[1]Giovana Fleck (L) with GV's managing editor Filip Noubel. Photo by Georgia Popplewell.
Giovana Fleck [2] is a Brazilian journalist and media researcher. She joined GV as a volunteer in July 2019 and currently leads Global Voices’ Civic Media Observatory (CMO) project and works on a number of other GV projects involving data and policy.
All candidates in the 2023 board elections have been asked to answer the set of questions listed below. Feel free to ask Giovana additional questions in the comments area below this post!
What appeals to you most about the prospect of serving on the GV board?
The opportunity to represent the great community of contractors I’ve worked with in the past three years. Global Voices became a huge part of my life because of the people that are involved in the organization, it would be my honor to serve on the board and push their interests forward.
What talents, skills, connections, and expertise can you offer Global Voices in your role as board representative?
This question made me think a lot! My most honest answer is: I’m not sure, but I think it would be fascinating, and even fun, to find out in the process! I joined GV as a volunteer and soon after got involved in the Civic Media Observatory. But, since then, I have had the opportunity to do so much in editing, design, community and project management, team creation, data analysis, etc. I’m resourceful, so I would say that is the most significant skill I can offer as a board representative.
As you look ahead to the next three years, what, in your opinion, should be GV’s overarching priorities as an organization?
My current roles in the newsroom and research branches of GV have put me increasingly in contact with questions about impact. How can we foster connections online? How can we spread the importance of context to a wider audience? Who are the people we should work with to provoke those changes? I would like to work towards answering those questions alongside my GV colleagues and hopefully establish priorities for the upcoming years.
On a more practical note, I would also like to participate in discussions that prioritize (even more) inclusion in the content that GV publishes. For example, we often don’t talk about people with vision impairments (at least 2.2 billion people [3] worldwide) who use voice-guided AI to read.
Personally, and thinking about the possibility of representing other fellow contractors, I would also like to advance discussions about the format of employment and stability. I think that's a huge challenge, and I appreciate GV for being a transparent organization. Yet, we could think about advancing. I would be incredibly interested in participating in these discussions.
What aspect of GV’s work interests you the most?
How welcoming GV is – for those who work, read, or are a part of the community. Lokman Tsui, in his Ph.D. dissertation [4] about Global Voices, described the newsroom as “hospitable” due to its “ethical obligation to listen.” I couldn’t agree more. For my first two years, I have never seen a colleague from GV in person. Yet, I never felt more welcome in an organization I worked for. Surprisingly, we formed relationships online that didn’t depend on being together in the same space (only at the same time). Something so usual in COVID-19 times still feels surreal to me. GV interests me because this very human work doesn’t seem to depend on physical human interactions – and I find it fascinating.
What would you like to get out of this board service experience, both professionally and personally?
What I most would like to get out of this experience is the chance to ask my colleagues for their demands and advance these topics from within the board.
How will you fit board service into your personal and other professional work commitments?
That wouldn’t be too difficult! I do have the time to commit to it :)
What methods would you use to engage and listen to the community in order to represent them effectively at board level?
Building the Community CMO gave me a good sense of how to better listen to a team and collect and implement their feedback. We have active and more informal groups on Signal, WhatsApp, and Slack (depending on participants’ security/preference) and we also keep in touch via e-mail for general announcements. I would like to use those channels for this role too, trying to connect as much as possible with my colleagues and advance their topics of interest in the board discussions.