Community radios role key to curb pandemic: Prof Vinod Pavarala, UNESCO Chair at UoH

Hyderabad: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Chair on community media, the only one of its kind globally, conducted a series of online dialogues with community radio (CR) advocates, practitioners, researchers and academics from across the world to discuss the role of community media in crises such as the current pandemic.

Community radio usually is a short-range, not-for-profit radio station or channel that caters for the information needs of people living in a particular locality, in the languages and formats that are most adapted to the local context.

The Chair located at University of Hyderabad (UoH) conducted a series of 11 global dialogues on community media in the post-pandemic world with the support of UNESCO New Delhi.

Held between June and November 2020, they had the participation of representatives of community media from South and Southeast Asia, the Pacific and Australia, South and Latin America, Africa, the United Kingdom, and Continental Europe. Live-streamed simultaneously on Facebook and YouTube, these dialogues had an estimated audience reach of about 50,000 people globally.

"As part of its outreach mandate, the Chair conducted the online dialogues involving representatives from across the world and deliberated on the groundwork that is being done by community radios in those countries and also to understand how they are coping with the current situation," said Prof Vinod Pavarala, the Chairholder.

Besides the global dialogues, the Chair also conducted a five-day online master training classes on social media broadcasting for community radios in Bangladesh.

The capacity building workshop trained the community radio stations in using mobile and online tools and implementing effective techniques in creating engaging content for social media. The workshop also focused on best practices of other CR stations and ethical practices on using social media.