Global Voices’ new Social Media Team Lead Gabriela Mesones Rojo.

I am excited and humbled to use this opportunity to introduce myself to you as Global Voices’ new Social Media Team Lead. My name is Gabriela and I have collaborated with Global Voices since 2018, as a writer reporting about gender, migration, human rights and digital rights from Venezuela, Chile and Mexico. In 2020, I also had the opportunity to work in the Global Voices Civic Media Observatory identifying and tracking key themes and narrative frames around events, trends, and other phenomena in digital media, social media and offline media. 

I began my journalism career in 2017, after the complex humanitarian emergency hit Venezuela and sparked the biggest migration crisis in the region along with a complicated political and social context for the country. Before that year, I was working solely with poetry, visual arts, and theater. The Venezuelan crisis, however, made me decide to start writing about the communities around me. I usually say that journalism saved my life, because it helped me survive a painful period for me and many people around me, and helped me feel helpful and connected to underrepresented communities around me. 

I have since then focused on writing and investigating the impact of the humanitarian emergency, migration and human rights violations from a gender perspective. I have reported from Venezuela, Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Spain. 

Through my new GV role, I am looking forward to exploring ways to breathe life into our social media platforms while also experimenting, innovating and finding new ways to promote and distribute GV’s amazing editorial content. The GV community is the heart, soul and center of this process, meaning that this task is by no means a hierarchical and vertical procedure, but rather a cooperative one where everyone’s input, feedback, ideas, inspiration, and creativity will help shape our social media presence.

Our social media platforms are also a fundamental space to connect with our audience, so I will take the opportunity to spark meaningful conversations and valuable debates to build bridges and celebrate our audience’s multicultural, multilingual and multidisciplinary knowledge. I would also like our social media platforms to become a place to celebrate our amazing community and our inspiring content. So please feel free to reach out to me via e-mail or Slack with any contribution, comment, or suggestions to improve our work. 

I am looking forward to working with GV’s amazing community!