The 4^th edition of ABU New Media Workshop brought together digital and social media content creators from ABU Member broadcasters in the breath-taking island nation of Mauritius to learn how to create media-rich digital stories, eye-catching social content and result-driven social media campaigns. The workshop was hosted by ABU Associate Member Radio Plus (Le Defi Media Group) at The Westin Turtle Bay Resort & Spa, Mauritius from 18-19 February 2020.

Under the theme Once Upon a Digital Story, this edition of the ABU New Media Workshop explored evolving storytelling formats and narratives in the digital media landscape with a focus on how storytelling concepts, formats, tools, and platforms are redefined for the tech era.

The workshop focused on creating compelling digital and social content across different platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. Two digital content experts from UK and Turkey shared tips and tricks to create engaging digital and social content on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok through interactive exercises.

“The ABU digital storytelling workshop in Mauritius was really eye-opening for me. It was so interesting to hear the challenges that broadcasters face in the Asia Pacific region as many are the same as we face in the UK. Understanding audiences and where they consume their content was a reoccurring theme throughout the two days, after all, we have to know where they are in order to target them,” said Laura Gibson, a social media consultant from the UK, who led an interactive session on tangible practices that can be applied in workplace.

Over the course of two days, participants learned the creative social media strategies behind popular ITV shows like Love Island and I’m A Celebrity and tried creating their own bespoke digital and social content across existing and emerging platforms.

“In a world where there are more and more information and many more social media platforms, media organisations are looking for ways to stay relevant and want to understand the emerging platforms and become popular in them. ABU Digital  Storytelling workshop in Mauritius allowed us to see that this is a problem for all the journalists and producers. In this workshop, we get to learn how to be active on different social media platforms and realise that creating content for social media platforms is actually fun and very easy,” remarked Tugba Cinarli, a senior producer from TRT, who shared the extensive digital productions at TRT and led a practical session on creating content on the immensely popular social platform, TikTok.

A total of 38 participants joined the workshop which was conducted and delivered in collaboration with Le Défi Training School, marking the first time that the annual workshop was hosted in the island nation.

The last edition of ABU New Media Workshop was held in Macau, China in March 2019 hosted by Teledifusão de Macau, S. A. (TDM).