New Caledonia and Vanuatu: Differences defined in a student reporting venture into the Pacific

Duffield, Lee

doi:10.24135/pjr.v22i1.17

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…The Pacific Media Centre developed a plan for a two-week climate change field trip for two postgraduate student/graduate journalists to gain firsthand experience of reporting on climate change issues in Fiji in April 2017. Drawing on previous field trips organised by the PMC, including the 2016 Bearing Witness mission and the experience of journalism programmes at institutions such as a 2015 New Caledonia and Vanuatu reportage by Queensland University of Technology (Duffield, 2016), this was an exercise in professional development. Fiji was selected for the climate project for logistical and media resource reasons, given that the centre already had a long-established relationship with the USP regional Pacific journalism programme with available accommodation on the Laucala Bay campus close to the centre of environmental research.…”

Section: Rationale and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Bearing Witness 2017: Year 2 of a Pacific climate change storytelling project

Robie¹

2018

PJR

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In 2016, the Pacific Media Centre responded to the devastation and tragedy wrought in Fiji by Severe Tropical Cyclone Winston by initiating the Bearing Witness journalism project and dispatching two postgraduate students to Viti Levu to document and report on the impact of climate change (Robie & Chand, 2017). This was followed up in 2017 in a second phase of what was hoped would become a five-year mission and expanded in future years to include other parts of the Asia-Pacific region. This project is timely, given the new 10-year Strategic Plan 2017-2026 launched by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) in March and the co-hosting by Fiji of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP23) climate change conference in Bonn, Germany, during November. The students dispatched in 2017 on the ‘bearing witness’ journalism experiential assignment to work in collaboration with the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) and the Regional Journalism Programme at the University of the South Pacific included a report about the relocation of a remote inland village of Tukuraki. They won the 2017 media and trauma prize of the Asia-Pacific Dart Centre, an agency affiliated with the Columbia School of Journalism. This article is a case study assessing the progress with this second year of the journalism project and exploring the strategic initiatives under way for more nuanced and constructive Asia-Pacific media storytelling in response to climate change.

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Section: Rationale and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Bearing Witness 2017: Year 2 of a Pacific climate change storytelling project

Robie¹

2018

PJR

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“…Faced with this challenge, the Pacific Media Centre developed a plan a for a two-week climate change field trip for two postgraduate student/graduate journalists to gain firsthand experience of reporting on climate change issues in Fiji. Drawing on previous field trips organised by the PMC and the experience of journalism programmes at institutions such as a 2015 New Caledonia and Vanuatu reportage by Queensland University of Technology (Duffield, 2016), this was an exercise in professional development. Fiji was selected for the climate project for logistical and media resource reasons, given that the centre already had a long-established relationship with the USP regional Pacific journalism programme with available accommodation on the Laucala Bay campus close to the centre of environmental research.…”

Section: Rationale and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Bearing Witness 2016: A Fiji climate change journalism case study

Robie¹,

Chand²

2017

PJR

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In February 2016, the Fiji Islands were devastated by Severe Tropical Cyclone Winston, the strongest recorded tropical storm in the Southern Hemisphere. The category 5 storm with wind gusts reaching 300 kilometres an hour, left 44 people dead, 45,000 people displaced, 350,000 indirectly affected, and $650 million worth of damage (Climate Council, 2016). In March 2017, the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) launched a new 10-year Strategic Plan 2017-2026, which regards climate change as a ‘deeply troubling issue for the environmental, economic, and social viability of Pacific island countries and territories’. In November, Fiji will co-host the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP23) climate change conference in Bonn, Germany. Against this background, the Pacific Media Centre despatched two neophyte journalists to Fiji for a two-week field trip in April 2016 on a ‘bearing witness’ journalism experiential assignment to work in collaboration with the Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) and the Regional Journalism Programme at the University of the South Pacific. This paper is a case study assessing this climate change journalism project and arguing for the initiative to be funded for a multiple-year period in future and to cover additional Pacific countries, especially those so-called ‘frontline’ climate change states.

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“…While the value of journalism fieldtrips is evident in student assessments and in the work that has been produced (students have won Ossie student journalism awards for their work in the first two years and produced a documentary that has played in film festivals in the third year) is useful and instructive to consider Lee Duffield’s analysis of his QUT students’ experiences participating in journalism fieldtrips in the Pacific and in Europe (Duffield, 2014, 2016).…”

Section: Twin Tyrannies Of Distance and Newsworthinessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This paper examines the principles of collaboration between a student filmmaker and student journalist, both postgraduate, in the 2018 edition of the project in terms of creative/news outcomes and also in terms of the pedagogical approach taken to aid the preparation, production and post-production in this project. Additionally, we explore this new context in terms of past work (Duffield, 2014, 2016; Marbrook et al, 2017; Robie, 2018; Robie & Chand, 2017) and where the project might develop in the future.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bearing Witness: A Pacific Climate Crisis Documentary and Journalism Development Project

Robie

Marbrook

2020

Asia Pacific Media Educator

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A three-year Pacific climate research and storytelling documentary and journalism project has contributed to a disruption and renewal theme in Pacific Island Countries development. Focused initially on Fiji, the project has involved three pairs of postgraduate students engaging with climate crisis challenges. Responding originally to the devastation and tragedy wrought in Fiji by Severe Tropical Cyclone Winston in 2016, the Pacific Media Centre embarked on the Bearing Witness journalism project by sending two postgraduate students to Viti Levu to document and report on the impact of climate change (Robie & Chand, 2017). Their main component was a multimedia report on Daku village in the Rewa River delta area. This was followed in 2017 with a series of reports leading to a multimedia package on the relocation of the remote inland village of Tukuraki (Robie, 2018). The third episode focused far more strongly on documentary with reports on waka navigation and climate change, the ‘ghost village’ of Vunidogoloa and a ‘homecoming’ short feature about the Banaban people of Rabi and the impact on them caused by climate change. The project explores Friere’s notions of ‘critical consciousness’ as they might relate to teaching documentary-making and also draw on the concept of talanoa journalism.

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New Caledonia and Vanuatu: Differences defined in a student reporting venture into the Pacific

Cited by 3 publications

References 1 publication

Bearing Witness 2017: Year 2 of a Pacific climate change storytelling project

Bearing Witness 2017: Year 2 of a Pacific climate change storytelling project

Bearing Witness 2016: A Fiji climate change journalism case study

Bearing Witness: A Pacific Climate Crisis Documentary and Journalism Development Project

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