THE 14TH ANNUAL SHORTY AWARDS

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media and digital. View this season's finalists!

Special Project

Special Project
From the 16th Annual Shorty Awards

Digital Dilemma

Entered in Long Form Video, Video Series

Objectives

Our digital world presents us with fantastic opportunities. But technology is moving faster than we can ever imagine. Quite simply, we’re never going to catch up to AI. Yet, it shapes or even dictates how we work, live and sometimes how we even think.
It can all be too much to understand. 

This is the idea behind Digital Dilemma. To make the digital space accessible to everyone. To help people be part of the conversation while also appealing to the savvy digital community.

To achieve this, we bring in experts to help us understand the advances in technology so that we can better use it in our everyday life or at least, get excited about it.  

When it comes to our audience, we listen. Digital Dilemma is data informed so that we can understand what people are talking about, what they’re searching for and certainly, what they’re questioning.
We’ve also wanted to know what people are worried about and provide real tools to empower our audience.

Strategy and Execution

The first episode of Digital Dilemma, published in July 2023, started with one basic question.  What’s real? We’ve found ourselves asking that time and again throughout this series. But the weight of that question really fell on October 7. Talking about a fast moving technology during a fast moving war is incredibly challenging. Getting the facts out of a devastating reality, on both sides, is painstaking. But like everything journalists do, it comes down to the story.  

And Al Jazeera’s reach in the region has meant our access to people on the ground, experts within our network, and contacts from those in their respective fields has allowed us to really penetrate the crux of what is going on. Like,   AI & MISINFORMATION IN WAR.- what’s really going on?  Or should you trust Artificial Intelligence  to provide accurate information about Israel’s war on Gaza? Is it better than a human’s instinct or conscience? This can be applied to any war of course and should.  But  turning any episode around while it’s relevant and getting through to people who’s feeds are saturated with all things war have been two steady challenges. How we overcome challenges is similar to how this project came to life. As well as our plan of action. The people in the room.

AI nerds who are intimate with the advances in technology. War and defence journalists who understand through experience what’s happening on the ground. A team of writers who are not only interested in the digital space but also what’s happening in our world.  A presenter who is hands on at all stages of the process and a creative department that makes what we say look good. It’s not all war of course. Deciding when to change course from a big story is any newsroom’s challenge but with 2024 being a super election year, we knew we had to address the elephant in the room: Elections & the AI Threat

Informative, newsy, educational and, sometimes, fun. We hope to unpack it all in Digital Dilemma.

 

Results

Everything we do as journalists is about reaching people. Telling a story that somehow makes an impact. But how do you break that down in a business sense? Through views and engagement as a start.  We have reached more than one million people so far which is significant given this series is not yet published on a regular schedule. And people are engaging. Leaving comments,  talking to each other about the content and even sharing our episodes. This is a benchmark for us. Reaching people. Engaging them. More importantly, giving them a safe and informative space to understand how the advances in technology are spurring them forward, whether they know it or not.  
 

Media

Entrant Company / Organization Name

Al Jazeera Digital

Links