The Reframed Stories Project asks people to respond to dominant themes and issues that appear in news coverage about their communities. These stories are reflections by people who are frequently represented by others in the media. Word clouds are created using the Media Cloud platform, a data analysis tool which examines a collection of media outlets over a specific period of time, allowing participants to analyze and discuss the preliminary insights into how they might be represented in the media. The project refrains from making conclusive pronouncements about the data, and instead is a starting point that creates space for discussion about how they can help shape their own media representation through digital media.

Daniel Benalcázar is a member of the Kichwa Peoples of Sarayaku located in Amazonian Region of Ecuador, and which has held long fights at a national and international level to stop extraction projects in their territory. The following is a transcript of the video of Daniel's comment about the word cloud for the term “Sarayaku“.

Dominant words from 97 articles published between January 2017 and April 2018 mentioning “Sarayaku” within 3 Media Cloud collections of Ecuador’s Spanish-language media outlets. (view larger image)

Yo escogí esta nube de palabras de la palabra “Sarayaku” porque es un pueblo guerrero que está conformado por ancianos, adultos, jóvenes niñas y niños. Además, por ríos, árboles y espíritus que también lo conforman.

Yo quiero que en esta nube de palabras aparezca cómo los jóvenes participaron en esta lucha histórica de Sarayaku. Además, también quiero que aparezca la palabra “educación” porque en Sarayaku no tenemos una educación de calidad como en las ciudades.

I chose this word cloud of the word “Sarayaku” because it is a warrior community, which is composed of elders, adults, youth, girls and boys, as well as rivers, trees and sprits.

I would like this word cloud to show the youth’s participation in Sarayaku's historic struggle. I would also like it to include the word “education” because in Sarayaku we don’t have a quality education, such as the one from the cities.

This is part of a Rising Frames series developed as part of a workshop organized by the Communications Department of Sarayaku on May 17, 2018 that brought together youth members of the community to examine how they or issues they care about are represented in an Ecuadorian media collection. Following the discussion, they created stories in response to that representation. One of the workshop facilitators, José Santí participated earlier in the Reframed Stories Project and wrote his own story about the representation of Sarayaku.