by Edwige Jeannenot
Arte, a French-German TV station, launched at the beginning of April an interactive online survey called “World of works”.
“We wanted to do something about youth unemployement which wasn’t sad. Something interactive, sexy to make people think about the background of what was going on”, explains Sinje Matzner, journalist at Arte who developed the idea.
The 60 questions were separated in 5 sections: work, money, education, politics and the futur. Always asked with a little derision, the questions explore all aspects of work: How did you choose your studies? Who is helping you when you’re out of money? Were you willing to prostitute yourself? Is working for Wikipedia a job? The given answer possibilities sometimes were very surprising. When asked if an unpaid internship is normal, you can either answer “The intern is learning something. Isn’t that enough?” or “Slavery was abolish, wasn’t it?”
“It is not a very serious survey. We had no ambitious on being representative. We wanted people to have fun. Every answer you give, you get feedback: a serious info”, describes Iris Hartl, journalist at Arte who also worked on the project.
“It’s more a serious game”, adds Sinje Matzner.
After answering all the questions, youth can also compare their results to the other participants, or compare the results by sexe or age, or both.
“It’s for the youth (16 to 35) but anyone can participate. Their results will just not be counted. It tells us a lot about ourselves and all the differents opinions on the subject”, said Sinje Matzner.
To make this survey, Arte worked with a German coding entreprise.
“It was also important to make youth participate. Our team is 30 years old or less. Maybe that why it’s different from what older people could have done”, concluded Sinje Matzner.
