Media and migration: Course for journalism students
Published: Nov 19, 2018 Reading time: 1 minute
Awareness and dialogue between the majority and people with migrant backgrounds are the essence of successful integration and well-functioning coexistence within societies. Especially in rather homogenous societies, where the majority of people doesn´t have personal contacts to migrants, media play a very important role, providing information and a platform for dialogue. Balanced and quality media reporting on migration and integration – such as other topics – needs skilled, knowledgeable and reflected journalists in the newsrooms.
However, in some countries, migration hasn´t been a topic for media and politics before the European „migrations crisis“ of 2015 and the experience with this topic within the newsrooms was lacking.
In order to help closing this gap, PIN´s Migration awareness program runs a course at the Faculty of social sciences at the Charles University in Prague. The first course takes place in the winter semester 2018 and provides students not only with an introduction into migration studies by academic experts in this field, but can also skills of working with migration and integration data and statistics and a possibility of exchange with professional journalists working on these topics. The course has a practical focus: students will gain experience working in the field and publishing their own media outputs.
The course is part of the project „People between the lines: Building skills for quality migration coverage“. The project takes place in Czech Republic, Slovakia and Estonia and has been funded by the European commission.
