Twitter hopes they will come to accept them and is stressing that they will only allow Promoted Tweets that “resonate” with the users; the company explains this as meaning that they will verify that Promoted Tweets are relevant to users and that if users are not interested in particular ones and do not click on them, then Twitter will stop showing them. However, it is not clear exactly how this procedure will work.

Broadcasters are well placed to offer Promoted Tweets that do “resonate” since they can address an audience interested in news. They can use them both to promote existing content and to help create new content. Examples might be:
– Promoting current affairs programmes to those searching for topics related to the subject
– Researching stories with Promoted Tweets asking for input from those with experience of particular subjects (and with location now being added to Tweets, the research will be able to focused on particular geographic areas)
– Encouraging those with breaking news to submit stories to your news service

Promoted Tweets promise to help in creating and promoting programmes. It is the sort of innovative tool we are looking for in the “Most Creative Marketing Strategy” award at the 2010 AIBs.