AUCKLAND (Pacific Media Watch): Four students from the Pacific Media Centre won prizes when AUT University's School of Communication Studies hosted its annual awards ceremony at the brand new Sir Paul Reeves Building in Auckland last night.
Taberannang Korauaba, editor of the Kiribati Independent, was one of only two students to be awarded with more than one prize at the ceremony.
Korauaba from Kiribati won the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Postgraduate Research after completing his Master of Communication Studies degree last year.
His thesis is titled ‘Media and the politics of climate change in Kiribati: A case study on journalism in a “disappearing nation”’.
Korauaba found that I-Kiribati journalists rely on the government to supply them with information on climate change, which in turn has led to journalists not believing that they can influence climate change policy because they are not the policy makers.
As one of Korauaba’s recommendations, he suggested workshops on climate change for journalists in Kiribati using the "Te Karoronga" approach. The "Te Karoronga" is a collectivist research approach which encourages discussion among a group of people. The approach does not have any leaders and membership is free.
Korauaba also won the Storyboard Award and SPASIFIK Magazine Prize for Diversity Journalism by a graduating student in 2012. Currently Korauaba, 37, is doing a PhD at AUT University following up his research from his master thesis.
Internship at Pacific Scoop
Pacific Media Watch contributing editor Daniel Drageset was awarded with Scoop Media Limited Award and will take up an internship at Pacific Scoop in July:
“As a non-commercial news service Pacific Scoop is an important contribution to the news media in New Zealand. Coming from Norway I have observed that media diversity in New Zealand is declining, whereas to a much bigger extent has been upheld in my home country, Drageset said.
"This seems to be due to the forces of commercialisation and a lack of will from the New Zealand government to facilitate media diversity. In this respect, non-commercial news services like the Pacific Scoop provide a very important supplement to the media landscape."
Drageset, 27, has a background in radio journalism in Norway and is currently undergoing his second year of his Master of Communication Studies degree.
Award to Blood Money journalist
Karen Abplanalp, 46, was one of three students awarded School of Communication Studies Postgraduate Scholarships.
Ablpanalp has previously won the $1000 Emerging Journalism award for her Metro magazine report “Blood Money” that investigated the New Zealand Superannuation Fund’s investment in the Freeport McMoRan goldmine in the West Papua region of Indonesia.
The Radio New Zealand International Award to the top scoring student in the Asia-Pacific Journalism course was awarded to Cassandra Mason. She received an internship at Radio New Zealand International.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
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