From Gaming to Human Rights Campaigns. The New Multimedia.
As the middle east is in a continuous increase in political actions, many questions can be asked regarding the protection of human rights in the region. Historically, it was generally easy for multiple suppressive middle eastern governments to blackout information about different kinds of protestations and political movements happening in their countries. The blackout covered and hid a lot of human rights violations against the people of these countries. This was possible due to the lack of media coverage at those times. However, with the advancements in technologies all over the world, reaching out and sharing information became easier and accessible for most people. Protestors are now able to generate and share their content and news without a supervision of anyone, which makes the human rights reports clearer and more transparent. In addition, a huge involvement of multimedia is taking place in the human rights field. This involvement doesn’t only include showing the reality of human rights movements and violation, but also making the viewer take part in it and reach to the maximum understanding of these issues. So the question is now is regarding the effectiveness of this multimedia revolution, is it really helping in changing the reality of the middle east? and how is it intersecting the historical association between multimedia and entertainment with such serious topics like human rights violations? In this article, I will highlight two recent multimedia factors that are getting more involved in human rights movements in the middle east: virtual reality and social media.
Immersive Journalism: virtual reality for a higher purpose
In the 2018’s UN Youth for Human Rights Summit, Australian game developer and educator Leena Van Deventer was interviewed about the possible connection between gaming and human rights. Leena believes that games, if designed considering some aspects, can actually change minds. She mentioned that this can be viewed with a bigger perspective, as journalists are using virtual reality to raise awareness about human rights issues.
Nonny de la Peña is one of these journalists. The American journalists is sometimes even credited with creating this whole genre of immersive journalism. She worked with different mediums such as print, documentaries, and podcasts. However, she felt that putting people “on scene” and actually making them feel something physical would completely change and positively support the feeling of empathy in the viewer. This is when she shifted her focus to virtual reality documentaries.
Nonny created multiple VR projects that aimed to not only inform the viewers, but to actually include them in the scenes. After a while, she was commissioned to create an immersive piece about the Syrian crisis. She got a big budget of 35,000$ in which she used to send a team to the Syrian-Iraqi borders to take pictures that study the situation of refugee kids. They later reconstructed the material to create a VR experience that mimics the life and environment that these kids live in.
These kinds of projects might seem more effective if it is sponsored by human rights non-profit organizations, which actually happened in reality. Amnesty International, which is very well known for its huge human rights campaigns, used virtual reality multiple times as part of its reports. One of the major immersive projects that they worked on was named Fear of the Sky, which was created in partnership with Syrian media activists and Lamba Media Production. The project showed a series of 360 photographs of different places in Aleppo city such as the market and a school. It focused on how the everyday life in this city gets affected with the barrel bombing practiced by the Syrian regime. The visual experience was accompanied with a narration that was made as if it is telling the story of a citizen in the city.
Another extremely engaging and powerful piece by Amnesty International is called Explore Saydnaya. In 2016, this piece was developed in partnership with Forensic Architecture, a research agency located in Goldsmith, University of London. This agency focuses on researching and investigating human rights violations, then reconstructing them using architectural modeling. Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture travelled to meet 5 previous detainees in famous Syrian torture prison, Saydnaya. As it is almost impossible for human rights organizations to access this prison, investigators used the stories told by the survivors to imagine and recreate 3d models of the prison and what is happening inside it. The result was a series of interactive 3d modeled environment presented with sounds and interviews telling the stories of the survivors. The piece was offered in English and Arabic which helped it become more engaging. This immersive experience was part of a huge campaign by Amnesty International about Saydnaya prison. A campaign in which they focused on sharing Assad’s crimes and asked for a proper punishment to the Syrian regime.
Social Media campaigns
Human rights movements developed naturally on social media as it is usually free and accessible for activists and protestors. However, recently, the idea of creating a theme associated with revolutions and protestations showed up. Such themes can help promoting and spreading the movement’s news worldwide. One of the most prominent recent examples of these themes was the campaign #BlueForSudan, which got really popular as a huge number of social media users changed their profile pictures to blue in solidarity with the rights and demands of the people in Sudan. It all started because of a 26-year old Sudanese activist, Mohamed Hashim Mattar. Mattar’s favorite color was blue, and his Instagram profile picture was blue when he was killed during the protests. His family and friends started changing their profile pictures for him, which later spread out all over the world and reached to celebrities such as Demi Lovato and model Halima Aden.
The wave did not stop there, as that specific shade of blue turned into a signature of the Sudanese uprising. Artistic expressions as well as songs created in support of the revolution all started using the color as a theme. COLORS, a music platform that promotes musicians from all around the world created a short series of music videos showcasing Sudanese artists singing for the revolution. Blue was used as a background for all of these videos.
Another Example of multimedia coverage for middle eastern uprisings is the Lebanese revolution social media coverage. The Lebanese revolution started in October with massive protestations demanding basic human rights. With all religions and levels of the society participating in festive protests, it was easy for the photographs and the videos to go viral on social media. A main factor could be the huge existence of Lebanese people on social media platforms, as well as the celebratory nature of the protestations. The Iraqi revolution also started in October, with similar demands to the Lebanese revolution. However, I had a personal impression that it did not spread as much as the Lebanese and Sudanese uprisings. This is what encouraged me to create social media surveys and get the users opinions about this point.
I created two Instagram stories surveys to get an insight of whether other social media users had the same impressions as me. In the first survey I asked the following question: Which color do you mostly associate with the Sudanese revolution? The results were very much as expected. 79.3% of the participant answered blue, and some of them also associated it with Mattar, the person who was the reason behind the movement.
In my other survey I created a poll in which I asked my participants to choose the revolution they have heard about more between the Lebanese and the Iraqi revolutions. I also asked them to explain why do they think is that? 70% chose the Lebanese, and most of them related their choice to the media coverage that accompanied this specific uprising. This lead me to another question that I asked few of my participants individually. Why isn’t the Iraqi revolution spoken about by other nationalities as much as the Lebanese revolution. The responses revolved around the idea that the Iraqi revolution was faced with violence, which is not what social media users consider as “content friendly”. The idea seemed understandable, but very concerning from a human right perspective.
The results of my surveys were very much close to the belief that social media, and multimedia generated themes are very effective in making people not only aware, but actually involved in creating change and protecting human rights. This might be a great opportunity for human rights interested creatives to further explore.
