eva stories case study

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"Eva Stories": Storytelling In An Instagram Age

By alixandra rutnik on aug 13, 2020.

Father-and-daughter duo personalize the Holocaust for modern audiences

The Holocaust is undoubtedly one of the most noted atrocities of the 20th century, but the passage of time has made these horrors unrelatable to a modern audience. Young people today can hardly envision a world without social media, let alone one where millions of people much like them were denigrated, persecuted, and eventually exterminated.

"Eva.Stories" sought to bridge that gap by imagining what a Jewish teenager growing up in that time and place might've captured had smartphones and Instagram existed back then. Eva Heyman , a young girl living in Nazi-occupied Hungary, began writing a diary of her experiences on her thirteenth birthday. This time served as the launchpad of a first-person retelling of her daily life in the form of Instagram Stories.

"Eva.Stories" was easily one of the more gripping entries in The One Show 2020 . Using modern methods and distribution platforms to tell an old story earned Tel Aviv Israel and K's Galleries the Best in Discipline for Branded Entertainment. We had an opportunity to chat with Mati and Maya Kochavi,  the father-and-daughter duo who created the project.

Eva Stories

K's galleries / tel aviv + leo burnett israel / tel aviv, k's galleries, os_be20_001g, 2020 branded entertainment: experiential / live events.

Instagram can be used for everything these days, including teaching a younger generation about the holocaust. All the Insta stories are like an interactive movie. How did this idea spark?

Our new media company, Stelo Stories seeks to re-introduce history to youth. History is not past, it is present in who we are and instrumental in what we hope to become.

In order to reach the youth, we decided to combine storytelling and technology. With each story, we asked ourselves, “what technology do we need to give to our protagonist in order to help them tell their story?” For Eva Heyman, the best tool we could give her was Instagram stories because it is the most popular way that young people communicate. By giving Eva a smartphone and an Instagram account, she was able to capture the hearts of the world.

"History is not past, it is present in who we are and instrumental in what we hope to become."

What made you think that Eva's diary was perfect to bring this project to life?

We have a strong internal research team within our company. This team includes historians, philosophers, and social media experts. We also use advanced research tools that let us reach content from libraries and archives.

Eva’s diary was chosen from a storytelling perspective. First, we felt that youth could really relate to Eva’s life: her parents were divorced and there was a little love story. Both of these things make Eva feel much more like a peer. Eva’s life also fell apart very quickly – within a matter of four months which made her story much more tangible.

Can you walk us through the creative and technical process of making Eva.Stories a living, breathting thing?

Stelo Stories is creating different genres for storytelling. One of those genres is the Instagram genre, which is the Eva format. We developed this genre through tests and through big data analysis.

In order to succeed in this genre, we had to make several important commitments.

1. Shoot the story vertically.

2. Totally commit to the POV of the storyteller, in this case Eva. In other words, we did not want people to feel the presence of the director or the writer.

3. Tell the stories via bite-sized videos, as to reflect the habits of Instagram users.

4. Unlock the concept of how to make users keep watching the next story and understand the conversation among the audience between each story upload.

5. Commit to the authenticity of the story. Since the film comes out on the iPhone it is much more personal and intimate, and the viewer must feel like what they are seeing is really happening right now. This demanded a lot of tests and extensive conversations about the topic.

6. Master the technique of photographing extreme moments – we had to study this deeply and conduct interviews in order to understand how people use their phones to document extreme and dangerous moments in their lives.

In terms of the process, the stories were filmed on a smartphone and then went into post-production. After the post-work, we cut up the film into 15-second bite-sized videos. Eva Stories is comprised of 220 Instagram videos which were all uploaded in 24 hours onto Eva’s Instagram page.

"Eva Stories is comprised of 220 Instagram videos which were all uploaded in 24 hours onto Eva’s Instagram page."

How successful was "Eva's" Instagram account?

We broke one million followers in 24 hours.

"We broke one million followers in 24 hours."

What’s next for Eva Stories after winning two Gold Pencils and the Best of Discipline in The One Show?

We are thrilled about the recognition from The One Show!

Eva was our first film in a series of ten films that re-imagine and document the stories of real children who lived during extreme historical time periods. We will soon be releasing our second film and we will begin the shooting of the third film in a couple of months.

IG: @EVA.STORIES

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‘Eva.Stories,’ Instagram series about young Holocaust victim, wins 2 Webbys

( JTA ) — An Instagram story series about a Hungarian teenager who died during the Holocaust won two Webby Awards, the internet Oscars.

“Eva.Stories” won for best use of stories and for best campaigns on social media. The series was created by Israeli tech executive Mati Kochavi and his daughter Maya.

The Webbys were awarded Tuesday in an online ceremony.

For 24 hours last year on Yom Hashoah, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day, the Kochavis put up a dramatized version of Eva’s life on the social media site. The stories are based on a diary kept by Eva prior to her deportation and death. The stories appear as if 13-year-old Eva owned a smartphone and was connected on social media during the Holocaust.

The Kochavis had hoped their initiative would help spread awareness about Eva’s life and the Holocaust to a younger generation.

“Eva.Stories,” which has won several other awards, has 1.3 million followers.

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Witnessing Eva Stories: Media witnessing and self-inscription in social media memory

2020, New Media & Society

This study examines the relations between memory, social media experience, and testimony in the Eva Stories Instagram project. By conducting a combined visual and multimodal analysis of the stories, as well as a close analysis of the relations between social media experience and testimony, we claim that Eva Stories establishes a new responsive space for remembering the Holocaust. This space enables users to inscribe themselves into mediated Holocaust memory and to become media witnesses through the co-creation of socially mediated experiences. The self-inscription of the user is made possible by three interrelated modes of media witnessing, which continuously evoke user engagement. These new modes, we argue, indicate a new kind of agency in relation to media witnessing: the ability to testify on one’s own present social media engagement with mediated memory, and become a witness to it.

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Worldwide, pubic memory initiatives are attempting to memorialize the current COVID-19 crisis whilst it is still ongoing. The Picturing Lockdown collection is one such initiative, led by Historic England (HE), the UK’s statutory adviser on historic environment. Calling out to the public to submit photographed experiences of lockdown to both its website and via social media, HE recruited the public to partake in a national memory-making endeavor. To examine memorialization practices of the present, this research asks: in an era of social media, how is an archive of an ongoing crisis represented? Using a qualitative method for visual and textual analysis, this research compares the official HE Picturing Lockdown archive collection and #PicturingLockdown on Instagram. Analysis reveals tensions in three spheres: the institutional, the temporal, and the spatial. Demonstrating the dynamism and “presentism” introduced by social media, this research illustrates how traditional practices of ...

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Alexandra Preitschopf

The article focuses on one of the most prominent examples regarding humanitarian education, the field of Holocaust education. Sensitizing students to propaganda and hate speech as well as to the consequences of scapegoating, discrimination and exclusion, it is considered by many as an especially effective didactic means to face the question how a society can slide into totalitarian, inhuman structures. At the same time, it offers an especially rich amount of teaching materials, including new possibilities of digital learning. Therefore, the article aims to give an analytical overview of different virtual approaches, dealing with National Socialism, the Second World War, memory, and its lessons for the future. Since it has often been observed that the life-story narratives of witnesses of National Socialism enable students to develop a more personal approach to history, it is not surprising that also new digital formats particularly focus on personal encounters. Consequently, the present analysis includes three different types of digital encounter: 1) Video testimony-based learning apps (IWitness, Escaping the Holocaust: My Encounter with Refugees, Learning with Interviews. Forced Labor 1939-1945); 2) Visualized-fictionalized testimonies on social media: Eva Stories; 3) Holograms as "digital survivors". In this context, another leading question was whether also Russian perspectives or material in Russian are available on a global level. Although they would help to foster multiperspectivity and intercultural understanding, there is, so far, no main focus on them, which also becomes apparent in the majority of the analyzed digital formats.

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Stefania Manca

The use of digital technologies and social media has become an increasingly significant means for engagement in many fields, and that of cultural heritage is no exception. Specifically, Holocaust museums have long been committed to providing historical and educational content to their audiences, and to this end digital communication channels and social media in particular figure among the means employed. Despite this, relatively few research studies have investigated the potential of Holocaust museums' use of social media as new memory ecologies. This preliminary study investigates how three prominent Holocaust museums (Yad Vashem in Israel, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland) use Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to enhance knowledge and understanding of historical and remembrance events among the general public. Using a mixed-methods approach, we analysed the museums’ social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to investigate the topics and phrases that appear most often in the posted contents. Through latent semantic analyses, we determined the words most frequently used by the three museums themselves and within the three social media channels. Additionally, we employed topic modelling to determine underlying themes. This approach allowed us to identify possible similarities and differences between the museums’ communication output and their social media channels. Moreover, to illustrate these potential similarities and differences, we also conducted 2-Mode network analyses. Our results show that the museums’ use of each social media channel exhibits different types of topical foci. For example, Twitter posts specifically include terminology on the Auschwitz camp, Facebook communication is more centred on the “exhibition” and the “Nazi” regime, while on Instagram the combination of “holocaust” and “photo” can often be found. Furthermore, similarities were also found, namely that the topic of “Auschwitz” is omnipresent and that all museums appear to focus on the 1941–1945 timeframe. The study has implications for the kind of historical knowledge and contemporary information that Holocaust museums and memorials contribute to disseminating on their social media profiles.

Image Testimony: Witnessing in Times of Social Media. Edited by Schankweiler, K. and Straub, V. and Wendi, T. Published by Routledge, 2019: 121-135.

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Eva.Stories Instagram series recounts Holocaust through teenager Eva Heyman's journals

JERUSALEM -- For seven decades, survivor testimony has been the centerpiece of Holocaust commemoration.

But with the world's community of aging survivors rapidly shrinking and global understanding of the genocide that killed 6 million Jews declining, advocates of Holocaust remembrance are seeking new and creative ways to share witnesses' stories with younger generations.

Much as Anne Frank's diary gripped the older generations, an Instagram account based on a true 13-year-old Jewish victim's journal, called Eva.Stories , is generating buzz among the young.

"If we want to bring the memory of the Holocaust to the young generation, we have to bring it to where they are," said the project co-producer, Mati Kochavi, an Israeli high-tech billionaire who hails from a family of Holocaust victims, survivors and educators. "And they're on Instagram."

Kochavi and his daughter, Maya, have created a series of 70 Instagram stories that chronicle the downward spiral of Eva Heyman's life in the fateful spring of 1944 when the Nazis conquered Hungary.

Heyman was one of approximately 430,000 Hungarian Jews who were deported to Nazi concentration camps between May 15 and July 9, 1944. Of the estimated 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust, around 568,000 were Hungarian, according to Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.

Heyman's tale, produced as a Hollywood-style movie with a cast of foreign actors and multi-million dollar budget, will stream throughout Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, which begins at sundown Wednesday. The installments appear as if Heyman had owned a smartphone during World War II and was using Instagram to broadcast her life updates.

The story goes live Wednesday afternoon, opening with Heyman's happier adolescent experiences then darkening as night falls. The Nazis tighten their hold on Hungary's Jews, confiscating her family's business, belongings and home, deporting Heyman to the ghetto and ultimately to the Auschwitz death camp. The story's climactic event is timed to follow Israel's two-minute siren that wails nationwide on Thursday, bringing the country to a standstill at 10 a.m., in annual commemoration of Jewish Holocaust victims.

Even days before the series' release, the account had amassed over 180,000 followers.

One of them was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who posted a video to Instagram on Monday urging Israelis to follow the account and spread stories of survivors via social media in order to "remind ourselves what we lost in the Holocaust and what was returned to us by the creation of the state of Israel."

"What if a girl in the Holocaust had Instagram?" asked the trailer, released on Sunday. The brief film shows simulated cellphone footage of Heyman's fictionalized life, from dancing with friends and a birthday with her grandparents, to Nazi troops marching through the streets of Budapest.

Dozens of Holocaust victims kept diaries of their experiences, with the best known work written by Anne Frank.

The Kochavis pored over scores of the diaries before deciding on Heyman, who, Maya Kochavi said, is the kind of girl "a modern kid in 2019 could connect to," with an unrequited middle school crush, family drama and grand ambitions to become a news photographer.

They hope Heyman's firsthand account will engage otherwise disinterested or uninformed youth.

Yet the concept is not without controversy. While the bulk of the feedback appears to be positive, some critics fear the story, with its internet lingo, hashtags and emojis, risks trivializing Holocaust atrocities.

"A cheapening of the Holocaust compressed into Boomerang," one Instagram user, Dor Levi, wrote in Hebrew in response to the trailer. He facetiously remarked that "the place for commemorating the Holocaust and getting the message across is on Instagram, between the butt of a random model and a video of a chocolate cake."

Maya Kochavi said she anticipated backlash. But she defended Instagram as a place where "lots of very intense and very powerful movements are happening," with potential to convey history's relevance at a time when anti-Semitism is surging in parts of the world, and Holocaust deniers are amplifying their dangerous messages online.

"It is frightening but quite clear to me. We might be the last generation that really remembers and cares about the Holocaust," said her father.

The Kochavis said that as part of their work, they found that a tiny fraction of social media conversations about the Holocaust in the U.S. and Europe are young people. Their research resonates with recent studies by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany revealing significant gaps in Holocaust knowledge among American millennials.

As physical relics disintegrate and human memories fade, Eva's Instagram story contributes to a growing push by Holocaust museums and memorials to capture young people's attention with interactive technology, such as video testimonies, apps and holograms.

The efforts aim, Maya said, "to make monumental historical events tangible and relatable," and to preserve stories of witnesses in perpetuity.

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Eva’s Story

What if instagram existed during the holocaust.

• Home › Case Studies › Eva’s Story

At a time in which there is both a disturbing increase in anti-Semitism combined with a dwindling number of Holocaust survivors, the task of preserving the memory of the Holocaust through education is becoming an ever more challenging and important one.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day 2019, Israeli entrepreneur Mati Kochavi together with his daughter Maya Kochavi launched an innovative memorial project that brought to life the diary of Eva Heiman, a 13-year-old Jewish girl who lived during the Holocaust, in the first Instagram movie of its kind – Eva's Story. The innovative project was the beginning of a new genre of historical memorialization which utilizes social media platforms to connect younger generations with the Holocaust through the language and technologies that they live and breathe.

Our main goal was to generate widespread public resonance and maximize the media coverage and exposure of Eva's Story in Israel, and later to the world at large. The complex, multi-faceted task required in-depth strategic considerations in order to ensure quality media coverage. Eva's Story had to hold its own on the launch date, a day packed with news stories, ceremonies and events memorializing the Holocaust a task particularly challenging considering the backdrop and sensitivities surrounding the first-of-its-kind use of social media as a medium for Holocaust education and memorialization.

Our 360° strategic media plan focussed on three areas in order to maximize media coverage of Eva's Story. Firstly, we created strategic collaborations with influential media and communications organizations. Secondly, we leveraged digital assets and social-media and influencer campaigns. Finally, we focussed on our connections with traditional media, Israeli and international media alike. Our work on the project began three months ahead of the launch; a time in which we secured coverage in advance in Tier-1 media outlets across the world, including a behind-the-scenes feature of Eva's Story on Israel's Channel 12 News, the project's unveiling in Yedioth Ahronoth and major articles in the New York Times and the international news agency, The Associated Press.

From the first moments of its launch, Eva's Story sparked widespread public turmoil with unprecedented coverage in more than 70 countries worldwide in 27 different languages. For two consecutive weeks, Eva's story was on the Israeli and international public agendas as a result of the dazzling media exposure the projected received. The project's founders were interviewed dozens of times, thousands of articles were published, there were 10 million interactions and reactions on social media, over 300 million views on the Instagram account, and a billion views and shares from opinion leaders and influencers, including the Israeli Prime Minister and the White House in Washington D.C. In recognition of their work, Mati and Maya Kochavi were crowned as the ground-breaking creators of Eva's Story and the project was declared one of the most important and influential commemoration initiatives in the world.

כתבתו של עומרי ברק - חדשות 12

Eva Stories

The SIP – A smart podcast - Thursday, 16.07.2020

The third episode of the SIP Podcast by the Smart Family Institute of Communication at the Hebrew University with Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann and Lital Henig discusses the controversial Instagram sensation “Eva Stories” (2019) in relation to the concept of media witnessing. During the conversation the two respondents contextualize the social media commemoration project, which was uploaded during Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2019, and introduce different modes of media witnessing on social media: the journalist witnessing mode, the atrocity witnessing mode, and the social media witnessing mode. Finally, they situate “Eva Stories” in relation to other forms of interactive digital storytelling in the context of Holocaust memory.

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  From TinHouse Press: "Growing up in a New Jersey factory town in the 1980s, Daisy Hernández believed that her aunt had become deathly ill from eating an apple. No one in her family, in either the United States or Colombia, spoke of infectious diseases. Even into her thirties, she only knew that her aunt had died of Chagas, a rare and devastating illness that affects the heart and digestive system. But as Hernández dug deeper, she discovered that Chagas -- or the kissing bug disease -- is more prevalent in the United States than the Zika virus. "

About the Author

A journalist, she has reported for National Geographic , The Atlantic , The New York Times , and Slate , and her writing has been aired on NPR's All Things Considered . Her magazine feature on transgender issues in communities of color was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award.

She has received fellowships from MacDowell, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Djerassi Artist-in-Residence, Blue Mountain Center, and Hedgebrook, and she currently serves on the board of the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Northwestern University.

Image and bio c/o https://www.daisyhernandez.com/

• Daisy Hernandez's Website

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Choices: The Holocaust Through Eva’s Story

Museum exhibit

• Exhibit content strategy
• Print design & layout
• Photo & document editing

About the exhibit

CANDLES Holocaust Museum & Education Center is a dynamic educational organization founded by Holocaust survivor Eva Kor. It exists to educate a wide demographic of folks about the Holocaust, modern-day issues, and the idea of forgiveness. The patrons of the museum include school children through older adults.

Project to-do list

• Design a complete refresh of their primary exhibit space
• Tell the story of their founder in a comprehensive way
• Demonstrate the theme of “choices” made by many (and the impact that had on so many, in this tragic chapter of history)
• Convey the information in an accessible way that accommodates a wide range of ages, heights and education levels
• Utilize CANDLES’ specific brand color blue as well as other vibrant colors, conveying the hope of Eva even after the struggles she faced
• Since the exhibit will remain installed as the permanent exhibit of the museum, account for installation longevity
• At the same time, design an exhibit that gives the museum the flexibility to swap out some pieces of information as needed, keeping the exhibit current and fresh

Project milestone

Content strategy

We were honored to design this exhibit space, to help tell such an important and moving message.

CANDLES Museum provided a multi-part Word doc outline of the exhibit, plus a wealth of reference documents, photos, and information from their archives and from other sources. We helped the staff sort through the copious pieces, clarifying and mocking up each portion of the exhibit. At every step of the way, we focused on organizing and presenting the content in a clear, accessible way .

Dynamic exhibit design

Our complete exhibit design incorporated layered panels to present a lot of information in a dynamic way. Finished pieces were in a range of formats to take advantage of the available space, including foam core boards, photographic prints displayed in frames, and large scale vinyl pieces installed directly on the wall surface.

Spotlight on

Movable walls

CANDLES had the clever idea to commission low walls on casters in the space, and our design took into account these walls folding up into the permanent walls , to provide the museum the ability to roll back the movable walls and use the space as a meeting room in off hours.

Hierarchy of information

We chose the exhibit’s typeface and font styles to be extremely readable from a range of distances. Our designs included text of varying size, to highlight important facts on a first glance, as well as present the full copy in a way that invited further reading and consideration.

The color palette we put together included a wide range of colors , as CANDLES requested, which we selected carefully with respect to different themes throughout the content as well as the overall flow walking through the exhibit.

Project Results

Impactful & educational

The final installed exhibit gives the museum a professional way to present Eva’s story , and continue their outreach and educational goals .

“From the outset, the team at Blustery Day Design understood the mission of our museum and was thus able to provide expert guidance through the exhibit design and fabrication process from start to finish. The result is a professional, impactful exhibit that connects with our visitors .” Dorothy Chambers Former program director, CANDLES Holocaust Museum & Education Center

“Christina at Blustery Day Design put together our museum exhibit in an attractive and thought-provoking manner. She used the available material with skill and attention to detail.” Eva Mozes-Kor Holocaust survivor and Founding Director, CANDLES Holocaust Museum

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Choice Furniture Superstore delivers a 14x return on ad spend

Choice Furniture Superstore (CFS), a Leicester-based furniture retailer shipping nationwide, is among the UK's fastest-growing furniture destinations known for its high-quality furniture and customer service.

The brand embarked on a mission to revolutionize its sales process. From enhancing lead generation via targeted online advertising to boosting revenue through increased sales volumes, CFS aimed to elevate all aspects of its operations.

The solution

CFS teamed up with InMobi and Microsoft Advertising for an extensive campaign. Search, Shopping, and Multimedia ads captivated online shoppers with compelling visuals. Premium native and display ads on the Microsoft Advertising Network targeted high-value audiences. Combining Audience and Search campaigns significantly increased return on ad spend (ROAS). Dynamic Remarketing re-engaged previous website visitors, with in-market audiences targeting high-intent shoppers.

With high-intent channels and a multi-faceted approach, we've achieved exceptional results. The conversion boost, CPA reduction, and RoAS is a testament to the remarkable growth powered by our collaboration with Microsoft Advertising and InMobi.

— Sohail Khan, Marketing Director, Choice Furniture Superstore

The results

Leveraging Microsoft Advertising’s high-value audiences, CFS soared to success, boosting conversions by 2x and slashing CPA by 30%. From January to June 2023, the campaign's RoAS skyrocketed to over 14x, up from 6x in the preceding six months (July to December 2022). Concurrently, overall revenue surged by 2.45x during the same periods.

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Sand in Newport Beach was replenished in 2023. (Photo/iStock)

Beach erosion will make Southern California coastal living five times more expensive by 2050, USC study predicts

The region’s sandy coastlines are vanishing at an alarming rate. It’s a warning sign for coastal communities worldwide, USC research suggests.

Rising sea levels and urban development are accelerating coastal erosion at an alarming rate in Southern California with significant ripple effects on the region’s economy, a USC study reveals.

The study, published in Communications Earth & Environment , predicts that Southern California’s coastal living costs will surge fivefold by 2050 as a direct result of beach erosion. This erosion will require more frequent and costly beach nourishment projects to maintain the state’s treasured shorelines, consequently driving up the cost of living along the coast.

“Our study presents compelling evidence of the rapid deterioration of Southern California’s coastal landscapes,” said Essam Heggy , a geoscientist in the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering/Electrophysics at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the study’s corresponding author.

“The challenges facing Southern California mirror a growing threat shared by coastal communities worldwide. The environmental and economic implications of coastal erosion reach far beyond California’s shores and demand interdisciplinary, global solutions,” he said.

Coastal erosion: Cost of living sure to surge as sandy beaches disappear

To predict future changes along California’s sandy coastlines, the researchers focused on the Gulf of Santa Catalina, which stretches over 150 miles from the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles County to the northern tip of Baja California in Mexico.

They used a combination of historical and recent satellite images as well as advanced algorithms to analyze coastline movement and predict future erosion based on different trends and environmental factors.

The study predicts a tripling of erosion rates by 2050, increasing from an average of 1.45 meters per year to 3.18 meters by 2100. Consequently, the annual sand requirement for beach nourishment could triple by 2050, with costs rising fivefold due to the global increase in sand prices. This will exacerbate economic and logistical pressures on coastal communities.

Beach nourishment is adding sand to an eroded beach to rebuild it and create a wider barrier against waves and storms.

“Our investigation suggests that coastal problems start inland due to the rapid growth of cities along the coast, which compromise inland sediment replenishment of sandy beaches,” said Heggy, whose research focuses on understanding water evolution in Earth’s arid environments.

“As our beaches shrink, the cost of maintaining them will rise. Finding innovative solutions is key to securing a sustainable future for our shores and local economies,” he said.

Coastal erosion in California: A case study for a global problem

Coastal cities in Southern California and those in North Africa bordering the Mediterranean Sea face a common challenge: a semi-arid climate year-round coupled with the growing threats of rising sea levels and eroding shorelines.

A significant portion of Earth’s landmass, roughly 41%, falls under arid or semi-arid classifications, and these areas support over a third of the global population.

To understand this global challenge, the researchers focused on two specific locations: Corona del Mar in Orange County, Calif. — an example of the typical Southern California coastline — and Hammamet North Beach in Tunisia. Both are densely populated and share similar climates, prone to increasing droughts, flash floods and unpredictable rainfall patterns. These characteristics mirror the challenges faced by countless coastal communities worldwide.

The findings showed that the average rate of shoreline retreat in these areas varies. In Southern California, beaches are receding between 0.75 and 1.24 meters per year. In Hammamet North Beach, the retreat rate ranges from 0.21 to about 4.49 meters annually.

“While beach nourishment can temporarily combat erosion, however, it presents significant challenges for developing countries,” said Oula Amrouni, a sedimentologist at the National Institute of Marine Sciences and Technologies at the University of Carthage, Tunis, Tunisia, and one of the study’s co-authors. “The high cost of acquiring the right sand, with the specific grain size, quality and composition, and the technical complexity of extracting and laying it are major hurdles. Additionally, worsening erosion in previously stable areas compels more frequent nourishment projects, straining already limited budgets and leading to unplanned expenditures for many communities.”

About the study: Co-authors of the study include Oula Amrouni and Abderraouf Hzami of the National Institute of Marine Sciences and Technologies at the University of Carthage, Tunis, Tunisia.

This research is supported by the Arid Climates and Water Research Center at USC under contract from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (AWD#00630), the USC Zumberge Research and Innovation Fund, and the USC Sea Grant.

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Can music education boost grades, attendance? A new case study suggests it might

A new case study that included hundreds of Tennessee public schools suggests that music education may be tied to better math and reading scores, along with better attendance and positive social, emotional and behavioral effects.

The study, titled "Face the Music: A Case Study for Expanding Music and Arts in Schools," was the result of a joint effort between the CMA Foundation and the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation. It examined the challenges and benefits stemming from music and arts education across 589 schools and 23 districts in Tennessee, and also included feedback from music and arts teachers, students and lifelong learners.

“Music and arts education are playing a key role in helping students catch up after the pandemic, from helping with math and reading proficiency to coping with stress and trauma. The research is clear: arts and music classes are a must-have, not a nice-to-have," CMA Foundation Executive Director Tiffany Kerns said in a news release.

The foundations behind the study hope it will serve as a model for other states to boost music and arts education at the state and district level, along with gaining support from nonprofit organizations and philanthropy.

Here are key takeaways from the study.

Related: TN high school band gets surprise invite to perform at CMA Fest as director wins award

A connection between music, arts, math and reading

Data from the majority of districts in the study showed that students enrolled in music and arts programs demonstrated significantly higher proficiency rates in math and literacy. The majority of districts also saw better attendance rates from music and arts students, compared to schoolwide averages. These outcomes align with a handful of other studies. However, the case study report did note an important caveat: Most studies on music and arts participation don't prove it's the cause of improved academics.

Here's a look at the proficiency and attendance numbers the study revealed:

• Roughly 1-in-4 school districts reported 47% of students enrolled in music and arts programs showed reading proficiency, compared to an overall school average of 36%.
• Roughly 7-in-10 school districts reported 46% of students enrolled in music and arts programs excelled in math, compared to an overall school average of 35%.
• Roughly 3-in-4 districts reported increased attendance rates for students enrolled in music and arts programs. The study noted that schools where music and arts students outpaced the school average for attendance saw an average attendance boost of 12%.

Systemic barriers to music and arts education

The case study also outlined factors that hamper access to music and arts education for students and schools. They largely align with trends reported in the most recent National Arts Education Status Report and historical data from the Tennessee Arts Education Data Project, the study said.

The barriers for students identified in the study are:

• Participation requirements, including after-school attendance and prerequisites or auditions
• Housing insecurity
• Transportation challenges
• Participation fees
• Equipment costs

The study also showed that curriculum scheduling is a primary issue facing schools. That can disrupt the ability to offer sequential music and arts classes in every grade, allowing students to explore a variety of options and build upon their skills each year.

Recommendations for action

The study mapped out a series of recommendations for how everyone from parents and students to educators and lawmakers can take action to bolster music and arts education in Tennessee.

For school community members like parents, students and educators, that can range from simply attending music and arts events to show support to advocating for more funding for programs. The study also calls on school and state leaders to partner to fund music and arts education, train teachers and develop partnerships that help sustain those programs in schools. It also challenges philanthropic organizations to fund grants, promote advocacy and awareness and take other steps to partner with and support schools.

"Each of us can support a system of change to enhance music and arts education for a more well-rounded education for our students," the study stated.

A look at the demographics and schools

The demographics of the schools that participated were similar to the state of Tennessee as a whole, but they differed slightly when it came to the population of public school students statewide. Students in the study were:

• 16% Black or African American
• 9% Hispanic or Latino
• 2% other racial identities
• 24% socioeconomically disadvantaged
• 13% engaged in special education services
• 9% English language learners
• 2% experiencing homelessness or in foster care
• 1% identified as migrants or refugees

According to 2022-23 academic year data from the Tennessee Department of Education, here's how Tennessee schools demographics broke down:

• 24% Black and African American
• 14% Hispanic
• 3% other racial identities
• 30% economically disadvantaged
• 14% students with disabilities
• 8% English learners
• Less than 1% in foster care
• 2% experiencing homelessness
• Less than 1% identified as migrants

Here's the full list of districts that participated in the case study:

• Arlington Community Schools
• Bartlett City Schools
• Benton County Schools
• Chester County School District
• Clarksville-Montgomery County School System
• Coffee County School District
• Germantown Municipal School District
• Giles County School System
• Greene County Schools
• Hamilton County Schools
• Jackson-Madison County School District
• Knox County Schools
• Lincoln County Schools
• Marion County Schools
• Maury County Public Schools
• Metro Nashville Public Schools
• Paris Special School District
• Robertson County Schools
• Rutherford County Schools
• Tullahoma City Schools
• Weakley County Schools
• Williamson County School 
• Wilson County Schools

The CMA Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the Country Music Association. More information, along with the foundation's extensive research and initiatives, can be found at cmafoundation.org . Learn more about the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation at mhopus.org .

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AI Is Making Economists Rethink the Story of Automation

• Walter Frick

Economists have traditionally believed that new technology lifts all boats. But in the case of AI, some are asking: Will some employees get left behind?

Will artificial intelligence take our jobs? As AI raises new fears about a jobless future, it’s helpful to consider how economists’ understanding of technology and labor has evolved. For decades, economists were relatively optimistic, and pointed out that previous waves of technology had not led to mass unemployment. But as income inequality rose in much of the world, they began to revise their theories. Newer models of technology’s affects on the labor market account for the fact that it absolutely can displace workers and lower wages. In the long run, technology does tend to raise living standards. But how soon and how broadly? That depends on two factors: Whether technologies create new jobs for people to do and whether workers have a voice in technology’s deployment.

Is artificial intelligence about to put vast numbers of people out of a job? Most economists would argue the answer is no: If technology permanently puts people out of work then why, after centuries of new technologies, are there still so many jobs left ? New technologies, they claim, make the economy more productive and allow people to enter new fields — like the shift from agriculture to manufacturing. For that reason, economists have historically shared a general view that whatever upheaval might be caused by technological change, it is “somewhere between benign and benevolent.”

• Walter Frick is a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review , where he was formerly a senior editor and deputy editor of HBR.org. He is the founder of Nonrival , a newsletter where readers make crowdsourced predictions about economics and business. He has been an executive editor at Quartz as well as a Knight Visiting Fellow at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism and an Assembly Fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. He has also written for The Atlantic , MIT Technology Review , The Boston Globe , and the BBC, among other publications.

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What happened when Israel attacked Rafah?

Israel has attacked twice since Sunday, killing tens of people in horrific circumstances.

Thirteen out of 21 people killed by Israel in an air strike on the so-called “safe area” of al-Mawasi were civilian women and girls, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary reported on Tuesday.

This was the second attack since Sunday, with a horrifying strike on Sunday night setting displaced people’s shelters ablaze not too far from Tuesday’s strike.

Keep reading

Rafah residents face further danger as israel hits city’s two hospitals rafah residents face further danger as ..., global protests condemn israel’s attack on rafah global protests condemn israel’s attack ..., rafah’s main hospital shuts as israel attacks again rafah’s main hospital shuts as israel ....

The world had watched, aghast, on Monday as displaced Palestinians were forced to dig through smouldering remains with their bare hands – looking for bodies, or injured people, or in some cases, a few scraps of food they could salvage to keep their families going a bit longer.

As reports further clarify what happened on Tuesday, here are the details of Sunday’s attack:

When and where was this attack?

The attack happened at night on May 26.

It was inflicted on an encampment of makeshift shelters just north of Rafah city, in an area called Tal as-Sultan

It came after United States President Joe Biden said a “major offensive” by Israel on Rafah would be a red line.

What happened in the attack?

Many shelters burst into flames with their occupants still inside.

The Gaza Government Media Office said Israel dropped seven 900kg (2,000-pound) bombs as well as missiles on the displacement camp.

The Israeli army said it targeted Rafah with “precision munitions”, and that a nearby fuel tank led to the subsequent fire.

Horrific videos emerged of the aftermath – the most notable was of a man holding up the corpse of a young child without a head.

Al Jazeera’s Sanad Verification Agency was able to obtain images of fragments believed to be of the weaponry used in this attack. The photos the agency obtained show the tail of a GBU-39/B small-diameter bomb, which is made by Boeing. The GBU-39/B includes a jet engine taken from the M26 unguided missile.

Who were the people killed?

Thousands of civilians had been sheltering in the Tal as-Sultan area, seeking some minimal protection from the continuous Israeli attacks across Gaza.

The Israeli government had not issued any orders to evacuate the area before it attacked.

How many people died?

Israel killed at least 45 people in the offensive.

The total number of injured people is hard to determine, as the hospital where casualties were taken has closed after a subsequent Israeli drone attack on its entrance that killed two members of staff.

How did they die?

Some people died from the impact of the bomb.

Some people “reportedly burned to death”, according to Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

What were they doing when they died?

Accounts from Rafah say that many of the dead were preparing to go to sleep when the attack occurred.

Why is Israel doing this?

Initially, the Israeli army claimed it had struck “a Hamas compound in Rafah in which significant Hamas terrorists were operating”.

It added it was “aware of reports indicating that as a result of the strike and fire that was ignited several civilians in the area were harmed”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has since said the attack was “a tragic mistake.”

“Despite our best effort not to harm those not involved, unfortunately a tragic error happened last night. We are investigating the case,” Netanyahu said.

The attack came two days after the ICJ ordered Israel to halt its offensive on Rafah.

Is the international community going to do anything?

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is set to convene an emergency meeting over the attack on Rafah.

To date, the United States has vetoed every UNSC proposal aimed at holding Israel accountable.

Donald Trump found guilty on all counts in New York hush money trial

Trump, who is seeking another term in the White House, becomes the first former U.S. president convicted of a crime.

NEW YORK — A Manhattan jury on Thursday found Donald Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to an adult-film actress, delivering a historic verdict that could shape the November election and that makes Trump the first former U.S. president convicted of a crime.

The verdict is an extraordinary loss for the presumptive GOP nominee, who delivered near-daily tirades outside the courtroom throughout the trial — excoriating the justice system and declaring his innocence.

Twelve jurors, whose names were shielded by the judge from public view, spent a little more than a day weighing the felony counts against Trump before returning their judgment unanimously saying otherwise.

Trump guilty verdict

Trump, 77, faces a maximum sentence of 1⅓ to four years in prison after being deemed a felon in the city where he first rose to prominence . Given his age and lack of a prior criminal record, he could serve a shorter sentence or no term of incarceration at all.

New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan scheduled the former president’s sentencing for July 11 — just days before the start of the Republican National Convention, where Trump is set to be formally nominated by his party.

The verdict propels the country into unprecedented territory, and its impact will reverberate across U.S. politics in the coming months. While awaiting his sentence, Trump will continue to campaign to reclaim the White House. Trump, who has been charged in three other criminal cases , is expected to appeal the New York verdict; neither the conviction nor any sentence he may receive prevents him from serving as president.

Podcast episode

After the verdict was read, Trump was told he could go free without bail. He turned to his son, Eric, and the two shared a stern handshake before Trump left the courtroom with a grimace, his face flushed. While Eric and his brother, Donald Trump Jr., attended multiple days of their father’s trial, former first lady Melania Trump and the former president’s daughter Ivanka stayed away.

Outside the courtroom, Trump again declared himself innocent, calling the trial “a disgrace” and falsely insisting that the case was driven by President Biden , his opponent in the Nov. 5 election.

“This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt,” Trump said. “The real verdict is going to be November 5, by the people, and they know what happened here.”

The conviction is a major victory for Manhattan prosecutors, who brought a local case with immense national implications even after their federal counterparts declined to seek an indictment against Trump in the matter years earlier.

“While this defendant may be unlike any other in American history, we arrived at this trial, and ultimately today at this verdict, in the same manner as every other case that comes through the courtroom doors,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D), the elected prosecutor whose office brought the case, said after the verdict, “by following the facts and the law, and by doing so without fear or favor.”

Asked about legal commentators and analysts who questioned the indictment — with some calling it the weakest of four criminal prosecutions facing Trump — Bragg said there was only one group whose view of the case ultimately mattered.

“Today, we have the most important voice of all,” Bragg said at a news conference, delivering his first extended public remarks about the trial since it began. “And that’s the voice of the jurors.”

The trial, which began in mid-April, hinged on a $130,000 payment made to Stormy Daniels, an adult-film actress who alleged a sexual encounter with Trump in a Lake Tahoe hotel room in 2006. Trump denies they had sex.

Michael Cohen, Trump’s onetime attorney and fixer, paid Daniels on the eve of the 2016 presidential election to keep her from publicly sharing her claims of a tryst. Cohen was then given monthly reimbursement payments from Trump that were recorded as legal fees in documents maintained by Trump’s company. Prosecutors say classifying the payments as legal fees was criminal.

Prosecutors accused Trump of overseeing “a long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election.” The government’s complex theory of the case was built on interlocking alleged criminal violations, and jurors were given a convoluted set of instructions as a result.

Defense attorneys argued that monthly $35,000 payments made to Cohen in 2017 were in fact compensation for legal services and that the classification of the business records was correct. The defense team also took blistering aim at Cohen, the prosecution’s key witness who has pleaded guilty to multiple crimes , including lying to Congress.

“You cannot convict President Trump of any crime beyond a reasonable doubt on the words of Michael Cohen,” defense lawyer Todd Blanche had told jurors.

Cohen told jurors that he was acting at Trump’s direction in arranging the Daniels payment. He was the only witness to testify that his former boss was directly involved. Defense attorneys subjected Cohen to brutal cross-examination, accusing him of lying on the stand and painting him as singularly focused on seeing Trump punished.

Blanche said after the verdict that it appeared jurors accepted Cohen’s testimony despite his attempts to convince them otherwise.

“At the end of the day, it remains true that if the word of Michael Cohen was not accepted at all, then you could not have convicted President Trump,” Blanche said on CNN a few hours after the verdict was reached. “And the jury convicted. So at the end of the day, they looked past what we thought were fatal flaws in Mr. Cohen’s story and his past, and they reached a guilty verdict.”

He also said he did not believe New York was “a fair place” to put Trump on trial.

Concerns about Cohen’s credibility were part of the reason federal prosecutors declined to pursue charges against Trump in connection with the hush money payment years earlier , according to people familiar with the decision who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal discussions.

But Bragg’s office continued scrutinizing the issue. The hush money allegations had been known around his office as the “zombie” case because for years, it seemed lifeless without truly dying. Last year, a Manhattan grand jury took the historic step of voting to indict Trump, the first of four times he was charged in a span of about five months.

The verdict Thursday was Trump’s latest legal defeat in a New York court since last year. He lost two civil cases to the writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of battery and defamation, and was ordered to pay her nearly $90 million ; he is appealing. He was also hit with nearly half a billion dollars in penalties following a civil fraud lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), though he was allowed to post a lower bond while appealing that decision.

And Trump faces criminal cases in Florida, Georgia and D.C. — though due to appeals and pretrial motions, it is quite possible none of them will go to trial before Election Day.

The jury in Manhattan was tasked with deciding whether Trump was guilty on each specific count of falsifying business records and whether he did so in an effort to unlawfully impact an election. Prosecutors offered three types of underlying crimes that could raise the unlawful election-meddling allegation; jurors did not have to be unanimous about which of those they felt was at play.

A jury of seven men and five women — seated during a week-long selection process in April — began deliberations Wednesday and, within hours, said they wanted to hear part of the trial testimony and some of Merchan’s instructions repeated to them. After that happened Thursday morning, the jurors retreated to the jury room to continue deliberations.

Attorneys were preparing to leave court for the day at 4:30 p.m. without a verdict and return Friday morning. Then a note from the jury room arrived.

“We the jury have a verdict,” the note said.

Trump and his legal team then spent an agonizing half-hour waiting while the panel filled out the lengthy jury form.

Jurors looked solemn as they filed into the jury box to reveal their verdict. All eyes in the courtroom were on the jury foreman as he rose from his seat to deliver their findings count by count. After he repeated “guilty” 34 times, once for each count, the jurors were individually polled by the clerk to confirm they were unanimous.

Trump watched them, frowning, his hands resting on his lap.

Merchan then thanked the jurors for their work, saying they had “a very stressful and difficult task.” He also told them that they were now free to discuss the case but did not have to.

They filed out of court a short while later, walking one final time in front of Trump. As usual, they looked forward but not directly at him.

Bragg left the courtroom. His trial team, all smiles, remained for several minutes, holding their transcripts and other materials.

The jury had deliberated for about 11 hours across two days, including the time spent hearing testimony and instructions repeated Thursday.

“The speed with which this verdict was returned is shocking,” particularly given the legal complexity of the case, said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice.

“It signals that despite the doubts raised by the defense about the credibility of Michael Cohen, the jury viewed this as an overwhelming case for prosecutors and there was little dissent among jurors about this outcome,” he said.

During the trial, witness testimony frequently veered into sordid territory , offering an expansive education about tabloid practices as well as how famous, powerful people work to keep scandalous stories and allegations hidden.

Daniels testified in graphic detail about what she said happened between her and Trump in 2006, when they met at a celebrity golf tournament. She described what sounded at times like a nonconsensual sexual encounter with him, leading his attorneys to unsuccessfully call for a mistrial .

Trump ultimately did not take the stand — an unlikely scenario , but one he publicly insisted was on the table throughout the proceedings.

Instead, he frequently pilloried the case on his way in and out of court, often castigating Merchan and Bragg.

Merchan had issued a gag order prohibiting Trump from commenting on witnesses or jurors in the case. He ruled that Trump violated the gag order 10 different times and twice found him in contempt of court, warning that jail time could follow if that continued.

Inside the courtroom, Trump could be a passive figure and closed his eyes while witnesses testified, leading to speculation that he had dozed off — something that he denies. Other times, he glowered or appeared angry, including when Daniels testified, leading Merchan to tell Trump’s lawyer the former president was “ cursing audibly ” and needed to stop.

In the trial’s final stretch, Trump was accompanied to the Manhattan courthouse by a rotating entourage of political allies and supporters , who sat behind him in the courtroom and appeared before cameras in a nearby park to denounce and question the trial.

Some of those allies pilloried the outcome Thursday. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) called it “a shameful day in American history,” while House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) decried what he called “radical partisan Democrats behind this abuse of power.”

Biden’s campaign said in a statement that the verdict showed “no one is above the law,” while noting that Trump would still be on the ballot in November.

If Trump wins that election, he would regain the presidency’s broad power to grant pardons. He could not , however, pardon himself, because he was convicted Thursday in state court. Presidents can only grant clemency on federal charges.

Berman reported from Washington. Isaac Arnsdorf in New York and Marianne LeVine in Washington contributed to this report.

Trump New York hush money case

Donald Trump is the first former president convicted of a crime .

Can Trump still run for president? Yes. He is eligible to campaign and serve as president if elected, but he won’t be able to pardon himself . Here’s everything to know about next steps , what this means for his candidacy and the other outstanding trials he faces .

What happens next? Trump’s sentencing is scheduled for July 11. He faces up to four years in prison, but legal experts say incarceration appears unlikely. Trump has 30 days to file notice of an appeal of the verdict and six months to file the full appeal.

Reaction to the verdict: Trump continued to maintain his innocence , railing against what he called a “rigged, disgraceful trial” and emphasizing voters would deliver the real verdict on Election Day.

The charges: Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records . Falsifying business records is a felony in New York when there is an “intent to defraud” that includes an intent to “commit another crime or to aid or conceal” another crime.