Winner
Year
2024
Category
Digital Media: Innovation Journalism
How do people communicate in a war zone today? As Hamada Nasrallah survived being bombed, besieged, displaced and malnourished in Gaza, he sent updates
to his friend Nahed Elrayes in the US – messages that became more infrequent as access to the internet became sparse.
‘Leaving Gaza’ pieces together Hamada’s story via these exchanges from August 2023 to April 2024, as well as material he posted to social media, and details he shared with Guardian Australia. Through a bespoke interactive scrolling chat interface, the multimedia feature follows one man’s movements through Gaza.
Over painstaking months of research, material-gathering, correspondence, writing, web development and editing, the Guardian Australia Team combed through volumes of messages and social media posts, translated texts and songs, verified social media posts, maintained ongoing correspondence with Hamada over WhatsApp in a war zone, and undertook technical trial and error to build the immersive multimedia format from scratch.
‘Leaving Gaza’ was led by Guardian Australia associate news editor Shelley Hepworth, investigations reporter Ariel Bogle, data editor Nick Evershed and reporter Rafqa Touma, with website development by Andy Ball and translations by Christelle Bassil and reporter Mostafa Rachwani.
Judges’ comments:
“As the atrocities in Gaza have worsened, harrowing stories of survival have emerged from those on the ground. ‘Leaving Gaza’ presents one such story, uniquely told through a deeply personal collection of real-time text messages, social media posts, and voice memos that chronicle one Palestinian man’s perilous journey out of the stricken region.”
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