With beabee for media in exile, funded by MIZ Babelsberg, a team from German independent newsroom CORRECTIV and Russian podcast platform Radio Sakharov set out to develop a membership and community platform designed especially for the needs of media in exile. Using the existing open source platform beabee, the team implemented additional features to enhance security for users in countries like Russia and facilitate (anonymous) engagement. Which challenges do media in exile face and what kind of technological solutions can benefit them? And is it even possible for journalists in exile to reach people in a country like Russia? Ksenia Petrova, a Community Relations Manager at Radio Sakharov and a member of the project team, answered our questions.

The project team of beabee for media in exile: Ksenia Petrova (Radio Sakharov), Julia Hildebrand (CORRECTIV / beabee), Polina Filipova (Radio Sakharov) and Will Franklin (beabee)

Dear Ksenia, media projects in exile face numerous challenges. The project beabee for media in exile is based on a technological approach to assist them. Why do you think such an approach is important?

Ksenia Petrova: Russian media in exile face a unique set of challenges. On the one hand, we must protect our readers and listeners in Russia, necessitating careful handling of data and avoiding Russia-based online products. On the other hand, international services like Mailchimp and other popular CRM systems are blocked for Russian users, preventing them from accessing our content without a VPN.

At Radio Sakharov, we prioritise transparent technological solutions that help us maintain independence and ensure the safety of our users' data. Many other exile media organisations share these challenges and must take certain risks with standard technological solutions to retain their audience. This is where open source becomes crucial: if a perfect solution doesn't exist, we can try to create one. Beabee already had a technological foundation that we could build upon, and we collaborated to tailor this platform to the specific needs of media in exile, developing new features to support our mission.

„The Russian-speaking community has been predominantly using Telegram since the Russian war of aggression, which is why we decided to use Telegram as one of our main engagement channels."

beabee is an open source community relationship mangagement platform for newsrooms. How have you expanded its features to meet the needs of exile media?

Ksenia: The Russian-speaking community has been predominantly using Telegram since the Russian war of aggression, which is why we decided to use Telegram as one of our main engagement channels. In order to allow for deeper relationship building with people on Telegram, we developed a Telegram bot integrated with the existing call-out system of beabee. This feature is crucial as it allows us to operate within a platform familiar to our listeners. Additionally, beabee focused on enhancing its security through a series of measures including 2-factor authentication and running a Pentest with our pro bono partner PortZero in Berlin. Security is vital for Radio Sakharov and other exile media, and it is where a lot of open source technology falls short.

How has Radio Sakharov worked with its community in recent months, and what has the team been able to use the platform for?

Ksenia: Radio Sakharov has used the Telegram bot connected to beabee to gather user-generated content, questions, and song suggestions for our broadcasts. We also used beabee as a platform for research and gathering information for a meetup on digital sovereignty for media in exile, which we did to share our experience with other media professionals. Beabee allows us to store and categorise all our contacts, facilitating communication with different audience segments. This functionality is particularly useful for organising offline events like live podcast recordings, as it helps us send invites to our listeners in various cities.

Overview of active callouts on the platform beabee for media in exile

„Gaining paying members is challenging because our primary audience resides in Russia, where access to international banking is currently restricted."

Your objective was to establish a platform that facilitates both donations and membership contributions. Have you been able to achieve these goals?

Ksenia: We created and tested a membership flow and have a few paying members. However, gaining paying members is challenging because our primary audience resides in Russia, where access to international banking is currently restricted. While we are keen to explore further opportunities, especially with Russian-speaking individuals living abroad, we realised that we need to take more time first to build out a strong product and find our footing in Germany.

So, we ended up focusing on organising a lot of events and engaging people offline rather than online. We still use beabee to manage sign-ups for our events and follow up with people based on where they live and which events they’ve attended, but we have decided against running a bigger membership campaign at this point. As for the next steps, we want to develop unique offers for paying members without depriving others of free information.

Live recording for a podcast by Radio Sakharov

„People could get fined and even be arrested for engaging with your content. That’s where the anonymous engagement tools can come in handy."

Radio Sakharov's community partially still lives in Russia. Based on your experience over the past few months: Is it even possible for exile media to reach people in a country like Russia?

Yes, it is possible, and many newsrooms do this primarily through Telegram, newsletters and other social networks. The media landscape is quite saturated, and the usual media rules apply: producing great content, building strong partner relations, and being consistent and unique are essential. However, when dealing with audiences in Russia, it is crucial to remember that people could face risks when reposting your content and making donations.

Also, much depends on the current status of a particular media outlet in Russia. If your organisation is labelled as “undesirable” for spreading “fake news” about the war in Ukraine, people could get fined and even be arrested for engaging with your content. This makes the engagement strategy particularly challenging, and that’s where the anonymous engagement tools can come in handy. For example, with beabee, it’s possible to create anonymous callouts. However, anonymous contributions require more attention from the editors and need fact-checking to ensure their suitability for editorial use.

„We would love it if there could be a sub-community dedicated to the needs of exile media where we can share what we have built and can learn from others."

How are you sharing the insights from your pilot project with other exile media and organizations that work with them?

Beabee is an excellent tool for gathering audience feedback and creating content with user-generated input. We hope that the Telegram integration will benefit media outlets already using Telegram, and we anticipate more integrations in the future to support various media needs. To understand those needs, we organised a Digital Sovereignty Meetup, and after this event, we created a visual guide for newsrooms thinking of trying out beabee.

Beabee is of course open source and the source code is published on GitHub. Developers can start there and use the code to contribute or build something new with it. We will also take part in Full Stack Journalism, a new collaboration between European independent newsrooms that want to support each other in finding, evaluating and implementing the right tools for their needs. We would love it if there could be a sub-community dedicated to the needs of exile media where we can share what we have built and can learn from others.

Thank you for the interview, Ksenia!

>>> More about "beabee for media in exile" (in German)
>>> Website of beabee
>>> Website of Radio Sakharov (in Russian)