#Forsa spurs media development, trends on Twitter

The Media Development Center at Birzeit University, in cooperation with the National Team for the National Media Development Initiative, has launched a web campaign to tweet and blog using the #Forsa hashtag on February 27, 2018. The campaign aimed to increase the presence of the Forsa Campaign on social media platforms.

Staff from the Media Development Center, media activists in the West Bank, thirty-five activists from the Media Development Center’s Gaza branch, and many other journalists and bloggers took part in the campaign.

#Forsa was the highest trending hashtag on Twitter in the Palestinian Territories from Monday afternoon until Tuesday morning, with more than 3000 tweets using the hashtag. Overall, the hashtag had a reach of 30 million and 40 million impressions.

The tweets, blogs, and Facebook posts revolved around the key outcomes of the National Initiative for Media Development, which are: Legal Reformation, Academic Development, Gender Equality, Self-Regulation, Public Media, Media Training, Media and the Community, Infrastructure, and Job Safety.

The promotional campaign also promoted the outputs of the campaign, which comprise bills of law, research projects and studies, scientific articles, courses, guidelines, self-regulation documents, codes of conduct, and short introductory videos.

The Forsa Campaign aims to pressure lawmakers into adopting the outcomes of the National Media Development Initiative, developed by the National Team, which comprises 85 institutions and partners from all sectors, including 16 universities and colleges from the West Bank and Gaza.

One of the goals of the campaign is to put enough pressure on the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, universities, and institutes that teach media to adopt three new media courses co-developed by a number of leading media organizations and institutions. 

The campaign also calls for the coordination of relationships with media organizations through the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate in order to guarantee media graduates a year of internship before accreditation.