Brief:
In 2017, Europe is concerned by a major immigration crisis, and when it comes to refugees, people and especially medias speak about data, about statistics, about immigration waves, even about terrorism, but never about humans. They are not considered as men and women anymore, they are refugees.
How Liberation, as a progressive media, becomes the catalyst of a societal change about refugees issue in Europe, 50 days before French presidential elections?


Solution & Cultural Context:
Refugees are described as a problem in medias that people refuse to have a gaze on because they don’t feel responsible for it. To switch people perception and give their own identity back the best solution was to let them speak on their behalf. On March 7th we decided to give them the whole paper for 1 day. An entire Liberation issue was written by 21 refugees from an array of origins with one challenge: explain beyond today’s news how they see France. A paper by the refugees but not on refugees

Impact:
- 21 refugees of 10 nationalities
- +35% of sales on this specific edition compared to usual days.
- 100k papers were printed and the digital edition was seen 4 million times
- Almost every major French medias (TV, Radio, Press) covered the news and interviewed authors
- International media supported the initiative
- Even French President François Hollande tweeted about it
- 3 refugees were invited to meet him at Elysee
- On Twitter #LibéDesRéfugiés was seen by 126 million people the first 24 hours