META webinar Series and Workshop

MU organises national workshops and sessions and invites an assortment of national and international trainers and speakers to Pakistan. In 2022, MU collaborated with the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), Sri Lanka supported by Meta to organise a series of webinars and a workshop - titled ‘The Future of Journalism in South Asia’.

The webinar series was conducted via Zoom from July to October 2022 and was attended by trainers from across the region and beyond and participants from four countries - Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.

It was exciting to bring participants from four countries from the South Asian region which meant the sessions would have to be conducted in several languages. The MU and CIR decided to engage translators, as well as breakout sessions in local languages to ensure the participants could grasp the concepts and understand the discussions.

Each webinar focused on a topic that was important to help journalists improve their understanding and skills in the changing media landscape.

journalists online, Facebook safety; journalism in the digital era, and fact-checking in an age of disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation. 

The first of the sessions ‘Protecting Yourself Online’ was held on July 14, 2022, via Zoom. The session was quite interesting as it brought the experience of renowned journalists from different countries. Speakers for this webinar included Namrata Sharma, an award-winning investigative journalist from Nepal; Rozina Islam, a journalist from Bangladesh affiliated with Daily Prothom Alo; Farieha Aziz, an award-winning journalist and director of an advocacy group Bolo Bhi from Pakistan and Senel Wanniarachchi from Sri Lanka, director of Hashtag Generation. The panel was moderated by Kamal Siddiqi of Media Unlimited, Pakistan.

56 journalists attended the session out of which 26 participated were from Pakistan. MU, CIR, and Meta ensured there was gender balance in the sessions which was why 50% of the participants were women.

The second session of this series was a training workshop on ‘Facebook Safety’ which was held on August 18, 2022, via Zoom. The trainers were Charmaine Fernandes and Sasha Edwards (META) who were facilitated by Ruhul Amin Rushd (Bangladesh); Rajneesh Bhandari (Nepal); Shahzeb Ahmed Hashim (Pakistan); Rifthi Ali (Sri Lanka – Tamil) and K M Rasool (Sri Lanka – Sinhalese). The facilitators were allotted breakout rooms after each training session and participants were divided into the languages they preferred, and the content of the training was discussed and explained in the respective language.

This was followed by another webinar titled ‘Elevating Journalism Standards’ held on September 19, 2022, via Zoom. The speakers for this discussion were Syed Zain Al- Mahmood (Bangladesh); Deepanjalie Abeywardana (Sri Lanka); Mahim Maher (Pakistan) and was moderated by Laxman Dutt Pant (Moderator - Nepal).

The fourth event in this series and third was ‘𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐍𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐉𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬’ held on 6 October 2022. Speakers for this session were Paavan Mathema (Nepal); Talha Ahad (Pakistan); Raisa Wickrematunge (Sri Lanka) and Zafar Sobhan (Moderator – Bangladesh).

The fourth webinar and final event was held on 20 October 2022 titled ‘Fact-checking and News Literacy in the Age of Disinformation’. Speakers included Sumon Rahman (Bangladesh); Nicole Han (Meta); Deepak Adhikari (Nepal) and H. R. Venkatesh (India). The session was moderated by Dilrukshi Handunnetti, Executive Director, Center for Investigative Reporting, Sri Lanka.