We invite you to check out the full festival programme on the website, but to provide a taster we have prepared the following brief overview. By clicking on +info► you can link to full details of each session, and then add it if you wish to your personal festival day-by-day agenda on your computer or smartphone.
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11:30 – 12:15 > Sala dei Notari | #ijf16talks
The terrible triangle: tyrants, terrorists and native reform in the Arab world +info►
#ijf16talk by Iyad El-Baghdadi. Moderated by Barbara Serra.
11:30 – 12:30 > Centro Servizi G. Alessi | panel discussion
Slow news: the leisurely revolution +info►
It’s time to propose new models to filter the massive overflow of news and re-establish a relationship of trust between journalists and readers. It’s time for a leisurely revolution.
11:30 – 12:30 > Palazzo Sorbello | books
Europe year zero. The reawakening of nationalisms +info►
We are witnessing a return of nationalisms in Europe. Right-wing movements with radical and populist identity and xenophobic tendencies are now seated in the European Parliament and in 2015 the election results in eight EU countries witnessed growth in their support. While representing mostly a sovereignistic right-wing standpoint, in some cases it includes radical fringes. A journey through six European countries: Marine Le Pen’s France, the United Kingdom of Nigel Farage leader of UKIP, the march of the “new patriots” of Pegida in Germany, the Hungarian far-right parties, the Greece of Alba Dorata and the alliance between Syriza and the Catholic separatists of Anel, not forgetting of course the Italian Lega Nord party of Matteo Salvini, which has declared its opposition to European elites and immigration.
12:00 – 13:00 > Hotel Brufani – Sala Raffaello | presentation
Journalism in the digital era: European scholarship Amazon-IJF +info►
Presentation of the winners of the 2016 Amazon IJF scholarship. Benjamin Pagliaro, founder of Good Morning Italy, will moderate a session with the presence of Alessio Santarelli, Director EU Content Store Kindle, presenting the five winners of the Scholarship IJF16 and activating discussions about the students’ points of view on the future of journalism, such as the impact of new technologies on content creation.
12:30 – 13:15 > Centro Servizi G. Alessi | panel discussion
Women in the media +info►
In a year when a woman is running for the president of the US, a woman has become the editor of The Guardian, and debates about women in business and in the boardroom are top of mind, have we made any progress on how women are represented in the media? This discussion will take the temperature on where we are now, and, more importantly, will look at concrete solutions of how to make genuine advances across all aspects of the media: getting women’s voices heard on opinion pages and conferences, getting a more balanced view of women being covered in the news, and helping to advance the careers of women in the media.
14:00 – 15:00 > Hotel Brufani – Sala Raffaello | panel discussion
Journalism after Snowden +info►
It’s been over two years since the Snowden revelations, and the debate about surveillance, civil liberties, national security and counterterrorism continues. Journalists around the world face impediments to freedom of information, and there are still few legal protections for whistleblowers. What has changed for journalists since the Snowden leaks?
14:00 – 15:30 > Sala del Dottorato | panel discussion
What does it mean to protect an eyewitness in the social media age? +info►
In the last year, we’ve seen a number of breaking news events where content posted by eyewitnesses to social media has become a story in its own right. Whether that’s the hounding of students caught up in the Oregon shooting on Twitter, the lasting impact on those who captured footage during the Charlie Hebdo shootings, or the people who have filmed police violence in the US. In this panel, we will hear the perspectives of those eyewitnesses caught up in these events and will explore how newsrooms should be doing more to protect them. Topics will include best practice for ensuring that someone’s location and identity remains hidden where necessary, protecting individual copyright, and considering the welfare of eyewitnesses both during a traumatic event and after they have contributed to your story.
14:00 – 15:30 > Sala dei Notari | panel discussion
The refugee crisis: how can television lead to a better understanding? +info►
For years now, our screens have been dominated by images of migrants and refugees embarking on the perilous journey to Europe, often risking their lives to reach a continent which is increasingly indifferent to their plight. The issue has exacerbated European disunity and raised questions about how Europe should respond to this crisis.
15:00 – 16:30 > Centro Servizi G. Alessi | panel discussion
Freelance war reporting +info►
Reporters, photographers, fixers, producers: working as a freelance journalist in war zones involves risks, challenges and opportunities for those who want to report on events first-hand. What are the new forms of reporting? What specific requirements are made of freelancers in a crisis context? What are the relationships with foreign newsrooms? What are the risks of operating in areas where the journalism profession is particularly exposed?
15:00 – 16:30 > Hotel Brufani – Sala Raffaello | hackers’ corner
Google Digital News Initiative: promoting innovation and high quality in digital journalism +info►
The Digital News Initiative (DNI) is a partnership between Google and news publishers in Europe to support high quality journalism through technology, to encourage a more sustainable news ecosystem, to promote innovation in digital journalism. The session will go through the three key pillars that compose the DNI: product development, where a ‘product working group’ will explore product development to increase revenue, traffic and audience engagement; training and research, where Google is investing in new training and developing resources for journalists and newsrooms across Europe with the involvement of the Google News Lab; supporting innovation, where an Innovation Fund has been established to support and stimulate innovation in digital news journalism over the next three years with €150m. The first round of the DNI Fund has been allocated to 128 projects and organizations from 23 European countries for a total of €27m. This session will therefore represent an opportunity to share with the audience some key learnings of this first round of funding.
15:30 – 16:30 > Sala del Dottorato | books
The Red Web: the struggle between Russia’s digital dictators and the new online revolutionaries +info►
A discussion with the authors of the 2015 book entitled ‘The Red Web: the struggle between Russia’s digital dictators and the new online revolutionaries’.
15:30 – 16:00 > Hotel Brufani – Sala Priori | presentation
Piqd and the slow journalism movement +info►
Sustainability movements are spreading in a growing number of sectors: food, energy, real estate, to name just a few. Only in journalism the notion of sustainability seems to lack any momentum. We think think it’s time for a change and hence piqd wants to spark and support an international slow journalism movement. What is piqd? Piqd is an aggregator for the best information the web has to offer. More than 80 specialist journalists, academics and politicians, covering different topics are recommending content on piqd. Each recommendation is accompanied by a short review, that answers the question “why exactly is this worth the time of the audience?” piqd is considered wants to be a fair partner of a sustainable information ecosystem. We pay our experts and we help quality journalism attract the attention of a mass audience. piqd, currently in German, is starting an international version soon and is looking for english speaking experts from across the globe.
15:30 – 16:30 > Palazzo Sorbello | in conversation with
Islam, refugees, Europe: politics beyond fear +info►
In dealing with the refugee emergency and the terrorist threats of the Islamic State, narratives which center on invasion and a clash of civilizations are unhelpful. In this way, complex historical, economic, religious and geo-political phenomena are subsumed into superficial prejudices that simply spread fear. Yet specific interests are at play and a historic shift is taking place between the West and the Middle East.
16:30 – 17:30 > Sala dei Notari | in conversation with
Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently: the courage of reporting on life in Syria under ISIS +info►
In northern Syria, near the border with Turkey, stands the town of Raqqa, considered the headquarters and capital of the Islamic State. The lack of journalists on the ground, both national and international, kidnappings, crucifixions, beheadings and repression by ISIS had created a curtain of silence around Raqqa, which was impenetrable for the foreign press. Until a group of young journalists and Syrian activists launched a revolutionary information campaign Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), with the goal to publish and distribute online content in Arabic and English to document the massacre that had been taking place in their city. The members of RBSS live with the constant danger of being discovered. Three of them have already been murdered by ISIS.
16:30 – 17:30 > Hotel Brufani – Sala Raffaello | presentation
The promise and the peril of drones +info►
Technology has made it easy to make a really good camera fly. Now apps are making it so you don’t even have to be a decent pilot. Journalists around the world are clamoring to use drones — and many already are — but for all the promise, there is peril. We’ll cover both.
17:30 – 19:30 > Hotel Brufani – Sala Raffaello | panel discussion
About time: digital women bosses take charge +info►
2015 saw a spate of women added to the roster of top editors in global journalism. One veteran is joined by three newcomers in a no-holds-barred conversation on how and why diversity at the very top matters to journalists and journalism, and to audiences.
17:30 – 18:30 > Sala del Dottorato | panel discussion
The capture of traditional media by Facebook +info►
Facebook, Apple and Google have all recently made significant strides in the field of publishing, with more still to come. These social media companies now hold unprecedented power; over our speech, our data, and increasingly over our access to information and news. What effect does this shift of power have on news consumers and journalists?
18:00 – 19:30 > Centro Servizi G. Alessi | panel discussion
The iconic image on social media: the death of Aylan Kurdi +info►
Mainstream, online news and social media alike have been replete with images of refugees since last summer. Images of people continuously on the move; marching through the countryside (on their way to different European countries), of desperate people at sea on small and dangerous dinghies, of small children both dead and alive, of people crawling through razor wire and trying to board packed trains are all widespread. Images and coverage of moments of intense solidarity with refugees, on the one hand, and of implied links to terrorism on the other, above all in the aftermath of the Paris and Brussels attacks in November 2015 and March 2016, have also been common. One image of a dead Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, lying face down on a beach in Turkey captured the world’s attention in September 2015. This panel will look at how Twitter played a crucial role in how this image was shared across 20 million screens in the space of 12 hours. It will look at the different ethical dimensions journalists and social media users struggled with when they made choices to share or not share these images and how platforms continue to struggle with graphic and hard to view content. The panel will also extend the discussion to how a key international organisation deals with the visual representation of the refugee crisis as well as their wider social media strategies for dealing with this crisis.
18:30 – 19:30 > Sala del Dottorato | panel discussion
Fail better: the journalist’s guide to screwing up +info►
Experimentation and risk-taking and getting-it-wrong are vital to innovation, whether with new products/services or with the management of people, newsrooms, new forms of storytelling and change itself. So why do journalists have such a tough time coming to terms with this? What practical advice can be given to journalists to allow them to fail fast, learn fast and be more creative when it comes to risky ideas? Stories (some personal, some not) from the front line of media industry screw-ups.