My original idea for my Major Multimedia Project (MMP) was to explore the concept of how COVID-19 affects the mental health and well-being of international students. However, rightly so, my lecturers advised me that the topic was too broad and needed a clearer angle.
Therefore, I have now decided to focus my idea on how COVID-19 will affect the mental health and well-being of international students in a couple of years time (i.e. in 2021/22). I will be making this seven minute radio documentary for BBC World Service's The Documentary Podcast. Based on my research, I then chose three case studies to focus on.
I plan to interview Maika Edberg, an International Student who wrote an article back in May titled: An International student's countdown of feelings during the coronavirus explaining the anxiety she went through during the lockdown. Since she has gone through this before, I plan to ask her how this will affect international students in 2021/22.
My second interviewee will be Fatema Bangee, a Psychological Well-being Practitioner. Her interview will be highlighting how COVID-19 is causing the mental health of international students to deteriorate during their university life.
My final interviewee was going to be a staff member from UCAS because I wanted to ask them how this pandemic has affected the way they help their international students. However, they haven't got back to me yet so if they don't contact me soon I plan to interview someone from a Student Union to ask them a similar question. Unfortunately, due to the current situation, I will be conducting all of my interviews over the phone but I will be recording them in the studio for better audio quality.
I have now decided on the three main questions that I want to answer in my documentary:
What are the main struggles international students face during this pandemic?
How has this affected their mental health/well-being?
What will the situation be like for international students in 2021/2022?
I had my pitch on Tuesday 20th October, so now that my idea has been approved my plan is to contact my interviewees and arrange a date and time to conduct the interviews and focus on setting up an official Instagram account to post polls to gain statistical data which I will be including in my MMP.
This was the infographic I made to go alongside my pitch:
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