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Switch It: Transformation into Rights-based Journalism About Sexual Violence & Raising Awareness on Sexual Violence
Project Period: January – December 2019
Project website: oyledegilboyle.org
Violence is mostly considered as a private sphere matter however it is spreaded into our everyday lives and that is one of our fundamental social problems. We encounter, witness and are exposed to this societal problem and its influences are in households, schools, streets; namely, in every place where we socialise. All violence that is reflected on the media, which may banalise and at the same time obscure the violence by embracing a language reproducing public moral and also nourishing itself out of this moral and blaming / shaming the survivors. Indeed, news-language of the media often leads to violation of rights with stigmatising both perpetrators and survivors in various ways.
When the media’s potency to form public opinion and creating belief is taken into consideration, it is unavoidable for the issue of violence to proliferate rapidly within the society. For us, instead of holding a perspective that legitimizes sexual violence and blaming / judging survivors, media’s primary responsibilities are producing content that contributes to proliferation of consent culture, making the sexual violence visible, emphasizing that it is a crime, empowering the survivors and guarding their rights.
The media must question false beliefs and cliches by checking its commitment to the ethical principles and also, it must serve as a model for the society and become a part of social transformation. We, as the Association for Struggle Against Sexual Violence aim at contributing to the media’s adoption of non-violent and rights-based approach, raising societal awareness and proliferation of consent culture.
The Goals of the Project:
- To raise awareness about gender-based violence and sexual violence, to change the societal perception, to transform language of violence, to contribute to removing the common opinions that feed the rape culture and to proliferate the consent culture.
- To contribute to the transformation of verbal and visual language of the media reproducing sexual violence; victimising, disempowering and blaming survivors and violating their rights; in the direction of a rights-based journalism.
- To follow the news on sexual violence to report the incorrect verbal and visual language used by the media institutions and to call these institutions for a collaboration in order to transform their language and visuals into correct ones.
- To create a visual pool consisting of visuals taking survivors’ rights and wellness into consideration, supporting and empowering them instead of triggering, victimising, rights-violating incorrect visuals.
- To support the survivors, to act in solidarity with them, to contribute to their healing and transform the social perception in this direction.
Planned activities:
In order to achieve aforementioned goals, we will organise a series of activities in 2019 within the scope of the project “Switch It”:
- Campaign: We will organise a campaign in a collaboration with figures who have a gender equality perspective and are known by the public. We will be focusing on the concepts of “consent”, “consent culture” and “victim-blaming” in order to destroy the constructed myths on sexual violence.
- Visual Archive: We will create a visual pool including the empowering visuals taking survivors’ rights and wellness into consideration, and then make this archive available for the media institutions.
- Media Following: We will follow media institutions’ news on sexual violence and identify incorrect verbal and visual language; then, we will call them for a collaboration to transform their language and also to participate in our workshops.
- Rights-based Journalism Workshops & Seminars: We will organise Rights-based Journalism on Sexual Violence workshops and seminars together with media and communication faculty students, media professionals and everyone who is interested in citizenship journalism.
- Self-help Visuals: We will produce empowering, solidarity-building and healing visual materials.
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PROJECT TEAM
Project Coordinator: Özge Karlık
Workshop Moderator: Şehlem Kaçar
Content Editing: Association for Struggle Against Sexual Violence (CŞMD) Team
Campaign Coordinator: Begüm Baki
Social Media: İrem Öztürk
Media Following: Begüm Baki
Visual Design: Büşra Erinkurt, Özge Özgüner
Visual Archive Content: Association for Struggle Against Sexual Violence (CŞMD) and Volunteers Team
Project and Visual Archive Webapp: Özge Özgüner
Video Editing: Özge Özgüner
Sponsored by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung with funds of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of the Federal Republic of Germany. This publication or parts of it can be used by others for free as long as they provide a proper reference to the original publication.
The content of the publication is the sole responsibility of CSMD and does not necessarily reflect a position of RLS.
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