Hey, you’re online! So are we.
Dear readers,
we, a group of five students from Sweden’s Malmö University, are extending our digital feelers into the world wide web. We are stoked about how we interact with new media in our fast-paced world and want to take this blog as our outlet to think aloud, share insights and get feedback from you – our readers. New media, Information Communications and Technology (ICT), and development is the name of the game, and we’re all about that. Bringing your fresh, razor-sharp insights are our globe-trotting authors based in Scotland, Malawi, Singapore, Jordan, and Australia.
Who we are:
- Kat – is from Poland, living and working in Scotland, and studying in Sweden. Works in visual media. Loves the open road. Kat will be looking at the discrepancy (or not!) between online activism and ‘spreading awareness’ and physical activism. Que the keyboard warriors!
- Nathalie – Muli bwanji? (What’s up in Chichewa) Nathalie is in Malawi, working in permaculture, thrilled about Fridays for Future. She wonders how Media can give the youth around her a voice. Where? In Malawi. Duh.
- Kerstin – What do Austria and Singapore have in common? That’s right, Kerstin. Roots in the first, living in the second; on top of that, she’s eager to zoom right into how social media, and especially TikTok, has contributed to lively discussions around the topic of exploitation of Syrian families.
- Alice – Based in Oz, is a communication specialist, with past work with the UN, WHO, and Oxfam in Papua New Guinea and the Middle East. For this blog, she’s keen on exploring how effective traditional civil activism (pre-1990s) is when compared to digital activism in the age of new media.
- Simon – feels at home wherever his plants happen to be. Currently, that’s Jordan. Simon is interested in fast-paced media, misinformation on the web, and how we deal with the overload of ‘news’ we are bombarded with every time we’re online.
So here’s the plan:
Over the next month, we want to draw you into the topics mentioned above by sharing what we are learning in the field of communication for development and honed in on new media. As we are all (and this includes you) constantly ‘signed in’ from wherever we are in the world, we want to use this space to reflect on what that means. How do we consume news and digital media? Is Uber evil? How can new media support grassroots movements? Are ‘slacktivism’ hot stuff or nothing but hot air? Who has the reins in their hand on these platforms, anyways? That’s what we want to find out.
We’d love for you to join us along this journey for the next few weeks, look forward to your feedback and input and yeah – watch this space for more to come!
…And we wouldn’t be a new media blog without plugging all our channels, so please follow us on:
You might wonder why our blog speaks so much about TikTok, yet we do not have a TikTok channel ourselves. This is a valid question and I’m glad you asked. Producing high-quality content for TikTok, which you will read more about in the upcoming posts, need proper video skills, which not all of us possess. This is why we stick to writing for our own social media channels. We don’t know what the future will hold, though. We might just become TikTok stars one day!
Thank you very much for reading to the end and we look forward to lively discussions directly on our posts in the “Comments” section as well as on our social media channels.
“Read” you next time!