November 22-23-24, 2023, mixed mode, in-person and online, on FAD platform
Concept
The Forum of Mediterranean women journalists/eighth edition launches the theme #AIjournalism #promptjournalism #promptknowledge which refers to the momentous challenge that has been thrown by artificial intelligence to journalism and the knowledge production sector.
The title “WOmaNchine learning” refers, with a play on assonance and color, to the need within generative artificial intellingence to broaden to “other” and non-majoritarian readings and looks at reality, intersecting minorities of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and ability.
In Europe, only 16 percent of qualified AI personnel are women. If all knowledge is situated, even in the field of AI, as well as in the global information system, the gender gap can be instrumental in building a polluted ecosystem in which power reproduces itself, following a device centered on binary and inherently violent oppositions (us/them) that erases the “choral” practice of nonviolence.
Article 5a of the Code of Ethics requires journalists to properly use gender language, emended from stereotypes, in the reporting of cases of violence and feminicide, just as the Rome Charter, included in the Code of Ethics, mandates the proper storytelling of cultural and ethnic minorities. However, some AI-based translation tools may exclude female gender declination when switching from one language to another or reiterate “race” stereotypes when it comes to representing foreigners or migrants, thus reproducing the historical colonial matrix of power in modernity.
These are just some of the critical issues that experts are already sketching on the horizon.
The challenges and opportunities for the mass media world, on the other hand, are endless and in many cases are already being taken up by newsrooms.
The Forum of Mediterranean Women Journalists, brings together the voices of diverse women, from journalists to civil society activists, human rights defenders, representatives of institutions, academics, scholars, Italian and international to train journalists and journalists, students and key stakeholders.
Beginning with an analysis of the language with which women are told and are told, including wars fought (in the sense of battles, personal and collective engagements) and wars suffered, in places of conflict as well as in post-conflict situations, the aim is to propose a sense of otherness, of a vision “other” than the dominant view.
The eighth edition of the Forum aims to tell the story of the decisive role of women in building a world of peace, security and conflict resolution, even when this world and these worlds take on “virtual,” “augmented,” “artificial” contours, to enhance and publicize the greater effort that women have to make, struggling first and foremost to be heard and make space for themselves to be able to contribute effectively to the promotion of peace.
Methodology
The eighth edition of the Forum is aimed at female students of the University of Bari, journalists and aspiring journalists, while also giving other interested and operational stakeholders in the field the opportunity to increase their expertise on forgotten conflicts and peacebuilding action by women in the territories of war, of all wars, including virtual ones.
Among the panelists were invited scholars and academics, investigative and war reporters, diplomatic, humanitarian and international cooperation figures as well as migrant and refugee women from conflict zones, experts in new technologies, virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence, to gather testimonies on the impact such realities have on “bodies,” “ecosystems,” “community,” and the role women themselves play in promoting peace, security and conflict resolution, reconstruction and reconciliation.