The 1 Billion Followers Summit for most influential personalities and social media influencers ended in Dubai yesterday and among the guests was prominent creator Yusuf Omar, a journalist and digital storyteller known for his innovative use of mobile journalism (mojo) and social media.
The content creator has over the years traveled to more than 100 countries producing over 4,000 videos on his Seen TV platform. Asked which country he considered his home considering his travel experience, Yusuf said he felt like he was a citizen of the world.
“That’s a very interesting question. I was born in the UK, raised in Australia, married in South Africa, my parents are in South Africa, I’m of Indian origin. I truly feel like a citizen of the world. We travel so often you could say we live in the clouds. So, home now is wherever my wife and son are. And right now, my home is in a hotel room in Dubai. But what this does is that you start identifying with different parts of your mixed cultural background, depending on the aspect of life you’re covering. In terms of my lifestyle, I feel very Australian but in terms of my political position, I’m very South African. I believe in advocating for the truth. So, it purely depends on the context of my life’.
Due to the marginalization of certain races and tribes together with his diversified cultural background, Yusuf decided to be a content writer and leave the news room. ‘When I worked at CNN International London office, with around 200 staffers, I was the only one that I knew of, who identified as Muslim. If you think about it, it’s quite a crazy idea, especially when you imagine the amount of content there is about the Muslim world. So, the lack of diversity in traditional media is really what sparked our interest in creating something new and something different. We came from backgrounds and positions where we felt unseen, where our stories were not accurately represented. That’s why we approached Seen TV from a position of, ‘How do we challenge people’s prejudices?’
The Summit, which took place in Jumeirah Emirates Towers and Museum of the Future attracted over 7,000 participants, including 3,000 content creators followed by 1.6 billion people.
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