Post by Admir Skodo, PhD

I was recently interviewed by the World Council of Churches about a project I’m coordinating. It’s called “Changing the Narrative,” and it’s a migration and media project organized by the Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe, World Association for Christian Communication, and World Council of Churches. It’ll focus on ground-truthing and amplifying genuine counter-narratives to the far-right frames in three multicultural neighborhoods in Italy, Germany, and Sweden. The project will also involve a media literacy component. … From the interview: Would you please describe the aim of the project, and outline how it will be approached? Skodo: The project contests the dominant far-right narrative about European multicultural neighbourhoods by combining three elements: a synthesis of existing research on how the contemporary media landscape constructs these neighbourhoods; fieldwork in Rosengård in Malmö, and volunteer-led story collection in San Salvario in Turin and Neukölln in Berlin to surface firsthand counter-narratives from residents themselves; and a sustained communications strategy to bring this synthesis and these voices to policymakers, opinion-makers, clergy, and community leaders. The project's purpose is to undermine the “multicultural neighbourhood is bad” narrative that justifies much restrictionist policy by lifting up the more nuanced picture residents themselves provide - challenges and opportunities, beauty and difficulty, the everyday lives of real people that categorical framings make invisible. Hopefully, the stories that emerge from this research can inform the more capacious narratives I mentioned above. https://lnkd.in/etj9UPHP