Empowerment Journalism - Commentary for Special Issue of Journalism Studies

ABSTRACT

Growing literature critiques the “parachute reporting” model of journalism. Briefly visiting communities as an outsider, overlooking local and cultural nuances, and prioritizing “audiences back home” can make this reporting practice problematic. Instead, we developed an approach called “empowerment journalism.” Learning from foreign correspondence, citizen journalism, media activism, and community-based research, we challenge reporting inequities by centering on principles of accountability, reciprocity, collaboration, and local ownership. We develop community partnerships and work with story “subjects” to co-create content that matters to their communities. This commentary offers lessons learned from using this approach with varying levels of success across three projects. (1) In Strangers at Home, we launched a digital storytelling and social media project with members of marginalized communities about rising nativism in Europe. (2) In Through Somali Eyes, we collaborated with Somali journalists who documented their daily routines of reporting and navigating danger with wearable cameras. (3) In Turning Points, we are co-creating visual stories with Indigenous storytellers in Yellowknife that confront stereotypes about alcohol. By reimagining the “newsroom” within – rather than distinct from – communities, we illustrate tensions and opportunities for journalists to transition from gatekeeper to collaborator and empower story “subjects” to produce and own their content.

KEYWORDS:

• Empowerment journalism
• parachute journalism
• collaboration
• community-based reporting
• mixed methods
• reporting practices
• reflexive practice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Maya Lefkowich http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3588-7150

Notes

1 One concern was raised by immigrant activists relating to the story “Fascist Logic,” which gives voice to an Italian far-right organization, and how – out of context – our promotion of it could be construed as endorsement. We are addressing this concern by ensuring that the videos can only be viewed in aggregate on the website, and we are developing an introductory video to contextualize the project, noting that the nativist voices are being presented to give context to the marginalized voices that are being empowered by the project.

2 Since the CPJ began its data collection in 1992, 12 foreign journalists and 54 local journalists have been killed. The types of deaths recorded are: murder, crossfire and dangerous assignments.

3 Examples of foreign reporters targeted include Michael Scott Moore, who was kidnapped in 2012 and held for two and a half years, and Amanda Lindhout, a freelance journalist from Canada, and Nigel Brennan, a freelance photojournalist from Australia, who were kidnapped in 2008 and held for 15 months. Local journalists include Abdisatar Daher Sabriye from Radio Mogadishu who was killed when Al-Shabaab detonated a suicide bomb killing 14 people and leaving 20 injured and Abdiaziz Ali, a journalist for Radio Shabelle who reported on Al-Shabaab and corruption and was shot and killed.