Australia has announced more than A$68 million over the next five years to strengthen and expand Australian broadcasting and media sector engagement across the Indo-Pacific.

As part of the Indo-Pacific broadcasting strategy, the ABC will receive just over $40m to increase its content for and about the Pacific, expand Radio Australia’s FM transmission footprint across the region and enhance its media and training activities.

And the PacificAus TV programme will receive over $28 million to provide commercial Australian content free of charge to broadcasters in the Pacific.

The strategy provides a framework to help foster a vibrant and independent media sector, counter misinformation, present modern multicultural Australia, and support deeper people-to-people engagement.

It focuses on three key areas, including:

• supporting the creation and distribution of compelling Australian content that engages audiences and demonstrates Australia’s commitment to the region;
• enhancing access in the region to trusted sources of media, including news and current affairs, strengthening regional media capacity and capability; and
• boosting connections between Australian-based and Indo-Pacific media and content creators.

Crucial role
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said media plays a crucial role in elevating the voices and perspectives of the region and strengthening democracy.

Wong said the Australia government was committed to supporting viable, resilient and independent media in the region.

Minister for International Development and the Pacific Pat Conroy said Australia and the Pacific shared close cultural and people-to-people links, and an enduring love of sport.

“These connections will be further enriched by the boost in Australian content, allowing us to watch, read, and listen to shared stories across the region — from rugby to news and music.

Conroy said Australia would continue and expand support for media development, including through the new phase of the Pacific Media Assistance Scheme (PACMAS) and future opportunities through the Australia-Pacific Media and Broadcasting Partnership.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said a healthy Fourth Estate was imperative in the era of digital transformation and misinformation.

“This strategy continues Australia’s longstanding commitment to supporting a robust media sector in our region,” she said.

“By leveraging Australia’s strengths, we can partner with the region to boost media connections, and foster a diverse and sustainable media landscape.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A former newspaper editor believes the journalism profession in Papua New Guinea and other Pacific Island countries is in crisis.

Team leader of the Pacific Media Assistance Scheme (PACMAS)/ABC International Development (ABCID) Alexander Rheeney spoke of this issue at the 2024 Pacific International Media Conference in Fiji last week.

Reflecting on his role as a former editor of both the PNG Post-Courier newspaper in Papua New Guinea and the Samoa Observer, Rheeney said a lot of challenges were facing journalists in PNG, especially over the quality of reporting and gender-based violence

He said the harassment mainly affected female journalists in newsrooms around the Pacific and Papua New Guinea was no exception.

Rheeney’s concern now is to find solutions to these challenges.

Rheeney told the NBC that every newsroom had its own challenges, and the 2024 Pacific International Media Conference was a great forum that brought journalists past, and present, including media academics and experts together to share and find answers to these problems.

He said the proposed PNG media policy was seen as a threat and challenge for some.

Many journalists and media houses were questioning what this policy might do to affect their way of reporting.

Papua New Guinea’s Information Communication and Technology Minister Timothy Masiu, whose ministry was spearheading this media policy, was also part of the conference and he spoke positively about the policy.

Minister Masiu said that the draft policy was to elevate the media profession in PNG and called for the development of media self-regulation in the country without government’s direct intervention.

The draft policy also was intended to strike a balance between the media’s ongoing role on transparency and accountability on the one hand, and the dissemination of development information on the other hand.

Republished from NBC News with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The University of the South Pacific’s Journalism Programme is open to strengthening engagement and partnership with the Australia Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) following the recent visit of senior ABC executives to Fiji.

Last week, ABC International Services head Claire Gorman, ABC International Development public affairs lead Jo Elsom, ABC Sport head Nick Morris and ABC Asia Pacific News managing editor Matt O’Sullivan met USP Journalism coordinator associate professor Shailendra Singh and staff to discuss ways ABC International Development (ABCID) and its regional media development programme (PACMAS) could assist the media in Fiji and journalism students at USP.

The discussions with the visiting ABC delegation focused on the possibility of content sharing, student professional attachments as well as priority areas for partnership such as youth, gender and regional cooperation to strengthen capacity-building and opportunity for growth.

USP Journalism students and staff have participated in a number of ABCID/PACMAS capacity-building workshops and training, including the Women Leaders Media Masterclass, Reporting the Story of Us: Media Masterclass, Factcheck webinar, Pacific Resilience Masterclass as well as a Training of Trainers short-course for Fiji journalists at the Fiji National University’s National Training Productivity Centre.

The ABC executives were also given a brief tour of the newly-refurbished USP Journalism facilities at Laucala campus.

Geraldine Panapasa is editor-in-chief of the University of the South Pacific’s award-winning journalism newspaper Wansolwara. Republished under a partnership between Asia Pacific Report and Wansolwara.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A French Polynesian territorial government cabinet minister says the pandemic and climate justice have provided an opportunity to think about the progress made about action for women’s empowerment in the Pacific.

Minister for Family, Solidarity and Equal Opportunities Isabelle Sachet has told the three-day 14th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women it was a time to reflect on the implementation of the revised version of the Pacific Platform for Action on Gender Equality.

“Together, we will work towards the total fulfilment of women’s rights, climate justice and women’s empowerment throughout the Pacific Islands region,” she said.

Fiji’s Minister for Women Mereseini Vuniwaqa echoed the sentiments, saying the covid-19 coronavirus crisis had revealed and intensified the “precarious situation” of women and girls.

“A year since the World Health Organisation declared covid-19 a pandemic, life as we knew it has been on pause, changed and transformed while the inequalities we lived with before the pandemic have carried over to the new normal, left unchecked and sadly increased,” she said.

“This is especially in terms of their economic security, physical safety, health and access to decision-making spaces. I firmly believe that we cannot waver.”

Pacific Island countries have made strong commitments towards achieving gender equality and empowerment of women and girls during the conference.

Sustaining the momentum
Organised by the Pacific Community (SPC) and hosted by French Polynesia, the conference is aimed at sustaining the momentum towards gender equality in the Pacific.

The conference has brought together stakeholders from all sectors for high-level discussions and consultations on achievable targets and an action plan to progress gender equality in the region.

Fiji’s Vuniwaqa said the crises, while devastating, could open up opportunities for transformation and bold actions.

She said the conference was for women and girls who faced or were at risk of gender-based violence.

“This work is for all women and girls in the Pacific. Those who carry most of the responsibility for holding our societies together during the pandemic, be it at home, in health care, at school, markets and across all fields,” she said.

Palau’s Vice-President and Minister of State Jerrlyn Sengebau Sr spoke for the Micronesian group comprising Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru and Palau.

“Our Micronesian sub-region has made concerted efforts to advance our collective gender equality agenda,” she said.

‘Agents of change’
“We also acknowledge the significant role of women as active agents of change and their partnership is critical to our work.”

With the theme of the conference Our Ocean, Our Heritage, Our Future – Empowering All Women in the Blue Pacific Continent, Sengebau said their efforts to date reflected the importance of developing their expertise in gender and women’s human rights as well as building capacity to mainstream and integrate gender across government and multisectoral responses to gender issues.

“It is also a key strategy for facilitating gender responsive budgeting through the collective resourcing of our gender equality agenda by all of government – that is the key to realizing political will and commitment at the highest level.”

Funding support for the event was provided by the government of Australia and the Spotlight Initiative.

Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Women Marise Payne said the past year had been difficult for the region and those challenges were not diminishing.

“The pandemic has forced us to confront an acute global health threat, border closures, economic insecurities and chronic supply chain interruptions,” she said.

“Every single one of us has been impacted one way or another by COVID-19. Globally, we have seen the industries that traditionally employ women – retail, tourism, the informal market economy – decline.

Disturbing violence increase
“That has distressingly coincided with an increase in both women’s unpaid work care responsibilities and very disturbingly increase in gender-based violence.”

Payne said the pandemic had compromised the accessibility and quality of sexual reproductive health services.

In some ways, she said the pandemic provided an opportunity to move ahead on a different course.

“Even before the pandemic, there were deep gender inequities between women and men so this moment of inflection and reflection gives us an opportunity to ensure that issues affecting women are addressed and that women play a critical role in decision-making and leading our economic recovery efforts,” she said.

More than 1000 people have participated in the conference, which was delivered via a blended approach of in-person and virtual interaction given that travel restrictions are still being observed across the region due to the pandemic.

The conference will be followed by the 7th Women’s Ministerial Meeting from May 4.

Josefa Babitu is a final-year student journalist at the University of the South Pacific (USP). He is also the current student editor for Wansolwara, USP Journalism’s student training newspaper and online publication. He a participant in the Reporting on Women’s Economic Empowerment workshop organised by the Pacific Media Assistance Scheme (PACMAS) in collaboration with the Pacific Community (SPC).

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A new study on the impact of social media in the Pacific during the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic has warned about the potential for misinformation or disinformation to have “dangerous outcomes”.

But the report also acknowledges the importance of the so-called “coconut wireless” in Pacific information sharing and says that an effective communication programme can provide “contextually specific understanding” and allow science practitioners to inform and engage.

The study by Vipul Khosla and Prasanth Pillay, entitled Covid-19 in the South Pacific: Science Communication, Facebook and Coconut Wireless, has been published in JCom-The Journal of Science Communication. It was commissioned by the Pacific Media Assistance Scheme (PACMAS) and both researchers are employees of the ABC division for International Development.

“It was clear from our analysis that the planning and implementation of effective science communication around covid-19 requires both an informed sensitivity to cultural contexts (e.g. food security challenges when local markets are inaccessible due to COVID-19 guidelines), and a commitment to using consistent terminology in public health messaging,” the study says.

“The global mainstreaming of terms such as ‘social distancing’ both by the WHO [World Health Organisation]and international and local media as part of common parlance, makes reverting to an alternative term particularly challenging for communication practitioners and one that requires prior consideration at a national level by key stakeholders.”

The researchers repeatedly refer to the role of the “coconut wireless” in communication and the spread of scientific messages in Pacific contexts in their analysis.

“The ‘coconut wireless’ is an informal phrase/slang that has a historical sense of playful notoriety in the Pacific as a way of referring to the centrality of ‘word-of-mouth’ (or interpersonal) accounts in the dissemination and discussion of news and rumours,” say Dr Khosla and Dr Pillay.

“The phrase was used consistently in discussions on COVID-19 (under the sampled analysis period) to flag presumed factual inconsistencies, [or] to clarify the authenticity of a story where news sources are not clearly defined.”

The researchers found a high penetration of technology devices and internet access in the South Pacific, social media – mostly Facebook – was used for disseminating information about covid-19 in the Pacific, and several countries used Facebook as their source of information for alert systems such as with Tropical Cyclone Harold.

“Given Facebook’s high penetration and usage rate in the Pacific, the platform serves as an active space for information exchange and deliberation around COVID-19,” says the report.

The study cites five issues to know about Pacific social media and the “coconut wireless”:

1. The “practice of doing science communication” is just as important as the science itself: “The methodological practice of curating and classifying evidence in scientific disciplines is valuable in educating [Pacific] audiences on the need to base their assertions and observations around covid-19 on carefully selected evidence.”
2. Audience/user centred approach to science communication: “There is a greater need to understand audiences and users of science information to ensure that science communication practitioners understand the context and landscape in which the information is received, interpreted, and shared.”
3. Social media and online discourse as a “rich source’ of understanding audiences/users: “Social media and online platforms offer publicly available information that can provide rich insights into how audiences and users engage with scientific terms.”
4. Consistency in the use of scientific terminology: “The use of commonly paired terms such as ‘quarantine, isolation’ and ‘physical distancing, social distancing’ can result in confusion among audiences. Furthermore, these terms become embedded into common parlance once introduced in official channels of communication and are accordingly adapted and appropriated, taking a life of their own.”
5. Greater institutional focus on media literacy: “There is value in developing and promoting audience-oriented discussions around media literacy at a regional and national level (if not extensively done already). These could comprise of sessions to members of the public that explain clearly how to critically evaluate media sources and differentiate between trusted avenues for news and science communication and typically problematic sources.”

The study was conducted across 23 Pacific mainstream Facebook pages from 1 February to 31 May 2020, showing that in the South Pacific there were three ways of communication used – including oral communication and rumours, online discussion, and science discussion.

“Communication and information flow in the Pacific tends to first originate from interpersonal forms of conversation outside the online sphere, through word-of-mouth,” says the study.

However, the research finds that there are some limiting challenges that cause users of social media to accept information shared by authority.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz