dokuz8NEWS continues its series of Alternative Media & Citizen Journalism Training Program with the “Social Gender & Children Focused Citizen Journalism” training. The session has taken place between 22-24 February 2018 in Istanbul and welcomed 30 participants from across Turkey. The participants came from Istanbul, Ankara, Diyarbakır, Mersin, Canakkale, Artvin, Trabzon, Afyonkarahisar and Cyprus, representing the NGOs, activist networks and university student groups. A network of social gender & children news has been founded as a result of the training session.

Since its foundation, dokuz8NEWS has organised many training sessions on Alternative Media & Citizen Journalism, the 25th training has taken place in Istanbul with participation of 30 people representing nine cities and Cyprus, coming from backgrounds varying from social gender, women’s movements, children, LGBTI+ networks. The session started with dokuz8NEWS founding director Gökhan Biçici’s keynote speech.

30 PARTICIPANTS FROM 15 INSTITUTIONS & 5 UNIVERSITIES

Biçici has stated that in the 24 training sessions that had been conducted in four years across Turkey, 650 participants from 55 cities have participated in the sessions. Biçici continued to explain that more than 60% of the participants in these training sessions continue being part of regional and thematic news networks. The regional training programmes have been transformed into thematic training sessions in the past year and have welcomed over 120 people. dokuz8NEWS director Biçici also announced that an alternative media academy will be founded shortly, building upon the groundwork laid by all the experience gained through 25 training sessions so far.

WHAT IS NEWS?

On day 1 of the training session, journalist Burcu Karakaş has presented “What is news? Story of news and journalism” to the participants. Karakaş has given examples of her news reports and reiterated the significance of news design and processing. She has specifically exemplified the common mistakes done by conventional media platforms.

NOT RESPECTING THE SURVIVORS’ RIGHTS IS A VIOLATION

After Burcu Karakaş, Şehlem Kaçar of Association for Combating Gendered Violence has presented “Basic elements in gendered violence in social gender oriented journalism”. Kaçar has put emphasis on the notion of survivors’ rights stating it is a rights violation to not respect a survivor’s rights, and reiterated that “using a child’s image in news can not be based on consent, and any kind of use of children for the adults’ world is abuse”. Kaçar also stated that this is a supra-political issue that should not be tolerated for being from one side or another.

RIGHTS-BASED JOURNALISM

Çiçek Tahaoğlu, the women & LGBTI+ news editor for Independent Communications Network BIANET, led the final session of the day with “Social gender oriented journalism”. Tahaoğlu started her talk presenting the representations of women in media. She has especially touched upon certain terms that bring social gender to the core of news and stated that social gender is a perspective on rights based journalism as well.

NEW MEDIA PRACTICES & NEW TOOLS

While social gender and children focused themes have dominated the program, there have also been modules related to dokuz8NEWS’ regular training curriculum. Verification & fact-checking training module has been offered by Çınar Livane Özer, while dokuz8NEWS’ digital security expert Onur Metin has given a module titled “data security for citizen journalists”.

SOCIAL GENDER & CHILDREN NEWS COMMUNICATIONS GROUP FORMED

On day 3, participants have been given their certificates for successful completion of the program. A communications group have been formed with the participants and dokuz8NEWS trainers, newsroom and editors.