This is the last part of a three part series about the use of media for NGOs. For more read part I and part II.

The biggest question before and after is the thought of who you want to reach with your pictures, videos or multimedia. Especially in the first part i was writing about visual language and how that affects the viewer of your stories. In this last part, with this thoughts in mind, i want to talk about how to use this different forms of visual language and media for communication purposes. This will be a lot about the delivery and how to get out the most of the material we have produced.

CONCEPTS*

Every concept for a new campaign involves thoughts about the audience we would like to reach with our media and that influences what type of media we use, but also what visual language. Beside that there is a lot to think about how we would like to involve people with our campaign in the cause. This is always the most important aspect and worth a lot of time spending on it. Do you want people donate money? Do you want to make them aware of an issue? Or do you maybe want both? How can we involve them? Do we mainly need a fast emotional overloaded fast donation we need like in an emergency like the Haiti earthquake or do we want to create a long-term relationship with the donors? Each one of the answers to this questions is in need of approaches obviously. So every concept is different at the end as there are way more specific question for every cause. So i will not draw some concepts here.

INVOLVING PEOPLE*

Important tough is in my opinion the thought of how to involve people. The way of communication, especially for NGOs (always tight in communication budget..) changed quite a bit with the internet and social media specifically. There are a lot of powerful tools out there, for free use. But at the same time also the form of communication with donors and other people changed through that. It is not a classic advertising communication (promoting your ‘product’ in a one-way-communication) anymore, instead it involves people, with writing comments, spreading the word further with this tools, getting feedback, questions. In short, it allows a direct communication and not only a delivery of a product like a brochure what is first of all only giving information. The direct communication allows not only to get the feedback, but also to activate people, make them interested with not only making them consume, but also actively taking part. A powerful way to involve people in a cause, sometimes maybe even more important than actual donations from the start. Check the Condition Critical project by MSF for a great example on that.

APPROACHING PEOPLE*

In a recent interview photojournalist Tim Hetherington stated “You should be interested in this because this is Afghanistan” — is not a constructive way to engage.” What he is talking about is the approach that many choose when it comes to important issues. By giving people the feeling that they have to be interested because it is important. With the change of communication, i believe, this approach is also more and more going away and new forms to engage people should come up. There are thousands of issues were it is tried to give the feeling of remorse as a tool to engage. Think of Climate Change as an example. No one has to be engage, but when we provide something what makes people interested in the cause, we could reach them in a totally different mindset.

VISUAL COMMUNICATION*

One thing that changed quite rapidly with the internet and the overflow of media. We consume way more visually than a couple of years ago, also because reading on a screen is still a pain in the are. Adding to that is the fact that most people are visual learners, what means the impact of visual media on them will be higher than words. What that means for information provided on websites of NGOs is that it should focus on clear visual interesting storytelling to make people interested with visual content. People will barely read in the web long reports from projects, especially not when there is a short video or multimedia. But words in combination with multimedia could do the trick if used in balance.

NOW WHAT?*

The last bits focused a lot on communication in the internet, also because i think it is one of the major platforms to reach people and get fresh information out. But there are of course the classic way to communicate with your audience. Lectures, brochures, advertising, tv-spots to name a few are still powerful. The advantage of a mixture of the different types of media i talked about in the second part is that it allows the use also in this different other outlets. Especially multimedia produced material offers video, photos, audio and all that what could be used for other purposes as well. I believe that it is not about communicating one way to get donors, the chance that comes for NGOs nowadays is bigger. It could engage people not only to donate, but also to involve them, make a cause important to them, connecting with people, leaving comments, spreading the word and helping to make the cause out in the world. Not because they are told it is important, but because they think it is important.

This is the second part of three part series about Media and the use for NGOs in their communication. Read the first part here.

Last week i was writing about the visual language and how we can use it to deliver different messages in our NGO work. Today is the next step. While last week it was more or less about visual media in general, i wanna look in todays post into the different types of media we have to tell the stories we want to tell. I will not exclusively talk about visual media as i think the other forms we have are powerful as well and it would be stupid to forget about them. So let’s jump right into it.

Words*

A lot of the communication an NGO is doing is coming through words, if it is at presentations, the brochures or the website. The written has still a big part in the form of communication. In my mind it has a couple of advantages. First: It could easily be adjusted to the needs of the story. With a photograph you might be missing in the story you can’t really reproduce it easily. Words at the same time ‘only’ need the knowledge and the experience to tell the story (leaving beside a general discussion about quality of storytelling). This means it is a easy to use way to communicate a story. At the same time the reader has to trust the words. A photograph, audio interview or videoclip is testimony that is (tough still subjective) in our perception closer to the truth. But, and this is also important, it is easier to draw a picture of complex situations or stories with words than with a photograph or the single perspective of one interview. With the use of the internet, in my opinion, also the way of how we consume has changed a lot. Long texts on NGO websites might be read only by few as the whole way of consuming content got way more visual in the last years.

Audio*

The closest to written words is for sure audio. It brings us a level of personal story that written words can hardly have. It also influences us emotionally way more than written words normally do. A big plus for 90% of the stories NGOs want to tell as most of the impact on people their stories have is on an emotional base. We get more of a certain person or some atmosphere sounds as well. It brings us more in the scene. It is not said for nothing that audio is in film 50% of the quality. Once watch a film without the sounds, i think it is crazy how fast you loose track of the story. At the same time audio is good adjustable in the editing of the direction of stories for instance.

Photography*

Photography has been widely used by NGOs. The quality might be very different, but the visual testimony of the situations and projects is a powerful tool. The biggest amount of people are visual learners. At same time photography is so powerful because it is static in one way, but that allows also the viewer to take time, wander around in the picture. The  situation is not changing, it gives time to build an emotional relationship. The viewer is able to find his own way into the story and through it. It is a testimony of a certain moment that try to tell the story. At this is also the point, why high quality photography can be so much more powerful in the impact on people. We are used to a huge amount of visual impact each day and a lot of photography is filled up with certain amount of related stories in our heads. That makes photography a very powerful emotional tool. One of the disadvantages of photography is one of it’s powerful abilities. It is only capturing one specific moment. Photoessays are one way to get over that problem.

Video*

Classic videostories about projects have always been a good way to share stories. It combines audio, moving images and the moving image is directing the viewer through the story. This is a huge difference to photography, not only because of the audio, but also because of the clear direction of the viewer. One could argue that photography can also direct the viewer with lines , light/shade and so on, but still video is faster, not giving so much time for the viewer and the moving part of the image has a huge power to draw the attention of the viewer. Used rightly it can have a huge impact on the knowledge side, but powerful photography might have the higher emotional impact.

Multimedia*

The combination of more or less everything what i said above could be found in multimedia. Many photojournalists right now jump on the multimedia train with extending their photoessays with audio to tell stories more deeply. It combines the power of both audio and photography in one. It could be easy to produce, when you combine for instance an interview with a set of pictures, as well. High level multimedia is something different tough, when it combines atmosphere sound, interviews and music, fine tuned to the pictures. But thinking back of what said about photography and video, a combination of those two with powerful audio could be the most powerful way. It combines the advantages of photography (making the viewer explore the scene himself, higher emotional impact, and so on) with the ability to transmit knowledge and direct the viewer to certain parts of the story. What that brings, when used right, is complex, but also quite obvious. It is a combination of the most powerful storytelling tools that could be very fine tuned on delivering the message. There are other advantages in multimedia i will talk about in the last part of the series, so stay tuned.

In the last part, that will be online in two weeks, i will write about the different ways to use media and deliver. We came from the general thoughts on how we want to tell something to the forms of media we can use to tell that. So in the last part it will be about the use of what we produced to deliver our story/ message to possible donors.

Climate Change, maybe one of the most important topics in human history right now. One of the first real global stories which could only be solved with a global perspective and global acting. As Copenhagen in the opinion of many failed, many are frustrated and even more think they could not change anything, when political leaders are not able to face a problem like that. But are we really aware of what will come with climate change, how our lifes will change?

The first question coming out of this is how is climate change covered in the media? And why is it maybe not working to reach an audience that starts to really believe that it is time to change something? I mean, millions came to see Obama becoming a president, but only 50.000 came to protest in Copenhagen. Just a thought.

In my opinion the biggest step to make people understand and care about Climate Change is to make it personal, not only personal in showing some devasting pictures from people in the floods in Bangladesh or the droughts in Eastern Africa. It has to touch us in a way that we understand that this problem, even when we don’t see it right now, will affect each one of us, in each society, each culture and each person. We have to get close and personal to the stories that even today are affecting people around the globe. We have to get personal accounts, people telling their stories, showing their lifes, not only some abstract data of how the world will change. Before that gets to sound too activism-like, let’s have a look at some interesting projects that cover climate change right now and tried to create awarness for it.

NOOR: Consequences

The photoagency NOOR sent out nine photographers to cover different stories from the ‘frontiers of climate change’. Being first of all photographers, they came back with great images, being interviewed afterwards for the production of soundslides about their journeys. The most of the shortfilms though show more how we destroy the world than the changes and how it affects the people. Maybe i’m wrong and that is still needed, but in my mind we are further. It is clear what destroys the earth, we should maybe more focus on how it affects us. What makes the reporting about some oil factories in Siberia interesting to us? It is far away, we can’t change that (also because it is another example we feel helpless about) and we don’t even know who really has to suffer about it beside some shepards in a region we never heart of before. When we wanna start to cover stories in a way that it brings attention and not only great images, nicely shown in exhibitions around the climate conference, we have to do more. It is important to cover those stories, no doubt about that, but when we really wanna get people thinking about it we have to do more in my opinion. I watched the videos and came out with nothing personal for me, nothing what would make me start really thinking about it, beside feeling some pity for people in this regions and some feelings of how stupid human beings could be. But nothing what directly affected me, would made me think of acting in any way. I just couldn’t relate enough to what was shown. Maybe the voices of the people, some video sequences would have changed something for me, maybe that would have made it less abstract, less far away. But don’t get me wrong, the project is great and for sure a big step in the right direction. It could just be way more powerful in my opinion with some easy additions.

Climate Change Documentary

Another great project by danish photojournalist Jakob Dall, also finished for the COP 15. He travelled also around the world, taking pictures of different places that are affected by climate change. Interesting is that it is not only covering the for us exotic places, but also places like Denmark or Ireland. Problem again: These are ‘just’ pictures, great in any way, moving, touching, but my concerns are kind of the same as with the NOOR project. It is hard to relate to it, plus it is also focusing on crisis and special events. The questions i asked myself when i saw the pictures: This that happening often? Is that really an effect of climate change? Even when that is not easy to answer, also here the voices of the people who tell how it changed in the last years and so on, could make it more powerful. Don’t forget, this stories are produced big for the web! So a good use of multimedia should be an easy step. Anyway, i think that what Jabob did in many ways is the right thing, go to the places, show how it looks like, get close, get personal.

Faces of climate change

This project is great. I don’t wanna talk to much about my concerns as it is kind of the same as in the ones before: Not personal enough, not bringing it close enough to me. In this project it is even that it sometimes feels like art, how they relate pictures with text, with pictures in a studio-like way. The pictures are great, but maybe for really getting touched we want something what feels real and not like out of a studio. We want to see the lifes and not only fancy portraits. In the moment i give it a more artificial look i take it away from reality and that is what we wanna show, right? But on the other hand this project is powerful in many ways. It covers the problem of climate change worldwide, from the farmer in Italy to the people in Siberia. It has of all projects the most global approach. And to see in the faces, see the people that are affected is nothing but powerful. Only, it could easily more powerful…

Bangladesh

Another photojournalist from Denmark, Jonathan Bjerg Møller, made some great stories from Bangaldesh, the country what is maybe right now the biggest affected by climate change. His stories are powerful, close and even when as always it could be more powerful, the story works. The use of b/w is maybe doing it’s work with it’s never forgotten relation of crisis and b/w. I would have liked to know how the stories would have worked in colour, but this is just a personal opinion.

To bring all that critique together at the end: Climate Change is such a big story, but with the internet we could do this stories better, more close, more personal with bigger impacts on the people who see this stories. Get the stories told by the people, show their lifes, how they have to cope with it, but also how it looks like on a daily basis might be a start. Making us relate to the problem and doing that in the most powerful way should be the main idea and starting point behind every project covering climate change for the media. How else should we start caring for it?

Two weeks ago the earthquake hit Haiti and destroyed more or less a whole country in seconds. What we saw in the direct aftermath was a media coverage close to painful in many ways. Now, not even two weeks after the earthquake, the topic does not even make the headlines of most newspapers anymore, the twitter feeds are getting more and more silent. Some might say, not surprising and yes, they are right. That is how it is in our world. Still i believe it could be different and still i think there are many things that could have been done differently (aka better?). This is a selection of my thougts to it. I’ve not been to Haiti in that time neither have i ever covered such a high media event like this. So this are my perceptions and thoughts of the coverage and i’m happy, when i’m proofed wrong or this leads to some discussion about the topic. Here are some of my points.

REDUNDANCY

This point is something what was discussed a couple of times in the last weeks. Foto8 pointed out that the huge amount of redundancy of pictures leads on the one hand to a point that many pictures are looking quite similar, but also that it takes away a huge amount of potential for stories to be told. Maybe it is normal, that in the first days in the whole chaos, where no one really has a clue where to go, how to get to places and what acually happened where, that the different media outlets are hitting the same spots. But does that mean that they should cover the same stories? In the first days we saw mainly one thing: A wild coverage of the devastation in many ways plus when ever someone was pulled out of a building. Like an overview of what happended. Quite understandable in this chaos, i guess, and maybe also the right thing to do. But isn’t a disaster like that, what is so wide spread, so total, the perfect situation to step away from the other, to find unique places, stories and pictures. It should have not been difficult to find horrific spectacular stories without the need of redundancy in that amount.

My concerns with that is not only that it leads to similar pictures. One of the problems i see is that a group of journalists covering the same events (more to that later.), also means that it will not help the relief teams in any way. There were many people who complained about the huge amount of journalists, being everywhere and not seldom just being in the way. So less redundancy means for some situations also more help for the actual relief crews on the ground.

STORIES

After the first days i expected to get bigger stories, like coverage of families for some days, their daily struggle in the situation. Less emergency snapshots, more deeper into the situation. I expected more single stories on certain situations, but at least my feeling was that the coverage never really stepped into that. My feeling was that most photographers were running around, still searching for the most dramatic picture they could find and at the point the bodies were mostly removed they went on to cover the ‘crimes’ that happen now. The ‘looting’ and so on (i mean, think about it for a second, what you would do, when you starve for days. Wouldn’t you try to get some food and water, even when it’s illegal?). The more dramatic the better. The other part of photographers embeded themselves in all the NGOs now taking slowly over after the first days and covering the relief they brought to the people. Also here many complained that the huge coverage of this was far away from reality and that the amount of coverage had nothing to do with the amount of relief that actually reached the people. That as many pointed out, the relief was reaching the people way slowlier than we might have thought, but at the same time the situation was beside exceptions most of the time calm and peaceful, was not what you got out of the media.

EVENTS

It was interesting to see how the coverage happend. For the first days after the earthquake i had no television, but could check the internet. So what i saw in this days was mainly pictures. Good pictures have in events like that a calm deep power to bring it close to you. With all the problems that the coverage itself might have, the pictures did the right job, also because they left out many things. Like a situation of a woman being pulled out from under a house and then seeing the picture of the same situation with six, seven photographers surrounding this two guys from the relief crew who just pulled out a woman from under a broken down house was more than bizzare and it was maybe the first time i really thought something is wrong here. Then, five days into the disaster, i watched CNN for the first time. I switched on the tele and the first thing i saw were two journalists, or better call it commentators, in nice studio light talking about the crazy stuff that happens all day in Haiti. They were obviously standing somewhere a bit higher, looking down in the back on a camp with displaced people. At that point i felt ashamed. It felt like it had become another event to report from. The commentators were looking on the situation without real contact to it, at least it felt like that. This might be wrong and maybe the nice light (wasn’t there a problem with power and stuff?) they were standing in, made it more bizarre. There is no doubt about it that a disaster like that needs te highest amount of coverage possible, but also or just because of that should the journalist not behave more from a listening point of view than shouting it out in the world how horrific and unbelievable the situation is without even trying to really understand it? Shouldn’t journalists not work together and spread out to cover as many different occasions as possible? And shouldn’t they talk with the Haitians to get an understanding what it really means for them, even better let them tell their stories?

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

I was looking for it all the time: That they start reporting not only on two things, the international help and the chaos, but start reporting what the people are going through. That they get deeper in the situations. Where are the stories following the people? Where are the stories about all the Haitians who pulled out way more people than any relief crew? Where are the stories of the Haitians who describe the situation and tell their perspective on it? Where are those stories that step out of the stereotype that a failed state like Haiti can do nothing right without the help of the western world? Isn’t it time that we learn that this is not reality, even when we would like to believe it? There is no doubt that every relief that comes these days to Haiti is good, that every help that really helps the people is good. But isn’t there another side of the story? We should stop to show them only as victims without a voice when we want to understand their situation. Without doing this we just swim in the same stereotype we are swimming in for way too long: The poor black people, not able to get anything running by themselves, but luckily the big western world comes and helps. We have to get into that when we really want to help on a long run and make Haiti something what could last longer than the glimpse of two weeks. When we not only want to bring the relief that billions of donations and the power of international help finally made it good, so we can forget about it again. When we want to keep the attention for the problems and potentials for a longer time and help, we have to understand it. And that is only done with the help of the Haitians. When we do not evolve a interest in their stories, Haiti will become just another goodwill story where no one feels bad about, because we stood together and donated some money, but also a story forgotten in some weeks.

WHAT COULD WE LEARN?

The problem of redundancy and with that the missing deeper stories and photoessays might not be solved in the first days of a disaster like that, but wouldn’t it be an idea as get cooperations running, like big media outlets working together, sending photographers to different places, with clear stories to cover, not this a little bit of everything? That would allow to dig deeper into stories, take more time for these. In times of the internet it could also be easily made accessable. Just think of twitter (a great resource of photography from Haiti these days…) What when photographers operating in a crisis area like that would upload their pictures and then tweet this with a certain hashtag (like Haitiphoto for instance). It would allow a good overview on what happens and the newspapers could pick out the stories they would like to take. This is just an idea and for sure there are some needs in the back to organize that, but it would also allow a bigger freedom to report and dig into stories.

Where are the Haitian photographers? Why were the first groups of journalists or NGOs not coming full with bags of cameras to equip the local photographers that might have lost their stuff, to get them back into the story? They know the place, they speak the language, they have passed through all this, so they have all the sensibility and understanding to cover it, a understanding of the situation that no one else will get close to in a short amount of time. Why not support them in any way possible? I’m not saying they should cover it alone, there is for sure a big need for the best photographers in the world to be there and cover it, but not only! And a big plus with local photographers is also that they could be the ones to cover the long-run stories when the crowd of war(event?)photographers had left for a long time. And it would be the right step to give the people more respect and act from a less voyeuristic point of view. What do you think, how a local photographer or journalist would have told the story of people looting? Without getting deeper into that discussion, would he have called it like that?

Maybe, that is my feeling, reporting from a crisis like that needs less shouting out, but more listening sometimes. And more power to the people, more trying to get their stories if we do not want to end it as a story of the western world intervening in a developing country to help, where we get out with the feeling of ‘just another crisis’ that could have taken place everywhere, more precise in every developing country.

At the end the media is also just a big business, so the amount of really caring for a situation like that might be low, especially when they go with the flow and report 24/7 on it till the point people get tired of it. For sure that is what brings for a short amount of time, when the story is hot, high TV ratings and good selling newspapers, but shouldn’t there be a little bit more sense of duty to do it right and with respect? And this way maybe create an interest for it that lasts longer than two weeks?

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