Whenever I am telling a story, I recognize that I have the potential to leave my fingerprints all over the narrative. Even when I am being impartial to the best of my ability, the story at least somewhat takes on my perspective when I am the one telling it. This has the potential to be a gift as I am able to let others see the world through my eyes; however, it is important to be conscious of the mark that I am leaving behind on these accounts. It is of particular importance that I contemplate this when I am attempting to convey the story of others. This is only made more important when I am telling stories that do not belong to the culture from which I am from.
I need to take time to recognize where am I similar and where am I different to those who I am trying to advocate for. Where can I feel my own biases creeping in, and how can I make an active effort to pull these back? How can I take inventory of my experiences and my privilege and acknowledge where I may need to do more work to create an equitable story-telling experience? In order to help answer these questions, I have compiled a list of resources that provide guidance on best practices for cultural sensitivity in communications work. Over the course of the fellowship, I will be working in communications to tell the stories of beneficiaries of critical programming. In an attempt to build my own understanding of how to maintain sensitivity in this work, I have set out to find critical resources on the subject:
How to Create More Inclusive Visual Communications: Ensuring Diverse Representation and Accessibility by Disha Arora
As part of the professional development portion of our fellowship, the program team assigns each of us a Senior Fellow. This Senior Fellow serves as a professional mentor for us as we embark on our projects. Since my work is a communications project, I was very excited to be placed under Disha Arora. Disha is an award-winning feminist filmmaker with an expansive career in this sector. In our initial call to get to know each other, I asked for resources on cultural sensitivity within the communications sector. Along with pointing me in the right direction for places to look, she also floated the idea that I could create a blog post to create my own tips. What better way to learn something than to teach?
One of the first places that I set out to learn was the blog post that Disha had mentioned that she had written on the subject. In Disha’s publication, she highlights the importance of creating media that can be accessed and understood by a wide range of individuals, regardless of background. She provides specific logistical tips for ensuring that published content has resources built into its user experience to allow everyone to seamlessly enjoy the material.
Cross-Cultural communication: Tools for working with families and children by Ladha, Zubairi, Hunter, Audcent, and Johnstone
Although the National Library of Medicine presents this to doctors to help them understand their patients from different backgrounds, this article provides lots of helpful concrete tips for ensuring cultural sensitivity in conversations. By starting the post with explaining the LEARN model (Listen, Explain, Acknowledge, Recommend, Negotiate), the authors explain a communication style which inherently provides space and encourages others to feel comfortable sharing their thoughts.
One of the examples they give is that silence may hold different meanings across different cultures, and this may require those from the United States to take a moment rather than to question why they are not getting an immediate verbal response. They provide several case studies from different cultures in order to illustrate the points that were abstractly explained. Although this article is not situated within the context of the communications field, I find that the tangible tips that are given would be extremely beneficial when working in the field and gathering stories from beneficiaries.
Cross-Cultural Communication – Methods & Challenges by Sharma and Pandey
In this article, Dr. Sharma and Dr. Pandey define cross-cultural communication and how this is navigated in a working environment. They discuss the history and the global context in order to understand why this is a critical skill to develop. Challenges are also laid out in order to avoid common pitfalls when communicating across different cultures. A key takeaway from this article for me is the delineation between high- and low-context culture. The authors define Western culture as low-context as a lot of trust is based on initial business interactions, whereas those from more collectivist societies such as India may desire to build more of a relationship and understanding of individuals before moving into decision-making.
After building this framework, the authors then provide direct tips of how to operate with sensitivity when working across different cultures. My favorite takeaway from these tips is to take time to understand how various cultural interactions make me feel. How do I respond to these exchanges, and how can looking inward help me understand my own culture as well as the culture that I am interacting with?
Cultural Sensitivity and Social Media: The Dynamic Duo of Global Marketing by Salvador Ordorica
While developing cultural sensitivity may take some work at the beginning, this article explains why this is a beneficial step for businesses and organizations to take. It allows us to connect in deeper ways and makes sense on both a human and business level. This article provides examples of social media campaigns that have benefited from localizing campaigns across the world and taking the time to understand the audiences that they are trying to reach.
Strategies for Sensitive Visual Storytelling by ViewFind
ViewFind spoke to several photojournalists in order to understand how they maintain integrity for their subjects across their work. A compelling point came from Dorie Hagler’s section where she talks about how we may interpose our own feelings onto those we are seeing because we want them to be presented in a certain way. It is important to allow the subject’s dignity to be the primary guiding light in this work. If we allow their story to shine, we can let our own viewpoints fall to the background. Michael Santiago talks about how he gets to know the people before he even brings his camera out. He wants his work to be a person-centered project. There is an almost hour long panel with all of the photojournalists at the bottom of this article.
Ways to respectfully document stories around highly sensitive topics
This easily digestible bite-size article breaks down cultural sensitivity within story-telling into three main components. The author starts by explaining that it is most important to relay the stories honestly and with integrity. Then, it goes into action and curation. How is integrity maintained across these three steps?
How to tell compelling stories while avoiding exploitation by Abesha Shiferaw
Shiferaw provides a list of questions for storytellers to consider when we are creating content that tells of the experiences of others. This is a great resource to consider at the beginning stages of project development.
As I have presented a broad range of resources, I hope together they paint a picture that helps us expand our own styles of communication. Bringing together the learnings from all of these documents can combine to help individuals be more informed when working within the communication sector in cross cultural settings. We are always learning and growing, and each experience will hopefully make us more aware, sensitive, and knowledgeable.
Additional Resources:
The Role of Filmmaking in India’s Social Justice Movements by Disha Arora
This fellowship is providing me with my first opportunity to work outside of the United States. While I have studied abroad, this experience of actually working in another country feels like an entirely new challenge. It causes me to reflect on the inherent knowledge I have of my home country and culture which I take for granted. I am not sure that I fully realized how much is lost in translation when I don’t have as much background knowledge of an entire country’s music, film, literature in the way that I do of my own.
Building a deeper knowledge of the existing media will also allow for me to have a deeper understanding of conversations from those in the field that I may only be processing at the surface level. This article from Disha delves into the history that filmmaking has played throughout India’s history of social justice movements. In utilizing this resource and watching some of the films, I will overall become more sensitive to the stories within the Indian context that I am trying to tell.
Communication for Development: A Practical Guide by Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC
This resource calls us to primarily think of our audience when we are creating materials that attempt to mobilize and inspire social change. It is a guide for creating our own style of communication that works in the development sector, rather than attempting to use the style of communication that works for more traditional and business minded groups. It is a reminder that communications trends are shaped by us, and when we revolutionize our way of speaking to be more equal and humanitarian, we are actively creating these changes. Throughout this document, the authors inspire us to consider the questions at the heart of what we are attempting to achieve when we are working with materials for development.
It also encourages us to consider all of the steps that need to be taken from concept to distribution in order to ensure that all the resources are available for this idea to come to fruition. Thinking about this from the beginning allows us to consider challenges and create a potential mitigation plan from the offset. Additionally, the report provides a multitude of examples from different countries, drawing out specific problem statements and objectives, the plan that was carried out, and recommendations for the future.
Works Cited:
Arora, Disha. “How to Create More Inclusive Visual Communications: Ensuring Diverse Representation and Accessibility.” AIF, 27 Sept. 2024, aif.org/how-to-create-more-inclusive-visual-communications-ensuring-diverse-representation-and-accessibility/.
Arora, Disha. “The Role of Filmmaking in India’s Social Justice Movements.” AIF, 19 Sept. 2024, aif.org/the-role-of-filmmaking-in-indias-social-justice-movements/.
Jenatsch, Thomas, and Richard Bauer. “Communication for Development: A Practical Guide.” Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC, July 2016.
Ladha T, Zubairi M, Hunter A, Audcent T, Johnstone J. Cross-cultural communication: Tools for working with families and children. Paediatr Child Health. 2018 Feb;23(1):66-69. doi: 10.1093/pch/pxx126. Epub 2018 Feb 15. PMID: 29479280; PMCID: PMC5815116.Z
Ordorica, Salvador. “Council Post: Cultural Sensitivity and Social Media: The Dynamic Duo of Global Marketing.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 13 Aug. 2024, www.forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinesscouncil/2023/11/14/cultural-sensitivity-and-social-media-the-dynamic-duo-of-global-marketing/.
Sharma, Anjul, and Purnima Pandey. “Cross-Cultural Communication-Methods & Challenges.” Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL), vol. 12, no. 1, Jan. 2024.
Shiferaw, Abesha. “How to Tell Compelling Stories While Avoiding Exploitation.” NTEN, 14 Sept. 2022, www.nten.org/blog/how-to-tell-compelling-stories-while-avoiding-exploitation.
ViewFind. “Strategies for Sensitive Visual Storytelling.” Medium, Medium, 14 July 2016, medium.com/@Viewfind/strategies-for-sensitive-visual-storytelling-761943a07868.
“Ways to Respectfully Document Stories around Highly Sensitive Topics.” Studio Subu, www.studiosubu.com/resource-bank-1/ways-to-respectfully-document-stories-around-highly-sensitive-topics. Accessed 7 Nov. 2024.
