Innovation for Dialogue: Creative Experiences to Encourage Participation

"We must initiate innovation processes that invite citizens to create or reinvent communication channels and become a part of the media."

In a world where open public dialogue is facing many challenges, this publication by Deutsche Welle (DW) Akademie looks at how to strengthen participtory dialogue on issues of public interest. It does so by highlighting four case studies from Latin America (Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, and Guatemala) that explore experimental, collaborative, and participatory communication and media development methodologies that increase the visibility of underrepresented topics and create opportunities for all voices to be heard. The four experiences and their lessons learned are intended to serve as inspiration for other media outlets or organisations to experiment with similar methodologies and to innovate in the construction of participatory dialogue. This publication is part of the series "The Power of the Voice: Community Media in Latin America", which also includes "Media Viability in the CORAPE Network (2020)" and "Radio in a Post-pandemic World: Tools and Strategies for the 'New Normal'" (2020) (see Related Summaries, below).

As explained in the guide, "The public sphere has become a digital sphere. Current debates on the most relevant public issues now take place on the Internet, albeit with certain limitations. This reality poses enormous opportunities... Nonetheless, this reality also presents serious challenges, such as identifying disinformation and propaganda, or preventing the polarization of ideas and emotions, fragmented dialogues, information bubbles, as well as circumventing algorithms and bots that make it difficult to separate disinformation from truthful facts.  These circumstances are leading to a shrinking public sphere, especially in the countries of the Global South, where these obstacles keep growing. Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean continue to face many barriers preventing equal participation in global debates. We refer, for example, to the lack of equipment or access to Internet, the limited availability of technologies in local languages or insufficient digital literacy. These realities do not guarantee free and fair playing rules."

In response to these challenges, DW Akademie is committed to Innovation for Dialogue (I4D) as a key field of action in its training strategy. "Innovation in this field means that societies must have the capacities to take full control of their public discussions using an infrastructure that serves public instead of private interests. They should be able to define for themselves the issues they deem relevant, instead of algorithms which are optimized to increase advertising revenues." Specifically, I4D proposes actions such as:

• Working with new actors, such as open data initiatives, start-ups, hacker communities, and innovation hubs;
• Experimenting with new technologies to have a positive impact on digital discussions; and
• Developing innovation capabilities with agile and human-centred design methodologies.

The case studies in this publication share the following characteristics:

• They are innovative experiences within their geographical areas and field of work.
• All four are experimental. They are not closed proposals but, rather, processes willing to explore alternative ways of communicating.
• They have been developed by local or community radios or networks that work with these media outlets.
• They have emerged to promote the participation and dialogue of citizens in the media.

Each case study is discussed in three sections:

1. An overview of the activity and its background.
2. The methodological information and practical recommendations to replicate the experiences.
3. A presentation of the lessons learned from the activity.

The case studies are:

• #ConectaCulturas Hackathon, in partnership with Coordinadora de Medios Comunitarios Populares y Educativos del Ecuador (CORAPE): Together with DW Akademie, CORAPE, a community media network, used a hackathon to design a mobile app that sought to contribute to rescuing the history and traditions of the country's Indigenous Peoples. The function of the app was to facilitate the uploading of content by Indigenous People to a documentation centre.
• Reporteratón, in collaboration with Asociación de Radiodifusión Comunitaria Vokaribe in Barranquilla, Colombia - The Reporterathon, as conceived by DW Akademie and Vokaribe, is a collective exercise in which journalists, members of social organisations, and local residents meet to record stories in short format - in just two or three days - and then broadcast them on the radio and through digital platforms.
• Colaboratorio, in partnership with Centro de Producciones Radiofónicas (CEPRA) in Cochabamba, Bolivia - This project was developed jointly by CEPRA and DW Akademie to increase participation and plurality in the programmes of the community radio stations of the CEPRA network. The Colaboratorio is conceived as a collective space to develop, research, experiment, and innovate about community radio with the participation of social actors. During its first pilot stage, it focused on finding out how to increase the participation of the community in the communication projects of local and community radio stations.
• Space Booths, in partnership with Radio Sónica, a member of Asociación de Servicios Culturales y Educativos (ASEC) in Guatemala - Space Booths are mobile radio studios equipped with everything needed to make a radio programme from a school, a sports field, or any other place away from the station. The programmes are sent to the central Sónica studios, from where they are broadcast over radio frequency and over the internet. With the support of DW Akademie, Sónica was conceived as a media laboratory, applying an action-reflection-action methodology. With this experimental focus and after working in more than 30 schools with the first version of the Space Booth for a year, they evaluated the experience and ended up transforming the Spacebooth into interactive media and information literacy (MIL) training meetings where young people learned about media and social media in a nontraditional and fun way that involved learning by playing with other students.

In developing these projects, five shared aspects that make these projects innovative and enriching experiences were identified. These are outlined in the report together with related lessons learned or takeaways. In brief, they are:

1. Disrupt preconceptions - One of the biggest challenges when it comes to innovation is to break free from the inertia of doing things the way they have always been done. Each project had its own way of disrupting preconceptions.
2. Promote and enable participation - The main objective of the experiences presented in this guide is to increase participation. Enabling participation means ensuring the right conditions for people to feel invited to be active in a workshop or radio station. The experiences studied suggest the following:
   • Enable participation throughout the process.
   • Agree upon ground rules with the group; do not impose them.
   • Think carefully about the methodology to be employed - e.g., writing on flash cards may not work with participants who speak different languages.
   • Go to them if they don't come to you - e.g., radio and participatory workshops yield the best results if they are done in the streets, in the community, or at school.
3. Facilitate teamwork - Co-creation and teamwork are essential, as they ensure that diverse perspectives are represented.
4. Foster experimental processes - Most of the experiences outlined in the guide have channeled their creative innovation processes through laboratories, which are understood as spaces instead of places. That is why these laboratories can move from place to place, experimenting with ideas collectively.
5. Stimulate creativity - Creativity is a key ingredient for any innovation process and can be sparked in a variety of ways - e.g., as shown by the examples in this guide, introducing exercises to "warm up" the neurons can help participants come up with more original ideas.