July 31 2025 GM

The Power and Relevance of Humanizing Tech and Digital Rights Through Storytelling

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• Date: Thursday, July 31
• Time: 9am EDT / 1pm UTC
• Facilitator: Mardiya
• Featured Guest: Vinayak Rajesekhar
• Where: On TCU Mattermost "IF Square" Channel.
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Join us on July 31, to hear from Vinayak Rajesekhar, a storyteller and communications consultant who will be talking about:

• Why the prevailing environment of covering and discussing tech issues and their impact on communities is problematic and/or concerning
• How can storytelling be an effective antidote or catalyst for change
• What are the anticipated pitfalls of storytelling that can/must be addressed when covering the human impact of tech and digital rights?
• How NGOs, non-profits, and social enterprises working on tech and digital rights can integrate storytelling in their communication workflows

Vinayak Rajesekhar is a storyteller and communications consultant who works with global non-profits and social enterprises working on the intersection of human rights issues. He possesses an academic background combining conflict transformation, peacebuilding, and anthropology. He uses visual media and storytelling as a way to amplify community voices and grassroots efforts aimed at building better societies worldwide.

What is Glitter Meetup?

Glitter Meetup is the weekly town hall of the digital rights and Internet Freedom community at the IF Square on the TCU Mattermost, at 9am EDT / 2pm UTC. It is a text-based chat where digital rights defenders can share regional and project updates, expertise, ask questions, and connect with others from all over the world! Do you need an invite? Learn how to get one here.

Notes

Can you tell us about your work, and storytelling project?

• I'm primarily a communications consultant and independent professional who's been working with a variety of setups, mostly a combination of non-profits and social enterprises since 2017 in a range of capacities within the responsibilities of a Communications Officer. In 2020, however, I wanted to blend my academic background in peace and conflict studies with my professional experience as a comms. professional after seeing that the kind of storytelling I was most interested in was sorely lacking among a lot of organisations who, in some cases, did not have an interest or inclination or, in other cases, lacked funding necessary to carry out such initiatives. Thus, my project Pax Politica was born.
• Pax Politica essentially is an attempt at visual storytelling that covers three aspects of humanity and society, especially in post-conflict scenarios, loosely touching upon a community's past, present, and future through raw, unfiltered, and deeply personal stories. Think of personal feature documentaries by AJ+, DW, and Al Jazeera in the past. They were presented by news anchors but driven on screen by protagonists. In Pax Politica's vision, the presenters and drivers will both be a story's protagonist in their native language.
• Why native languages? Because peacebuilding even today is deeply colonial or carries colonial roots forward. English is still the primary means of communication that hundreds of thousands of communities do not speak, understand, or communicate in yet have made strides to rebuild their relations after decades of conflict and strife. Peacebuilding needs to decolonise itself and turning to language as a means to do that is one such way. Decolonilisation of peacebuilding is already a discourse that is taking place within such circles but Pax Politica is designed to take this to the screens... mobile, desktop, and hopefully in a few years, television.
• Talking about the past, present, and future of communities in a peacebuilding context, there are three main themes or topics under these umbrellas. Trauma, pain, and memories of conflict (past), tech., its evolution, and impact on communities (present), and climate change (future). All these three themes have the potential of either pulling back or accelerating the chances of conflict within societies. Unfortunately, we're seeing the latter happen. And bringing these issues to the public in a visual manner through bold storytelling, colours, and visuals is essentially what Pax Politica aims to do.
• You can find out more about the project on Instagram: https://instagram.com/storytellingforpeace
• YouTube: https://youtube.com/@storytellingforpeace

What changes do (did) you anticipate while embarking on Pax Politica, and what approaches to storytelling / communication do you use to achieve the changes you envisioned, and how did you employ them?

• When the project was conceived in 2020, a dear friend had begun putting Pax's visual language together while I got busy with interviewing people from all over the world including journalists who'd covered civil wars, photojournalists who'd recently returned from Ukraine, Syrian refugees, trauma healers, and even film and television professionals who'd dramatized civil rights issues in Kashmir, India, for example.
• I had begun putting these stories online on Instagram until 2020 but then, life happened. I had to shelve the project for a little while until I landed up in Colombia for a fellowship between 2023 and 2024 where I interviewed over a dozen rights activists who've been involved the country's peace process since the peace agreement was signed with the FARC-EP in 2016. These interviews are what I have begun putting up on YouTube now.
• The changes I primarily anticipated were nervousness and fear among my interviewees to begin with. Being the son of a documentary filmmaker, I began to probe hard and dig at first but over time, my approach softened and I learnt to let go of matters that my interviewees simply were not comfortable discussing out of personal pain and grief or fear of reprisal. Instead, my approach became that of an unstructured interview where I would briefly discuss an interviewee's journey prior to filming, ask them for any topics they would not like to discuss - personal or otherwise, and then start recording.
• Another development I had foreseen - not necessarily a change - was increased scrutiny and censorship of free, independent media around the world, notably in India. This has undoubtedly increased and touched depressing levels so much so that I am actively avoiding touching any issue that the govt. either considers domestic or is an intrinsic component of its foreign policy.. which is why I have only focused on Colombia-centric interviews so far but aim to diversify slowly but gradually over time.
• One of the pitfalls I've observed with this project is our collective obsession with watching celebrities or public personalities on screen. Peacebuilding often is most inspiring to know more about, even in the tech. space, most from people who've lived through dark days or confronted their abusers face-to-face among a myriad other facets but they're largely unknown because mainstream media hardly covers them, so the world doesn't know about them. The people Pax aims to cover are exactly those; the ones walking among the shadows, the ones working behind the scenes, the ones doing the grunt work, the ones who return home to a simple loaf of bread but deeply care about their communities, and so on. They're not celebrities by any yardstick but they're critical pieces of the puzzle. Unfortunately, they don't bring views, merchandise, or money.
• And this is an aspect I think I'm learning more about and looking for ways to mitigate so that the project not only becomes profitable over time but also sustainable in a scalable way without losing its essence.

If you will suggest a format for storytelling, interviews, and documentary film making for others doing similar work., what are the 5 main approaches you recommend folks, projects, and orgs use while doing their work etc?

My top five recommended approaches,

1. Immerse yourselves in your interviewee's social environment before even touching your camera. Observe, look around, listen, eat, taste, breathe, do whatever somatic exercises you need to to get a proper feel of your interviewee's everyday. You'll live it once, they live it everyday and it shapes their thought process, vision, and values. It's essential for you to get a glimpse of it in a day to be able to represent it appropriately in your storytelling product.
2. Listen more, talk less. If and when you've asked a question, let them lead the answer even if it wavers and meanders. Sometimes a moment of spontaneity unveils pearls that you would not have dreamed of which you can then build on and steer away from your list of prepared questions.
3. Similar to point two, the more you listen, the more you may be able to uncover through follow-up questions.
4. When doing interviews, find a native speaker for your interviewee to feel comfortable and answer in a relatable tone and tenor. it matters and their comfort - or lack thereof - ALWAYS shows on screen. The camera captures more than the eye can tell.
5. Capture your interviewee's ambience through sounds and lights. It isn't necessary to always represent your interviewee in a picture or video. Sometimes their environment matters just as much. Softness is key to making a viewer feel warmth and hope from a story that is otherwise painful to listen to. And aren't warmth and hope values we are inspiring people to feel even when the world at the moment feels like it's going to shit?