La voz del refugiado

Abstract

First of all, I’m going to describe who are the refugees. The refugees are people who are forced to flee their home countries in search of a better life. The chosen topic is "the refugees’ situation in Spain". This topic is chosen with the order to making visible and giving voice, as the name of the medium itself indicates, to the situation of refugees who are forced to flee their native country. The aim of the cybermedia is to transmit to the public that there is an unknown collective for many who do not know the history behind them. At the same time, by means of data, statistics and current events, among others, to squeeze out as much information as possible about this group for the public. So that, when they read, observe and analyze the pieces produced, they get to know, become aware of and put themselves in the shoes of these people who are looking for a better life. With regard to the target audience, it is a media aimed at all kinds of audiences, from young people (from 12 years old) to senior citizens. In my opinion, it is an issue that addresses a social problem, so awareness must be raised among the majority of the population who know how to access the digital media via the internet. For me, the most important target audience to inform is young people, as they are the most active through social networks, as they can disseminate the media information through them and reach a much higher number of viewers and visualizations. With regard to competition, there is no specialized media for refugees in Spain. However, there are thousands of organizations that support and help these exiles. These include the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid (CEAR), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Spanish Catholic Migration Commission Association (ACCEM), the Spanish Red Cross (CRE) and La Voz del Refugiado 15 the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), among others. These entities disseminate information about these people on their websites and social networks, such as press releases, reports, infographics, news, etc. With regard to the design and corporate identity of the cybermedia, the main colour used is light military green, a colour that symbolizes hope. At the same time, the "corporate" colour is beige, the main colour used for the medium's logo. The colour used for the texts is black, for reasons of clarity in terms of readability for readers. On the other hand, the medium's typography is sans serif, specifically Arial. Probably the most popular of the fonts, along with Times New Roman, and the font predefined by WordPress. This font is black to make it easier to read for readers, as before the font was in white and was more difficult to read. This media is made up of seven sections: the first one is "¿Who are we?" where I briefly explain the project. This is the section where I explain the identity of the medium and its objectives. Next, we have the section of in-depth interviews with professionals linked to the subject. By the other side we observe another section such as "Stories", where I expose different stories of refugees who lived through chaos and in the end succeeded or did well. A section that makes visible stories that are unknown or known to the most curious and exposed to the public so that they can get to know them and empathize with them. Secondly, we have the "Organizations" section, which features organizations that support refugees and work to improve the situation of these people in our country. The aim of this section is to make the actions and services of these organizations visible to those who need them. At the same time, for citizens who do not know the functions of these organizations, they can get to know them and find out a little more about each one, as well as their respective projects and campaigns in progress. Thirdly, there is the section "Data", a section based on showing the reality of the figures and data in relation to refugees. In addition, the aim is to alarm the population about the chilling figures and the situation of these people in Spanish territory. La Voz del Refugiado 16 Next, we find the "News" section, as its name suggests, in this section is intended to report all the news related to refugees in Spain. Thus, citizens can be informed of everything that is happening with these people in the country and how each situation is progressing. In this way, they can put themselves in their shoes and try to raise awareness in society and introduce the values of unity, empathy and social justice for these people. Finally, we observe the "Galleries" section where the photo-galleries of the different events covered by the journalist will be published. The platform where the project is being carried out is WordPress. I chose this platform because we worked on it in class and it seemed very complete to create a website from scratch. Referring to social networks, they are very useful tools when it comes to disseminating the information on my website and reaching the widest possible audience. My choice was Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. To begin with, Instagram is probably the social network with the largest number of active users. That's why I decided to advertise my project on it to make it known among young people and, at the same time, broaden the audience to include all possible ages. It could be said that Instagram is the social network par excellence for creating content, disseminating it and promoting your website. On the other hand, Twitter is a social network that is growing in popularity year after year. Here we can find a more serious and "mature" audience. So, I decided to create a profile on this social network for my TFG project in order to reach more people, have a more varied audience and complement the only functions of Twitter with those of Instagram. Finally, the decision to create a YouTube account was totally improvised. However, it was very useful for the development of my project. In WordPress, in order to include videos in the publications, they must be previously uploaded on YouTube, so I had no choice to create an account. Basically, I use the YouTube account to upload the videos of the interviews I do, so that I can then include them in the publications on my website. La Voz del Refugiado 17 In relation to the sources of information and documentation used, most of the sources have been documentary due to the limited availability of personal sources. However, in some pieces I have been able to use personal sources that have helped me to elaborate the piece. These personal sources have always had to do first hand with the piece in which they were used. The documentary sources I have drawn mainly from ministerial institutions and refugee support organizations. In both I found most of the information I used to develop the project. I also used statistics and infographics published on their websites to write based on them. As a final assessment of the project, in my opinion, the fact of carrying out my final degree project on a social problem such as the situation of refugees, in this case, in Spain, has been a very enriching experience. At the beginning, when I considered this topic as my dissertation, it was because I found it very interesting to make visible the situation of these people who were in critical situations. I have always been a very empathetic person with the pain of others, as it seemed to me a splendid opportunity to bring out my full potential. However, when I started to develop my work, I found thousands of obstacles in my way that prevented me from moving forward, but at that moment I thought: "if refugees with a thousand other problems and obstacles have been able to move forward, why not me, because I never gave up". The strong points of the work have been the enriching experience that I have lived, the people who I have met thanks to the project, everything I have learned to value through the situation of refugees. In short, an accumulation of things that I will take with me, values that I keep in mind and stories that I will never forget. On the other hand, the weakest points, in my opinion, were the scarcity of information about these people in relation to other subjects with a greater abundance of information. I noticed this in the documentation phase. At the same time, the limited availability of personal sources for interviews. Another aspect that didn’t work in my favour was the COVID-19 pandemic. I would have liked to visit refugee camps or shelters to meet and film the stories of the refugees there. However, the pandemic was a barrier to my project's progress La Voz del Refugiado 18 and the measures were solid. Practically, access was restricted to everyone unless you had a press pass and were a professional journalist.