Our key task for 2021? Bring more funders into the impact conversation.
This year was slated to be our year of impact. We started off with a bang in January at the Sundance Film Festival, where we released Decoding Media Impact: Insights, Advice and Recommendations, our impact report summing up seven years of research in the media impact space.
How do foundation-funded media projects need to rethink their storytelling and distribution models in order to break through in today’s polarized environment? In this guest post, communications strategist and filmmaker Christine Arena of Generous Films shares key insights for funders from the novel approach behind Let Science Speak—a multi-media campaign designed to counter anti-science propaganda […]
To further explore issues related to media impact and assessment, MIF is forming a working group of funders who want to strengthen the field of practice. Here’s a bit of background on how we arrived at that decision: MIF has been regularly tracking the field of media impact assessment for the last eight years. Every […]
As parents and teachers around the country adjust to a new year of largely remote schooling, many are looking for resources to teach effectively about a variety of topics. In the absence of hands-on science classes, parents and teachers can turn to the educational impact campaign associated with “Inventing Tomorrow,” a Peabody Award-winning film that […]
A host of new tools allows journalists and independent researchers to analyze important trends across media including airtime, advertising, digital privacy, and political spending. (h/t to Nancy Watzman of Lynx LLC for sharing the first four): Ad Observatory: Launched last week, this new tool from NYU Tandon School researchers helps journalists and researchers find trends in Facebook […]
As protests for racial justice continue in cities across the U.S., more and more institutions are publicly reckoning with their own roles in perpetuating systemic racism. In the journalism space, a debate about the concept of objectivity is raging: whose view is considered “objective”? Do “both sides” of an issue always demand equal weight? Some […]
For the first time in history, the 2021 Sundance Film Festival will take place in at least 20 cities across the country, as well as online. “We want to reach people who we have not been able to reach before—where access to the work is not predicated on being able to afford to travel to […]
Media Impact Funders hosted a call back in May with about 50 documentary film funders who shared how they are supporting filmmakers when theatrical screenings and face-to-face engagement are off the table. We caught up with Participant and Doc Society to hear more on how they are supporting impact work during this uncertain time.
Since August 2018, 10 reporters at 10 public radio stations across the United States have participated in the Guns & America collaborative. They report stories from their local communities and share broadcast and digital content among each other’s stations and national platforms, with the goal of bringing context, nuance and a human face to one […]