Unlearning

 

By Johanna Kallmeyer

On Tuesday, we were looking forward to a 2.5-hour workshop from the Nuance Project, an initiative led by three students from Leiden University, focused on teaching and applying transformative dialogue skills to heated topics. Having Afghan, Palestinian, and Jewish backgrounds, they were moved by the raging discussions on university chat groups following October 7^th. The polarisation of the topic in their circles inspired them to learn about transformative dialogue and create safe spaces for students to have productive conversations on these topics that divide their communities. Recent trends in media, of short form, digestible and supposedly “objective” content that is supposed to appeal to as many people as possible, keep people surrounded by filter bubbles and create black and white narratives that cause a decline of empathy towards each other. The effects are seen in political divides all around the world, making morals seem definitive, and people seem disconnected. The Nuance project aims to tackle these divides in our student community in the Netherlands, but unfortunately, they could not make it to the meeting to teach us their methods. 

However, we met with another initiative that tackles polarisation and the failure of general media sources. Kosovo 2.0 is an inspiring online magazine that publishes long articles and feature formats, as well as submission-based posts on its website. We met with one of the co-founders, Besa Luci. She told us about how she felt there was something lacking in how journalism in general, but especially in the region, had become less and less about actually taking time to focus on people’s stories and listening to others with empathy. At Kosovo 2.0, they aim to address topics that are not widely discussed due to taboos or polarised narratives. 

She mentioned one thing that stuck with me when she explained the importance of journalism as storytelling, and not “objective” reporting. Because journalism and storytelling are about more than just learning and being educated, they are actually also about unlearning. Unlearning the hateful narratives we have all heard and grown up with about certain groups of people. Unlearning the ways we interact with one another through hate and othering. Storytelling helps us imagine ways in which the world can be different and helps us formalise our role in changing it. It helps us connect and meet each other with empathy and understanding. This certainly applies to the incredible work that Kosovo 2.0 is doing with their online magazine, I think that is something we all need to remember. 

A page from their amazing website https://kosovotwopointzero.com/en/