In just one semester, students and faculty at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications have researched, built, populated and marketed a website designed for the Midwest city’s booming refugee populations.
Advertising students took the lead in researching the three target communities: Karen refugees from Burma and refugees from Iraq and Sudan.
“Through surveys, focus group interviews and one-on-one interviews, the students determined that each group had slightly different news and information needs and more substantially different media habits,” said Tim Anderson, the project’s coordinator.
All three groups listed their difficulties with English as their most difficult challenge. Karen refugees also identified transportation and cultural differences as problems, while both the Iraqi and Sudanese listed employment as a difficulty. The Sudanese also added the rather specific difficulty of obtaining a Nebraska driver’s license.
“We were confident we could supply useful information no matter what the problems were, but we were very interested in learning which medium would be best to reach these three rather different communities,” he said.
To that end, their research uncovered the fact that the best way to reach the Karen, many who can not read or write their own language, may be through a regularly distributed series of DVDs. Few households have computers.
“We had hoped that mobile phones would be a prominent part of this project from the start, but at this point that does not seem to be the case,” Anderson said.
The common denominator among all three groups is that their teenagers have greater access to computers and are the most accomplished English speakers in their households.
With research complete, Anderson turned to plotting out content around four main areas, which he described as:
- Informational videos. The Karen refugees, especially, are new to electricity, refrigeration and housekeeping, having spent as much as two decades in camps on the Thai border. All groups also need help navigating job searches. The project plans to prepare a series of video projects, to be made available on its website, which can address these issues. The project may occasionally collect these into a DVD collection for community distribution.
- U.S., Nebraska and Lincoln culture. Early on, project leaders thought they would be telling many dramatic stories of these refugees’ lives before they arrived in Lincoln. They learned, however, that such stories are not interesting to other refugees. The refugees want to know who the Nebraskans are. One example: The disciplining of children is a recurring issue in the refugee communities. Many parents came from cultures where it is still permissible to strike a child, and several have gotten into trouble for acting in a way perfectly acceptable in their homelands. The project used this information to plan to create stories explaining U.S. culture and the differences the refugees might run into.
- Success stories. Refugees are interested in knowing how some people in their communities have been able to succeed, and the project will highlight some of their stories with short profiles.
- Other refugees. The refugees are also interested in their counterparts from other countries, so stories are planned on what the refugees themselves are up to by involving the refugees in telling their stories.
In addition, Anderson has arranged a partnership with the editor of the local daily, the Lincoln Journal Star, which will allow Mosaic to create weekly local briefs from material in the newspaper. “The refugees consistently told us they don’t read the local newspaper but they wish they had a better idea of what was going on locally,” he said. Mosaic plans to publish the column in English, Arabic and Karen, side by side, offering a simple English lesson at the same time.
Local agencies, including the Lancaster County and Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, have expressed enthusiasm for the site.
