Listen to this podcast episode on the potential of podcasting in human rights activism and the power of narrative storytelling. Hosted by Gianna Brassil.
The Rise of Podcasting and Its Impact on Activism
If names like Serial or This American Life sound familiar to you, you’re probably in the know as to what podcasting is all about–podcasts are downloadable episodes of audio content, typically part of a series on a thematic topic. Over the past few years, podcasts have grown into a dynamic media form, with niche shows catering to listeners’ political, cultural, educational, musical, and technological audio palate. While podcasts are often produced by professional radio stations, they can also be created by independent media creators. The freelance nature of podcasts makes them a unique tool for activists who want to broaden the audience of their message through low-cost means.
In collaboration with podcasts The Irrelevant Arabs (@irrelevantarabs) and Palestinians Podcast (@PalestiniansPod), as well as Sylvia Thomas, producer at Freedom Podcasting Company and Barbara Frey, director of the Human Rights Program at the University of Minnesota, New Tactics created its own podcast that explores issues of representation, the value of oral storytelling, and accessibility in creating independent media.
Grappling with Representation and Human Suffering
The tension between a podcast’s entertainment value and the representation of human suffering is a topic that we grapple with in our podcast. We ask questions about how we can create stories that are honest and empathetic, meanwhile knowing that sometimes it is impossible to “create comprehensible stories out of the incomprehensible” (That the World May Know, James Dawes). Our podcast guests also discuss the uniqueness of voices and oral storytelling as tools to re-humanize conflicts and highlight the experiences of individual human lives.
Accessibility and Empowerment Through Podcasting
Finally, we discuss the accessibility of podcasts. With a microphone, simple audio editing software like Adobe Audition or Garageband, and an online platform such as Soundcloud to distribute episodes, activists can reach countless potential listeners. The power of becoming a media creator cannot be underestimated, and this episode seeks to demonstrate how media creators have the ability to reshape the landscape of representation, define for themselves what it means to be a human rights activist, and nuance an audience’s conception of how human rights stories can be told.
