This project focuses on creating a research proposal on the topic of "How News and Media Affect Perception in the Context of Palestine and Israel." This proposal focuses on using aspects of co-design and workshops discussed in "Convival Toolbox" by Liz Sanders and Pieter Jan Stappers in order to gain insight about the connection between what we intake and what we believe. It was also created in supervision of Liz Sanders. This proposal is not in favor of either side but rather an unbiased way to understand whether or not news and media affect perception. I chose the situation of Palestine and Israel as it is something that I care about deeply and it is a media-driven polarizing topic. In addition to the using the ideas of co-design, I saw this proposal as a way to introduce design to new people and topics in order to create a path to interdisciplinary work.
Project background
Co-designers and Stakeholders
My proposed co-designers should be of various backgrounds with little knowledge of the situation in Israel and Palestine. I wanted to make sure that diversity was a big part of choosing my co-designers to gain multiple points of view as well as try and limit bias in the end results.
Co-Design Method #1
In the first activity, co-designers will be split into two groups and over the course of a month and a half co-designers will receive news from either Western-based sources or Middle-Eastern-based sources. These articles will come from media after October 7th, 2023. They will gain a few pieces of media everyday that are chosen by the researcher and they will document their reactions in a journal which is to be collected at the end of the study. After 6 weeks of news, each co-designer will have a journal of their thoughts expressed in anyway that they chose like words, sketches, collages, etc... This will help us understand what news pieces led to what thoughts and overall perceptions of the topic.
Co-design Method #2
The second co-design method is a workshop in which co-designers will participate in three activities. The first activity includes a 2D toolkit; the second activity involves an online gallery of the work of the co-designers from activity one; the final activity involves a brief introduction to the other group's news sources.
Co-Design Method #2 - Activity #1
Co-designers will receive the instructions "Visualize the Israel Palestine Conflict" and they will be given a tool-kit similar to this. This is not the final toolkit and is a sample of what could be. This will help co-designers as well as the researcher understand how their implicit perceptions from news come out physically and visually.
Co-Design Method #2 - Activity 2
This activity is geared towards understanding how perception can affect how you think of other people as well as seeing directly whether or not people contrast in their beliefs. It is also meant to surprise the co-designers by exposing them to different people.
Co-design method #2 - Activity #3
The last activity includes seeing news articles from the other side of media (Western vs. Middle-Eastern). This is supposed to show whether or not co-designers stick firm to their perceptions or start to question based on new information and why that is. The last step of the co-design workshop is to mail in your journal to the researcher.
Analysis Plan and Deliverables
All of these techniques will be used to find insights about news, media, and perception in the context of Israel and Palestine and hopefully lead to new ideas and further thoughts for study. If this proposal was ever implemented and depending on results, I would hope that the results be used to start to change the media industry into becoming more honest and equitable. After analysis is conducted, I would hope to publish the results in the format of a magazine with many visuals and "articles" of information that includes raw-data, analysis, and insights.
Final Deliverables, Timeline, and Resources
