Get ready to hear from Emma Bapt, News-Decoder’s intern. The university student has listed topics we should examine and proposed new initiatives.
News-Decoder readers, get ready to hear from Emma Bapt, our intern for this summer.
Emma has already drawn up a list of subjects that she thinks we should examine — Zika, Brexit, privacy versus security — and proposed new initiatives.
Starting in June, she will be tackling some of the issues herself and riding herd on others, asking for input from our network of contributors. All in the interest of driving News-Decoder forward and sharpening her writing and researching skills.
A citizen of both France and the United States, Emma is bilingual in English and French, fluent in Italian and sees News-Decoder as “an excellent opportunity to foster global comprehension in a complex and unpredictable world.”
She is a first-year student of war studies at King’s College, London, and says she is passionate about conflict and war, international relations and current political affairs. The study of war, she adds “is essential to our understanding of the modern world.”
But Emma’s interests extend beyond conflict, and she has already listed subjects she thinks News Decoder needs to tackle.
One of her goals is to become a thinker who takes different realities into consideration.
First is the Zika virus. “How can the threat of the Zika virus be defined, as an individual, national or international security issue?” she asked.
“Is it a global crisis and how much of a threat is it to the global community? This seems particularly relevant with the Olympics opening in Brazil in August 2016.”
Second is Brexit — the possible departure of the United Kingdom from the EU after a referendum scheduled for June 23.
“What are its implications both for the UK and the EU on an individual level?” she asked, proposing a video made up of short interviews exploring how Brexit would affect our readers personally.
Emma also suggests covering privacy versus security issues, illustrated by the San Bernardino/Apple case. “Should technology be a tool of freedom and should this freedom have limits?”
Emma wants more young people to be involved in News-Decoder’s community. To stimulate interest, she recommends creating online discussion forums and extending our snapshot series by focusing specifically on students.
Apart from her studies, Emma says one of her goals is to become “a thinker who takes different realities into consideration”.
She is concerned about inequality and works as a volunteer providing academic and moral support every week to a 10-year-old boy at a public primary school to stimulate his self-esteem, confidence and ambition.
Emma has already contributed to the News-Decoder file in a recent story on challenges facing the millennial generation.
We look forward to having Emma on our team and reading more of her thoughts.