The Digital Media Maverick - Atif Tauqeer

· Working on a novel nowadays, and has studied Journalism in Pakistan, Australia & Germany.

· Worked in sub-editing, editing, for radio and also in stage direction.

· Also worked in GEO & AJJ as a voice artist/narrator.

· Has been associated with DW for the past 13 years.

· DW is the 3rd best news organization in the world, after BBC & Voice of America.

He started his talk talking about how writing needs to be crisp, fresh for it to engage readers through digital mediums. He then continued onto speaking about how he makes his writing captivating, as there is a set formula that he follows: an attention-grabbing introduction and inclusion of graphical elements (images, visually-moving writing). Digital writing, in particular, comprises a different formula, which is succinctness, crispiness and addition of images. So, whether it is a blog or a vlog, it needs to be short, as only compact, short content is more likely to receive shares and therein the required reach.

He spoke about how credible is less likely to get shared, while fake news is more likely to spread fast as it has more potential.

A few other elements he touched upon:

· Both the craft and ideas are equally important.

· Language should be crisp when writing for digital writing.

· It is important to understand why a piece of content is written, is it written for sensationalism, for disseminating a piece of information or for clickbait?

· Clickbait journalism has increased significantly in the past few years, even credible publications, such as BBC have to use clickbait articles.

· The clicks get advertisements, which funds the newspapers.

· Any individual can bring change – power of digital media. As Zainab’s rape case found its prominence within the digital space, which eventually led to the creation of national laws for punishing/incriminating rapists.

· Each establishment has a social media page, where paid people work for the said party e.g. ISPR, PMLN, PPP.

· Each news piece on digital mediums needs to be compact.

· Journalism is known as ‘literature in hurry’.

· It is essential for digital creators to know ‘who their audience is?’ and who is supporting them, for them to understand their standing within the digital space.

· Even an image shared on a digital channel can cause a revolution.

· More than presentation, content is important.

· Including videos, images is critical for grabbing attention.

· There is no verification and no language structure in digital writing. Now, anyone who has a smartphone can generate news.

· He recommended journalism students to read ‘Gatekeeping’ & Noam Chomsky ‘s book – Media Control & Manufacturing Control.

· The reason why fake news spreads is because of ignorance.

· There is a connection between who decides what the senders sends and what the receivers wants.

· The only thing missing in digital writing is the editorial control, as the editor doesn’t edit any of the news articles – something that was crucial in the past.

· In the past few years, the phenomenon of fake news has risen to the forefront.

· Atif Tauqeer’s area of research is ‘propaganda and framing’

He then spoke about how certain things never make it to news, such as hike in medicine prices, as pharmaceutical companies pay high prices for restricting the publication/transmission of such information. He then touched about ‘freedom of expression’, and how Pakistan curbs the ability of individuals to speak freely, while the western countries find it easier to speak on both print and digital mediums. He, however, said that there are certain things that even the western media speaks about in a careful, measured manner, such as 9/11.