13 April 2022
DW Akademie: Afghan media sector faces economic collapse
DW Akademie and its partners have just finalised a piece of research into the state of the media in Afghanistan. 175 respondents answered an online questionnaire.
The report, Afghan media sector faces an imminent economic collapse, can now be accessed on DW Akademie’s #mediadev web resource:
https://www.dw.com/en/afghan-media-sector-faces-economic-collapse/a-61327013
It focuses on the financial situation of media houses and sheds light on reporting restrictions and the situation of journalists.
Respondents shared their clear recommendations for the support of media and media professionals in Afghanistan by international actors.
The survey results were discussed in February 2022 in the Media Freedom Talk Six Months after the Fall of Kabul, organised in cooperation with Reporters Without Borders. The video of the event is available to view here:
https://www.dw.com/en/media-freedom-talks-journalism-in-afghanistan/a-60631440
Image: Flickr – The U.S. Army – Radio station gives voice to remote mountain province.jpg
2 December 2014
In the Service of the Public, a new study released by DW Akademie, examines the transformation of state broadcasters into independent media in various countries, including those in Moldova, Mongolia and Myanmar.
Determining whether the transformation of a government broadcaster into an independent media organization has been successful or not can be a challenge. It’s also often unclear whether public service media are the only ones capable of carrying out their public responsibility, or whether private and community media can also take on this role.
The series Edition DW Akademie has just published In the Service of the Public – Functions and Transformation of Media in Developing Countries, a study offering recommendations for future projects involved in transforming state media. The authors take a closer look at broadcasters in twelve countries: Afghanistan, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Moldova, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Nigeria and Serbia.
DW Akademie is the Deutsche Welle’s internationial centre for media development, media consulting and journalism and has been accompanying the transformation of state broadcasters in developing countries for many years. “Supporting reforms like these is not always easy,” says Director of DW Akademie Christian Gramsch, pointing out that “transformation processes can come to a halt. As a media development organisation we often have to look at alternative approaches to take.” The new comparative study is an important orientation guide for DW Akademie’s worldwide activities, says Gramsch.
The publication takes a critical look at the stakeholders involved in each transformation process and the extent to which they have contributed to its success or failure. There’s a special focus on analysing approaches taken by media development organizations.
“One of the study’s major findings is that transformations are possible under certain conditions,” says Petra Berner, head of DW Akademie’s Strategy and Consulting Division, and co-editor of the publication. However, she points out that transformations require a long-term strategy supported by all stakeholders involved in the process: political elites, management and employees of media outlets, civil society groups and the general public.
The authors stress that greater efforts are needed to create the political and legal frameworks conducive to effectively developing public service media, and that improvements are required for implementing the reforms in the media outlets themselves. “Media development organisations have often failed to recognise the role of organisational development, and that restructuring broadcasters is a long term-process,” says Berner.
Edition DW Akademie is a new publication series focusing on the areas of media development, media policy and journalism. In the Service of the Public
was edited by Jan Lublinski, Merjam Wakili, Petra Berner.
Read the report in full as a digital publication (ISSUU) or PDF.
13 December 2012
The visit by a media delegation from Myanmar to Germany, organized by DW Akademie, is part of Deutsche Welle’s ongoing support of media development in the country. The project is supported by the Federal Foreign Office.
Following decades of censorship, Myanmar is in the process of liberalizing its media institutions. Deutsche Welle is assisting this transformation via its international center for media development, DW Akademie. It is currently hosting a high-ranking delegation from Myanmar, including Ye Htut, deputy minister of the Myanmar Ministry of Information, seven representatives from the state-run Myanmar Radio and Television (MRTV) and the Director of the country’ first semi-private TV-station MRTV 4.
Aside from Deutsche Welle’s headquarters in Bonn and TV studios in Berlin, the schedule includes visits to the Federal Foreign Office, the Federal Press Office, the German Federation of Journalists (DJV), the ARD network of public service broadcasters and regional broadcasters Berlin-Brandenburg Broadcasting (RBB) and Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR).
At the various stops, the visitors are taking part in discussions and lectures on the role of the media in society and politics. Experts from the field are contributing their insights into the challenges of media restructuring and how established theories can be applied to Myanmar today. Many have drawn from their experiences with the change in the German media landscape following the reunification of East and West Germany. The key question is whether the German public service broadcasting system could serve as a model for Myanmar.
Years of cooperation
DW Akademie started providing training projects for media organizations in Myanmar in 2007. In 2009, it became involved in the establishment of the Myanmar Media Development Center (MMDC) – set up by MRTV-4. The process, which took three years, was also supported by the Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD) and Germany’s Friedrich Ebert Foundation.
The MMDC opened in July 2012, with DW Akademie providing preliminary training for prospective TV professionals, followed by training for media producers in how to be trainers themselves. The graduates of the train-the-trainer workshop are to become teachers at the MMDC.
“A functional democracy needs a vital media landscape,” commented Gerda Meuer, Managing Director of DW Akademie. “This is why supporting the media transformation in Myanmar is the right thing to do. It’s very pleasing to see that our continuing work there is bearing fruit.”
DW Akademie is continuing its involvement at the MMDC, with more courses and workshops planned for 2013. It will also coordinate future international support for the basic and advanced training of media professionals in Myanmar and for the establishment of vocational institutes. A DW Akademie staff member has been stationed in Myanmar to work together with local partners. These efforts represent part of a sweeping plan for media development in the country.
Since February 2012, Deutsche Welle’s English-language TV channel DW has been available in Myanmar via direct-to-home provider Skynet – a nationwide network that offers telephone and Internet services in addition to television.
DW programming is also available on a number of other platforms in Myanmar, including the Forever Group’s pay TV network, which makes DW along with other international channels available to Myanmar audiences. Myawady TV (MWD), Myanmar’s second-largest TV station, as well as the popular state-run MRTV broadcast select DW programs and magazines such as Journal, Tomorrow Today and In Good Shape.
13 November 2012
The Open Media Summit is DW Akademie’s first open online course. Live video discussions, online resources and social media create a shared learning environment for citizen journalists and bloggers from the Arab world.
From now until December 16, participants in the Open Media Summit can take part in interactive online training sessions on topics such as the responsible use of online information sources, the potential of data-driven journalism and Internet censorship. The main language of the course is Arabic and there is also an English website. Participation in the Open Media Summit (#OMS 2012) is free and it is open to anyone interested from North Africa and other Arab countries.
“Aside from on-site workshops,” says Gerda Meuer, Managing Director of DW Akademie, “the Internet – especially Facebook and Twitter – lends itself to training opportunities for bloggers and citizen journalists.” DW Akademie is testing how e-learning and social media outlets can successfully be combined for shared learning and teaching based on the massive open online course (MOOC) concept. MOOCs are a new educational format currently being widely discussed, especially in higher education circles.
DW Akademie’s Open Media Summit has involved experts from the region and developed the course based on their expertise. “We expect the Internet activists to actively contribute to the educational progress of the participants with their input,” says Meuer, describing the idea behind the project. “Our intention is to bring together the knowledge from the region and pass it on.”
The OMS 2012 is part of a larger project to provide support and training to social media activists from the region and is conducted jointly with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) with funding by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). It is the first project of its kind inmedia development activities for the Arab world and ties into Deutsche Welle’s longstanding commitment to online activists and citizen journalists. In 2004, Deutsche Welle initiated the annual Deutsche Welle Blog Awards – The BOBs – and was the first broadcaster in the country to launch its own YouTube channels and Facebook pages.
The virtual OMS campus is online at dw-akademie.de/oms2012. In addition, there is a dedicated Facebook group as well as Twitter feed. Reporters Without Borders supports the online event on topics related to Internet censorship.
http://specials.dw.de/oms-en/
http://specials.dw.de/oms-ar/
Join the Open Media Summit on Twitter: #oms2012
18 September 2012
Deutsche Welle has signed an agreement with the United Nations expanding their cooperation. It is the latest development in a partnership set up five years ago.
DW Director General Erik Bettermann and UN Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal signed a broadcast agreement on Monday at the UN headquarters in New York, aimed at boosting cooperation in the field of media.
Launsky-Tieffenthal said that “we at the UN are glad that we can build upon our long-term cooperation with Deutsche Welle, which is based on trust. This agreement lets us further expand and deepen that cooperation.”
Speaking for Deutsche Welle, Bettermann stressed that “the promotion of human rights, participation and democratization is a central aspect of our multimedia programming in 30 languages, just as it is for the UN. Cooperation between DW and the UN is particularly important for us because of this shared sense of purpose. We will be glad to continue working together in the future as well.”
The agreement enables DW to supplement its television programming with materials from UN-produced documentaries. DW welcomes this as a way of enriching its internationally-focused television series like World Stories with new perspectives and high-quality reporting from around the world.
Available in English, Spanish and Arabic, World Stories draws on content from DW’s premium partners and presents highly captivating stories around the globe.
DW’s globalization magazine Global 3000, broadcast in German, English, Spanish and Arabic, is a prime example of this cooperation: Deutsche Welle has been able to include selected UN materials in the program, and, in turn, the UN’s television station, UNTV, has broadcast Global 3000 since the partnership was set up in 2007.
Beyond television, bilateral cooperation has grown in many other fields in the past five years including media partnership for UN events, media workshops ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit, involving UN experts in DW’s annual conference Global Media Forum, and integrating UN-relevant topics into DW’s multimedia projects such as Education for All, Voices from Today – Ideas for Tomorrow, or the educational program Learning by Ear for Africa.
Moreover, DW Akademie has opened its media training programs to UN staff. In cooperation with UNESCO, it conducted a series of training projects at universities in Morocco, Kenya andSouth Africa, and on behalf of the UNDP, DW Akademie provides media training to parliamentarians from Moldova. This year it is also planning radio workshops for UN reporters based in Darfur.
