As most of you should know there is
currently a huge refugee crisis in Europe, over a million people from across
the Middle East, from countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, have
flooded into Europe in hopes of finding asylum. This has lead to thousands of
journalists from across Europe heading to the refugee camps set up in Greece,
Germany and other European countries to cover the stories of these people.
However the refugees have unsurprisingly
become unhappy with the negative way in which they are being represented, so in
response, last year a few of the refugees come together to create Refugee.TV,
including Mahmoud Abdul Rahim, who can be seen in this report from the BBC,
this I where I originally found out about this.
Here are links to their YouTube channel and
website
A number of these programs have appeared in different refugee
camps around Europe, they interview the refugees in the camps as well as
turning the cameras back onto the journalists coming from other countries to
find out what it is they want to find there.
I think this is a very interesting topic, especially in
reference to what was in todays lecture about Indigenous media and
representation. These people may not be Indigenous to these countries but they
still deserve to be represented fairly, so they have created a way to represent
themselves, even when they have been forced into such a position. I think this
is amazing and should be talked about more.
There has also been a crowd funding campaign to help support
this project.
In a time of such unsettlement and unrest within and between Europe
and the Middle East and in the midst if this crisis, I think this is a
wonderful thing to come from people.
This is such an interesting post, I had not heard about refugee tv and it was really interesting to look into. I like how you have related this to the indigenous media lecture as well, you are right in that the refugees are not an indigenous minority but they are still facing negative portrayal in the media and are not in a position of power to project their own reality and identity within the media, and yet here are a few refugees setting up this news source in order to push back against negative representations, it’s really heartwarming. This relates directly to what Suzanne was talking about in regards to how the mainstream media has the power to create and legitimize particular versions of what is going on in the world, which is often a very eurocentric viewpoint. Through refugees creating their own media they are able to resist this and control the representations of themselves which can provide a completely alternative point of view. They can resist stereotypes and produce representations that instill pride and portray their realities. The only unfortunate thing about refugee tv is limited funding which can affect how aware people are of its existence. I probably would not have heard of it if not for this post. Also refugees, or people still living in areas of crisis such as Syria, may have difficulty accessing it if they have limited access to electricity or technology. However it is a great start, and hopefully more people will become aware of refugee tv. The more support refugee tv gains, the more a wider audience will see these different representations of refugees in Europe and it will help to broaden people's understandings and perspectives of the refugee crisis.
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