Exploring Hate
Antisemitism, Racism and Extremism
Exploring Hate: Antisemitism, Racism and Extremism is a multi-platform reporting initiative of The WNET Group in New York City, investigating the roots and rise of hate.
As a Producer on the team, I produced a digital series, Dialogue for Change, and accompanying broadcast special, as well as a student-focused animation competition, that explore antisemitism, racism and hate. In my role, I also edited a short video piece on October 7th and helped to create multimedia content for the website and social videos for a variety of platforms. Explore some highlights below.
Animated responses to hate
For our Exploring Hate initiative, I led a student-focused partnership in which we asked students from the School of Visual Arts’ BFA Animation department to animate answers to these questions:
What is hate? What is the opposite of hate? How do you handle hate towards someone that you care about?
The resulting collection is titled An Animated Response to Hate and offers a personal window into students’ perspectives on hate through creative storytelling and animation skills.
Stories like this that are accessible on YouTube and social media reach new and younger audiences and lift up youth perspectives on the big issues that our society is facing.
Listen harder, dig deeper
Dialogue for Change is a multi-part digital series that explores the contentious Israel/Hamas narrative gripping the world since Oct 7th. Through first-hand perspectives on war zone loss, global history, and dual/dueling faiths, each guest takes a stand on fighting entrenchment and finding common ground.
A broadcast special featuring one of the episodes aired on WLIW this summer.
“Very much needed conversations.”
— Viewer of Dialogue for Change
October 7th
Within hours of the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel, a small group of Israeli volunteers quickly set out to capture the historically significant digital stream of social media posts, selfies, images and messages from massacre survivors and those who perished.
Their project and the website they created—October7.org—has a simple goal: to collect, translate, and publish as many firsthand testimonies as possible, making them widely available in multiple languages, while also producing an education and research database focused on survivor stories and perspectives.
Noting that social media gives us 21st century access to the diary-like thoughts of others in the context of what they’re going through, October7 project workers say the bare minimum society can do this time is remember.