For many years, the Department of Communication and Design has offered COMD335 “Science Writing and Journalism” (coordinator and instructor: Lutz Peschke) and COMD409 “Advanced Broadcast Studio” (coordinator: Andreas Treske, instructor: Yusuf Akçura). In collaboration with these courses, this spring students produced three Video Talks on behalf of the Horizon 2020 project PandeVITA.
The PandeVITA project aims to contribute to a better understanding of how to engage citizens in knowledge and scientific processes for increased public awareness and responsibility according to scientific needs in pandemic times. For this purpose, it has developed a platform and smartphone application for the analysis of global knowledge transfer between citizens, scientists, political figures and economies during a pandemic. The PandeVITA consortium consists of seven partners from Belgium, Finland, Germany, Spain and Turkey. The coordinator of the project is Lutz Peschke from the Department of Communication and Design.
To disseminate the activities of PandeVITA, three PandeVITA video talks were requested in which different topics about health communication would be discussed with experts and the public. The head of the department, Andreas Treske, and course instructors Yusuf Akçura and Lutz Peschke took this opportunity to teach students how to produce a professional talk show. The production process was divided into two parts. Lutz Peschke, with his students, developed the concepts of the three talks in COMD335 “Science Writing and Journalism.” They analyzed which topics would be societally relevant to discuss in post-pandemic times; researched the scientific details; created suitable narratives and communication concepts; and developed the storyboards of the show. Finally, they found suitable experts and developed a way to integrate the public into the talks. Yusuf Akçura and Andreas Treske, in COMD409 “Advanced Broadcast Studio,” helped students develop the technical setting in the broadcast studio in COMD. This included multi-camera and live-streaming, editing and the integration of a Zoom guest in the talk. The added value of the collaboration between the courses COMD335 and COMD409 was that the students learned how to use synergies in cooperation with different production teams.
As a result, three PandeVITA Video Talks were produced. On May 9, Assoc. Prof. Sühendan Er from the Faculty of Education at TED University, Dr. Ceren Gürdere from the Bilkent Psychological Counseling and Development Center, Demet İzgü from TED Ankara Koleji and online guest Assoc. Prof. Frans Folkvord from Tilburg University in the Netherlands discussed the topic of “Mental Health in the Post-COVID time.” The second PandeVITA Video Talk on May 23 dealt with the topic, “COVID-19 impact on Gender equality: What is the lesson learned?.” Nazlı Özlem Atmaca, president of the Ankara Bar Association Gelincik Center, Yasemin Gümüş Ağca from the Department of Graphic Design and, via Zoom, Prof. Paola Todini from the Faculty of Law of eCampus University in Noverdrate/Italy were part of this discussion. Finally, on May 30, the topic of the talk was “Reliability of News in Pandemic Time.” The guests were Assistant Prof. Yasin Aydoğdu from the Faculty of Law of Anadolu University Eskişehir and, via Zoom, Miguel Crespo, researcher and journalist from the ISCTE-Instituto Universitário in Lisbon/Portugal. All PandeVITA talks were moderated by Lutz Peschke and are available on the COMD YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@comdbilkent/streams).
