Hello there!

If you have been an active Rappler app user, you may have noticed our recent experiment. 

We’ve been asking Rappler app users to send us questions they would like to ask key personalities we’ve invited to an on-camera interview. Then, during the interview, we read out those questions so that the interviewee answers them live and on video.

We’ve called this new news product “Ask Me Anything” sessions. Our first one was with EDCOM II Executive Director Karol Mark Yee, all about their recently launched report amid the country’s longstanding education crisis.

Our second AMA session was with tax expert Mon Abrea – about the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s easily abused “letters of authority.”

A week later, we followed it up with an interview with International Criminal Court spokesperson Oriane Maillet, in which our app users got answers to their questions about former president Rodrigo Duterte’s pre-trial hearings.

These AMA sessions differ from our usual community chats because of the video component. While the questions from app users are sent in through the chat rooms, the answers are captured on video. During the video interview, our reporter reads out the question and credits the app user who sent it in. To get the answers, the app user just needs to watch the video, which we pin at the top of the chat rooms where app users send in their questions.

It’s an exciting combination of two unique Rappler modes of news delivery: chat rooms and live video. 

If you want to join the next one, just download the Rappler app and tap the Community tab below. Make sure to allow notifications since that is the way we announce the details of the next AMA session.

Why launch this new product? Because we believe journalism should be empowering.

But what if journalism, instead of making you feel helpless in the face of the world’s problems, could give you agency instead? What if journalism could help you get the answers you need, from people with power and influence over your life? 

Through the AMA sessions, we hope to do just that. It’s part of our overall vision for engaged journalism – journalism as a dialogue, a conversation, a two-way street.

App users enriched the AMA sessions with their questions and insights. They possess points of view that give them their own authority – the authority of lived experiences.

Take our AMA with Karol Yee. App user Rpcl, who says they run a reading program, sent in this insight and question:

“Our biggest challenge is the buy-in of parents. Reading comprehension is not understood as a pillar of learning, which is understandable [since] they themselves manage to survive on a daily basis with minimal comprehension skills. Are there any materials we can use (comics, animation, socmed templates) to drive [home] the value of reading comprehension to the general public so that this becomes a key election issue?”

Others who joined the AMA session included students, members of faculty unions, a day care worker. They asked about tuition, rights of teachers and education workers, how feeding programs are critical to early childhood education, curriculum issues, and more. You can backread the questions here. 

The Justice and Crime chat room was also flooded with questions from app users, for ICC spokesperson Oriane Maillet, who reporter Lian Buan was able to interview at The Hague.

App user Van asked, “If the case proceeds to conviction, what forms of reparations could be made available to victims, and how does the ICC determine appropriate compensation or restorative measures?”

In essence, we gave the floor and microphone to our app users. In many ways, it was them, not us interviewing Karol, Mon, and Oriane. While our reporters moderated the questions and injected their own expertise, the collective wisdom and curiosity of our app users moved the conversation along and brought it to different directions.

The video component made the interaction real. It brought the interaction beyond the realm of the digital, into the realm of the physical. 

What urgent and important topic should we tackle in our future AMA sessions?

Rappler Recap: Should Sara Duterte be impeached for acts outside her VP functions?

Dwight de Leon breaks down the second day of a House panel’s hearing on the Sara Duterte impeachment complaints

Trimester? Semester? More than the system, DepEd urged to ensure 180 school days

The latest on ongoing talks about the school calendar

The Explainer: Fight and Win

In another episode of The Explainer, Manolo Quezon walks us through the history of vice presidents seeking the highest office

Paolina Massidda on the ‘despair and hope’ of representing victims in Duterte’s ICC case

What’s it like representing victims of atrocities in the ICC? Watch this interview.

– Rappler.com

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