The return of Chicas Poderosas to Chile in the event “New Media, New Voices”, brought together more than forty journalists, designers, programmers and activists in a large number of talks and workshops that took place from October 25 to 26 at the School of Journalism from the Diego Portales University.
With the theme of Women’s Rights as an axis, the event brought together mentors, experts and social organizations with the aim of providing the Chicas Poderosas community in Chile with skills, tools and knowledge of topics as diverse as:
•Data Journalism
• Programming in R
• User Experience (UX)
• Fact Checking
• Native videos
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Cybersecurity
Here are the highlights of this two-day event that inspired more than forty women in Chile and who gave them tools to approach the world of digital journalism.
And check here an interview with Ana Arriagada, Chicas Poderosas ambassador in Chile, about the community and what inspires us.
Journalism and the search for the truth
Searching the truth with precision is one of the greatest challenges of journalism and to speak of that task two prestigious journalists opened the Chicas Poderosas Chile event: Paula Escobar, editor of Revistas de El Mercurio, and Andrea Vial , Executive Producer at Turner Chile, which drove the checking project Chile Check of that company.
Paula Escobar delved into two of the most impactful investigations in Chile in 2018 about harassment in the Film and Television industry. The cases of the directors Herval Abreu and Nicolás López shook the local industry, forcing us to review protocols and practices in many organizations. Paula delved into the back room and challenges of these investigations with the community of Chicas en Chile.
Andrea Vial, meanwhile, spoke of the challenge of verifying information in a digital world overpopulated with content, and how journalistic work becomes increasingly necessary to investigate and reveal the truth. To illustrate, Andrea shared an extraordinary BBC case where, taking as a starting point the video of the execution in cold blood of two women and two children who circulated in social networks, journalists were able to situate the moment temporally and geographically, and could even identify those responsible for the crime to bring them to justice.
Check here a note about the return of Chicas Poderosas to Chile and everything that happened during the first day. (ES)
Approaching data journalism
Two mentors were responsible for introducing the girls to the world of data journalism. Riva Quiroga from R ladies Santiago and Valparaíso and Chloe Eunsung Kim, co-founder and director of Data Campfire.
Riva held an R programming workshop for beginners, where attendees could generate a graphic to represent a large amount of data in a step by step.
Chloe, meanwhile, in her workshop at Data Campfire taught us in a practical workshop to approach a data set with a journalistic look, identify the news and choose the best way to show the information to our users. The girls then presented their note proposal and how they would graph it in their media.
The first robot in Chicas Poderosas
LaBot is the first robot member of Chicas Poderosas. With an incredible personality, without fear of anything and with the ability to tell the most complex stories in the most didactic way, LaBot surprised us thanks to the inspiring talk of the journalists behind the most popular cyberchica of the moment in Chile: Andrea Insunza, Paula Molina and Francisca Skoknic.
There they told the story of this journalistic undertaking and they announced that they were participating in a worldwide investigation that was still confidential, but that it was already published: The Implant Files (http://www.labot.cl/tag/the-implant- files /), which revealed data on the dangerous deregulation of medical implants around the world and also in Chile.
Fact checking and native videos
It was the girls from Chile Check who were in charge of introducing us to the world of information verification. Today, discriminating the true from the false and ensuring the legitimacy of information is increasingly necessary and Margot Anacona, Valentina Matus and Valentina de Marval were the mentors who taught us about fact checking. They work at CNN Chile and also in Chile Check, a platform for the verification of public discourse that debuted in the Chilean presidential elections in Turner Chile and that now denies false news through native videos, very simple and easy to understand.
Check here a note about the Chile Check workshop in Chicas Poderosas with tips to stop false news.
And to teach us about native videos we had Rocío Cifuentes, Audiovisual Communicator of Wemul, the producer responsible for the popular YouTube channel of Woki Toki. With Rocío, the girls learned a little more on how to cook successful videos on social networks.
Ciberseguridad
The NGO Derechos Digitales was in charge of holding a cybersecurity workshop for the Chicas community in Chile. Marianne Díaz, a lawyer in the area of research and public policies of Derechos Digitales, gave basic advice to protect the information that one handles in the network and gave attendees a didactic kit, in tarot format, that will allow each girl to create her own security strategy, according to your needs.
When working in investigative journalism, journalists handle reserved content and / or sources off the record, so this workshop gave advice to avoid risks and take care of our content.
Check here a note about the workshop on Digital Rights in Chicas Poderosas with tips to protect your internet safety.
UX y SEO
Learning about user experience (UX) and knowing techniques to find us easily is indispensable for journalism today. The mentor of Laboratory, Allison Guzmán, supported us with a UX workshop where the Girls put to work in a practical exercise based on the principles of User Center Design.
The Blueaspects company, meanwhile, with the mentoring of the engineer Claudio Jerez, gave the guidelines to gain a space between the large amount of information circulating on the Internet with tips to be easily found by answering clearly in our notes to the needs of users, in the most relevant time and place for them.
Women rights
Chicas Poderosas Chile | Nuevos Medios, Nuevas Voces focused on the rights of women. We talked about reproductive and sexual rights, abortion, discrimination, female entrepreneurship, our role in the cultural industry and how to overcome the fear of change.
To speak precisely of sexual and reproductive rights, we invite the Chilean Association for the Protection of the Family, Aprofa, whose director Deborah Solís told us about her team’s work in favor of a better education and sexual life of Chileans, recognizing that sexuality is a natural and integral aspect of life, and therefore fundamental human right.
Con Las Amigas y en la Casa, on the other hand, through Osa, one of her activists, told us about her experience accompanying women in situations of abortion in Chile and their analysis of how the media addresses this reality today.

Finally Monserrat Lecaros, technological journalist; Javiera Tapia, founder of the independent feminist medium Es Mi fiesta; Pía Vargas, journalist and entrepreneur, the writer Claudia Apablaza and Jocelyn Parada, developer and former student of Laboratoria, told us their testimonies of entrepreneurship and how it was developed and move forward in a world where they were a minority.

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