UNESCO Chair at UoH reaches out to community radios

Hyderabad: The UNESCO Chair on Community Media, University of Hyderabad (UoH), conducted a series of online 11 Global Dialogues on Community Media in the Post-Pandemic World with the support of UNESCO New Delhi. Community radio (CR) advocates, practitioners, researchers and academics from across the world participated in the discussion, live-streamed simultaneously on Facebook and YouTube, with an estimated audience reach of about 50,000 people globally.

The UoH conducted the dialogue series between June and November 2020, with the participation of representatives of community media from South and Southeast Asia, the Pacific and Australia, South and Latin America, Africa, the United Kingdom, and Continental Europe.

Besides the Global Dialogues, a 5-day online Master Training Classes on Social Media Broadcasting for community radios in Bangladesh was also conducted. The capacity building workshop, led by Prof. Vasuki Belavadi, a faculty fellow at the Chair, aimed at building the capacities of community radio stations in using social media to increase community engagement and supplement their daily broadcasts. The workshop trained the community radio stations in using mobile and online tools and implementing effective techniques in creating engaging content for social media. The workshop also focused on best practices of other CR stations and ethical practices on using social media.

“As part of its outreach mandate, the Chair conducted the online dialogues involving representatives from across the world and deliberated on the ground work that is being done by community radios in those countries and also to understand how they are coping with the current situation,” said Prof. Vinod Pavarala, the Chairholder. The Chair plans to transcribe all the dialogues and publish the text as an important resource for the sector with the support of UNESCO.