Afghan Community Media for All
On the 106th anniversary of Afghanistan’s independence from British rule, Alive-in/Afghanistan is proud to announce the publication of an archive of stories from across Afghanistan. These stories focus on the lived experiences of women from across the country and are only the beginning of what Alive-in/ hopes to be a growing archive of stories about Afghans, by Afghans.
Like many countries with a history of colonialism, Afghans have not had the opportunity to develop a free and independent media focused primarily on meeting the needs of Afghans. Instead the international community financed an Afghan media that replicated the extractive approach that was colonialism’s founding principle.
Starting today, Alive-in/Afghanistan is publishing all the raw content from 32 stories and making the content available under a Creative Commons license, so that anyone interested might review all source materials, check the published stories against the source material for bias, and reuse the material however they see fit for non-commercial purposes.
Origins
Mohammad Jawad Alizada, the Editor-in-Chief of Alive-in/Afghanistan, explains the importance of the agency, “Alive in Afghanistan, is first and foremost a media agency for Afghans. By publishing content in 3 of the languages spoken in Afghanistan, Afghans get to know what is going on in our country and what the fabric of our society looks like. Most importantly, Afghans need accurate, locally-sourced information to bridge the divide that has been sown into our population by decades of misinformation. If we want a peaceful Afghanistan, we must learn about each other and learn to live together.”
Alive-in/Afghanistan opened on the day the Taliban returned to power in Kabul, but at the time it was unclear just how difficult the situation would become for Afghan media. At this point that’s become abundantly clear as more than 40% of the media has closed since the Taliban returned to power in 2021.
The bulk of reporting, storytelling, and media from Afghanistan in general has not focused on addressing the most important question, ‘what do Afghans need to know in order to be fully engaged citizens?’ Instead, whether we speak of reporting by local or international agencies, media from Afghanistan has replicated some of the worst elements of the press –– too much focus on breaking news, depersonalizing events, and reducing them to raw numbers.
According to Brian Conley, Director of Alive-in/ and co-founder of Fasila, a communications consulting firm, “We don’t yet know exactly how this material will be used, and that’s part of the point. Our goal is to democratize access to media and storytelling, and to ensure that the communities being reported on can participate in how their stories are told. That’s why we believe in making all of our source material accessible to the public-except in cases where additional care is required in the interest of safety and confidentiality.”
A new model for community media
Alive-in/Afghanistan hopes to provide a model to other community media, by making all non-confidential source material available free, Alive-in/ enables everyone to use the material for their own reporting and storytelling. Rather than relying on outside media that drop into communities, gather information, and then tightly control which stories are told, Alive-in/ seeks to open access so communities themselves can shape and share their own narratives.
Alive-in/ believes this approach can eventually provide a strong counter to the extractive approach to journalism. Extractive journalism focuses on information deemed relevant to your audience, irrespective of its impact or benefit to the community being reported on. This can naturally lead into a form of bias through omission due to prioritizing some stories over others. Combined with a collapse in funding for media resulting in fewer and fewer resources to support innovative reporting, the media have developed an overdependence on user-generated content collected from social media.
There is a reason companies believe it makes sense to rely on user-generated content: it’s generally free and extremely abundant. The internet continues to explode with user-generated content–500 hours uploaded to YouTube each and every minute–95 million posts made to Instagram daily.
It’s reasonable that one might take this as a good sign, that more stories are being told and therefore humanity is becoming more informed about the world around us.
However, that is not a foregone conclusion, particularly when it comes to understanding other countries and cultures. In the United States, where Alive-in/ is based, 58% say it is harder to be informed today because of the plethora of information available.
Amplifying marginalized voices
Alive-in/ is focused on two interrelated challenges–first to provide a platform for the most vulnerable and marginalized to be heard today; and second, to increase the representation, consideration, and recognition of these voices ongoing, ideally in perpetuity or until they are no longer marginalized. Alive-in/ believes this approach is key to accomplishing the goal of decolonizing media, especially local media in low-income and otherwise marginalized countries.
That second part of the mission is what led to our collaboration with Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW). FFDW is committed to preserving humanity’s most important information and supporting the development and adoption of decentralized technologies. With FFDW’s support, Alive-in/ has embarked on a relatively unique experiment in the international media ecosystem.
"Our mission is to permanently preserve humanity’s most important information. We are proud to support Alive-in/Afghanistan’s incredible work to safeguard critical human rights data on the decentralized web. Having known and admired this group’s efforts for many years, I’m thrilled to support their vital mission,” said Megan Klimen, a founding officer of FFDW. “By using decentralized storage, this information is protected from censorship and single points of failure — and ensured to remain accessible for generations to come."
Alive-in/ has identified a few potential use cases, we are excited to see how our content will be used, especially in ways that we haven’t predicted.
If you’re a researcher, journalist, student, or simply interested in Afghanistan, we believe you’ll find a lot of value in access to not only our published stories, but the raw source material behind that content.
Anyone interested in learning more about the archive and accessing its content can check out the page we’ve just published on Alive-in/: https://alive-in.org/archive/ This page provides links and context to each story and the accompanying source material, all of which is hosted on IPFS with support from Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web.
If you'd like to speak with someone from Fasila or FFDW to learn more about the archive please contact brian@fasila-inc.com or publicity@ffdw.org --particularly for questions specific Filecoin and the technical of our collaboration.