Reporting in the wake of disasters and migration
A workshop presented in collaboration with the Calcutta Research Group, Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna, South Asian Women in Media (SAWM), South Asia Network for Communication, Displacement and Migration (SAN-CDM) and the DW Akademie.
The State of India’s Environment Report 2022 (Down To Earth, 2022) predicted that nearly one hundred and forty-three million people, a little more than the population of Maharashtra, will be displaced due to the massive climate disasters in the next thirty years. The displacement from the homeland to some other place has a deep impact on the social and psychological life of a migrant. The difference in socio-economic status makes it even more complicated.
Reporting on these issues is a challenging task for media practitioners; additionally, journalists from marginal and border regions face technical and infrastructural challenges during reporting on migrants. It is all the more difficult to report on climate change given the fact that it becomes complicated for the general viewers and readers to understand the rigors of scientific and technical data.
Incidences of climate-related disasters are on the rise and so are cases of migration and displacement that manifest in either shock displacement or form part of gradual outmigration practices. In the case of the latter, people move out of their native places leaving behind their traditional occupations. Agrarian communities, fishing communities, riverine and coastal communities, people living in mountainous terrains, etc., are the worst affected in such cases. Reporting such cases becomes all the more difficult because of the chain of events that precedes the process of displacement.
The primary challenge while reporting climate change and climate-induced displacements is basically ‘getting the message across’ to the general public. This necessitates the need to engage in conversations about reporting climate change and related migration.
The workshop aims to bring together practitioners from diverse areas of Media so that they can discuss and throw light on how they report on such an intense issue, the difficulties they face and the ingenious ways they adopt in order to get the reportage done.
This Workshop is being organised in congruence with Calcutta Research Group’s previous endeavours on media studies and practices and is a part of the institute’s continued focus on Migration Studies.
Participation by registration only.
For registration kindly click
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Calcutta Research Group
The Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, now known as the Calcutta Research Group (CRG), was born as a facilitating organisation in support of the peace movement in West Bengal. A gathering of four hundred peace activists of the subcontinent in Kolkata 1996 marked the beginning of CRG. In its 25th year, CRG is now known to be one of the foremost institutes in the field of Migration and Forced Migration Studies and it continues to explore newer avenues to look into the processes that facilitate migration.
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