Global Citizen, 2020. Somalian gender equality activist Ifrah Ahmed. [image] Available at: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/5-activists-fighting-fgm-in-africa/ [Accessed 30 April 2022].

Media Attention Towards FGM (Before/After Pandemic)

BBC(Official Media)--gradually decreasing attention

Possible reason: The official media has shifted their attention towards the pandemic itself.
- The official media has shifted their attention towards the pandemic itself.
Which is not helpful to the FGM victims
- when the official’s voices can’t be heard, people will not regard this problem with great significance.
- Subsequently, when there’s a weaker official voice, people will doubt the realness of the issue, since FGM might be a very distanced concept to a lot of people in other countries.

YouTube(We Media)--gradually increasing attention

Possible reason
- The pandemic encouraged the development of We Media and online interactions.
- People were staying in quarantine, which gives them a lot of free time to learn about different social issues happens around the world, and actively discuss about it.
Helpful to FGM victims
- Authenticity–people who has gone through FGM, or has people they know that has gone through FGM, can choose to step out and talk about it. it educates the public authentically, and gives other victims power when they had their voices heard

However—since there’s a large amount of self-orientated content, there could be extremists that actually approve the act of FGM. It also counts as media attention
- Worsens the victims’ mental health, make them question their voices
- Could indulge the act of FGM in certain cases

The Increasing Attention We Media have on FGM（YOUTUBE）

We also analysed the verified and unverified account’s posts number on youtube. Verified accounts, which is usually official news platform and verified users, although the content is more flexible and more interactive (allows comments, etc), they are still from reliable sources instead of individual users.

Unverified accounts are usually held by individual users, who posts contents due to their own will. They are mass audience like us, and they chose to step out and say something, and post it on a public platform like youtube.

similarly to previous analysis, during the pandemic, the official voices are shifting their attention away from the topic of FGM.

However, more self-orientated content appeared, personal voices are heard, which could be more educational than the official demonstration, due to the authenticity and flexibility nature of We-Media.