MobileActive.org

The paper reviews roughly 200 recent studies of mobile (cellular) phone use in the developing world, and identifies major concentrations of research. It categorizes studies along two dimensions. One dimension distinguishes studies of the determinants of mobile adoption from those that assess the impacts of mobile use, and from those focused on the interrelationships between mobile technologies and users. A secondary dimension identifies a sub-set of studies with a strong economic development perspective. The discussion considers the implications of the resulting review and typology for future research.

This report explores the ways in which non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) and
other groups deploy and use mobile
technology in their work to help solve some
of the world’s greatest problems. This study
is not meant to be exhaustive or definitive,
but rather to provide a view into how a
number of organizations are using mobile
technology to achieve social impact. The authors
selected case studies that enabled an
exploration of significant innovations,
opportunities, and emerging trends, as well
as the obstacles, in the use of mobile
technology to advance social goals.

We are entering the media economy. The
traditional boundaries of the media and
entertainment industry have become
meaningless. Today almost every
business and social activity is a form
of media. An increasing proportion of
our social interactions happen across
media channels. Every organization is
now a media entity, engaged in creating
and disseminating messages among its
staff, customers, and partners to achieve
business objectives. As the physical economy
becomes marginalized and economic value
becomes centered on the virtual, media
encompasses almost everything.
At the same time, many media organizations are experiencing
severe challenges, as content proliferates, audiences change
behaviors, advertising revenue erodes, and new competitors
emerge. Others are prospering as they tap swiftly growing
sectors, leverage amateur content creation, tap the power of
social networks, and scale production costs. Meanwhile adjacent
industries such as telecom, financial services, mobile phones,
consumer electronics, professional services, and even automobile
are becoming media participants. This year's Report contents include:
* Growth Forecasts for the Global Media Market
* Seven Driving Forces Shaping Media
* Future of the Media Lifecycle
* Future of Media: Strategy Tools
* Media Snippets

Large-scale disasters are growing. On the one hand, global warming and unprecedented
environmental change are resulting in disasters more frequent and calamitous than before.
Natural disasters such as earthquakes (Kashmir, 2005), floods (Bangladesh, India and
Nepal, 2007), landslides and mudslides (Bam, 2003; Chittagong, 2007), volcanic eruptions
(Merapi, 2006), tsunamis (South and Southeast Asia, 2005) and forest fires (across
Europe, 2007) continue to severely affect the lives and livelihoods of millions. On the other,
the iconic images of the London bombings (7 July 2006), the Twin Towers in New York on
11 September 2001, Madrid train bombs (2004) and the Bali bombings (2002 and 2005)
coupled with hundreds of gruesome local incidents -- including suicide bombings in coun-
tries such as Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Iraq -- are a stark reminder that man made disas-
ters, often the result of terrorism, are a permanent feature of domestic life in many coun-
tries.

But how do we make sense of such disasters -- their causes, their impact on those in-
volved as victims and perpetrators? How do we maintain compassion in a world with com-
peting human tragedies? Does the increasing availability and affordability of Information
and Communications Technologies (ICT) -- covering PCs, radio, mobile phones, blogs,
SMS and the Internet -- result in the coverage and awareness of disasters qualitatively bet-
ter than before? Or does reportage across a hundred thousand websites and blogs by
those who are untrained in professional journalism diminish the importance of and, by ex-
tension, the response towards a disaster?

There are no easy answers to these questions. Whether we like it or not, new technologies
are changing the manner in which we gather, store, disseminate, consume and comment
on news. The overall experience after the tsunami in Sri Lanka and the subsequent design
of ICTs for humanitarian aid suggests that ordinary citizens can play a pivotal role in facili-
tating the flow of information in relief and conflict management mechanisms.

Mobile telephony will be the world’s first ubiquitous communications platform and
is getting there faster than anyone expected. Its major path of growth is now in the
global South where the mobile is not just a phone but a global address, a transaction
device, and an identity marker for hundreds of millions of poor people. is holds
unprecedented opportunity for media in developing countries to engage their core
audiences more deeply, reach new audiences on the edge of their current footprint,
and provide interactive and customised information services that are both profitable
and life-improving. But the opportunity is also a threat to traditional media, just
as the Internet has been – and on a larger scale in developing countries. If media
don’t address the mobile as a viable information platform others will, and within the
space of a few years media players there will have lost a large measure of their market
share, ‘mind share’, and standing in society at large.
mobile

Across the world, journalists and traditional news media organizations have come to realize that new media—including blogs, social networking sites, cell phone messaging, and other relatively new technology applications—are having a profound impact on their work. A recent survey of U.S. journalists noted that for a majority of respondents, the new media have had a significant impact on the speed, tone, and editorial direction of their reporting.1 Yet the field of independent media development has been slow to fully realize the potential of new information and communication technology (ICT). Although new technologies have fundamentally altered the traditional media landscape, many media-development donors, practitioners, and scholars have only recently begun to consider ICT seriously and systematically in their traditional models of media development. Many who do utilize ICT tend to do so in the background, rather than making new technologies the major feature of programming. To complicate matters further, new technologies are not simply being incorporated into the rules of the media game; they are changing them completely. New trends like citizen-based journalism, spontaneous mass organization prompted by new media communication, instantaneous image transmission, and ubiquitous computing have totally reshaped the way people and institutions gather and process information. During the recent presidential primary contests in the United States, for example, viewers were able to submit questions via video networking sites such as YouTube, and discuss candidates’ debate performances on social networking sites such as Facebook. The trend is not limited to developed countries; from the Philippines to Kenya to Korea, new information technologies are transforming the modern news media. To be sure, incorporating and anticipating new media technologies in traditional independent media-development models may be a more complicated process than it appears. Particularly because use of these technologies can be spontaneous, user-driven, and relatively low-cost, it would appear that making creative use of them would be relatively easy for donors and practitioners working on independent media development. Nevertheless, there are additional factors that must be considered, including questions of access; patterns of use; the “non-organic” quality of top-down, donor-driven programs; technical literacy; and other similar factors. Through an examination of the use of ICT in independent media development, this paper seeks to shed light on the state of current practice with respect to media development and new technologies. It will also place these developments within the context of a rapidly changing global information industry, one that is evolving faster than traditional media programs have been able to adapt. Finally, it will offer several recommendations on how independent media-development programs can take advantage of, and keep abreast of, these new global trends.

This report explores the dynamics of the role of mobile phones in creating and enhancing access to information and citizen-produced media. It explores trends in the use of mobile telephony with a focus on software and platforms that make content creation and broadcasting easier. It also presents an inventory of current and potential uses of mobile phones to promote citizen media and freedom of information, and presents short case studies of examples from the MobileActive.org community.

It further discusses security considerations that might impact citizen media and freedom of information. Finally, it describes possible medium-term directions for future development and donor investments. To the end of adding additional tools, case studies, and insights to the document from reader contribution, there is A Mobile Voice addition to the MobileActive.org wiki.

The document includes an introduction, key observations, definitions, trends in news production and consumption, industry trends, mobile phone functions and their use in citizen media, citizen media projects, security considerations, open source citizen media platforms, counter-productive uses of mobile phones, cost, knowledge gaps, hardware and software gaps, industry issues, and recommendations.

Use of information and communication technologies for international development is moving
to its next phase. This will require new technologies, new approaches to innovation, new
intellectual integration, and, above all, a new view of the world’s poor. The phase change from information and communication
technologies for international
development (ICT4D) 1.0 to ICT4D 2.0 presents
opportunities for informatics professionals
and offers new markets for ICT vendors.
It also brings new challenges to our established methods
of working and emphasizes the need for new expertise
and new worldviews. Harnessing digital technologies in
the service of some of our world’s most severe problems
requires understanding these changes. Before proceeding,
though, we must ask why we should give priority to
ICT application for the poor in developing countries.

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on development policy issues including health, natural resources, education and more. This issue focuses on micro-entrepreneurs in Nigeria, mobile ladies in Bangladesh, unequal gender relations in Zambia, getting beyond the three billion mark, mobile banking and poor households in Jamaica.

The positive implications of landline telecoms infrastructure and, more recently, of mobile communications on
economic growth in the developed world have long been acknowledged, with numerous studies analysing the
issue. Now that most of the developed world has reached high penetration levels of mobile phones, both current
growth patterns and future projections suggest that virtually all of the mobile industry’s new customers in the
coming years will come from developing countries. In fact, as of 2007, there were more mobile customers in
developing countries than in the entire developed world (ITU).
What impact are mobile phones having on developing countries and are user experiences and overall impacts
unique or similar to those of developed countries? While it might seem intuitive to just extrapolate from the results
of earlier studies in developed countries, the developing world is in fact leap-frogging the developed world when
it comes to mobile communication and its many uses. The implications of this technology on daily life in
developing countries appear to be more far-reaching than they were in the earlier developed country rollouts. For
example, studies have demonstrated that mobile technology is driving improvements in social links, the creation
of social capital, improved market information flows and productivity, as well as increases in GDP and Foreign
Direct Investment.
This report surveys recent research and highlights the top studies in this area based on content, relevance,
originality and credibility. While it is not an exhaustive and scientifically developed list, it illustrates the work that
we feel is most important at the moment and highlights key conclusions on the impact of mobile technology in
developing countries.
Further, while the existing research is valuable in understanding the impacts, the literature is still limited in its
coverage and scope. We therefore recommend additional research to expand evidence and knowledge, particularly
with respect to basic economic studies, prospective applications and the needs of users around financial services.
We also call on stakeholders such as mobile operators, governments, industry groups, foundations and
development organisations to play their part in improving information sharing, increasing research and driving
developments in these countries.
Finally, we provide information on additional research on impacts and policy issues, as well.

In this paper we detail the synergies we have observed be-
tween the features and limitations of mobile phones, and the
usability and accessibility requirements of rural developing
world users. This includes support for sequential interac-
tion, multimedia input and output, asynchronous messag-
ing and a universally familiar numeric keypad. However,
we argue that the WWW as currently conceived may be an
inappropriate model for delivering mobile information ser-
vices in this context. We highlight a number of tensions we
have observed between the traditional web model, and the
design synergies that we have uncovered. To demonstrate
an alternative framework, we describe CAM | a platform
for delivering mobile information services in the rural devel-
oping world. Supporting scripted execution, media-driven,
tangible interaction as well as an online usage model, CAM
is uniquely adapted both to rural accessibility requirements
and the inherent capabilities of mobile phones. By learning
from the CAM design, we can either improve the design of
existing mobile web standards and services, or implement a
more appropriate framework altogether.

This practical guidebook is a must-have for every nonprofit and political organization interested in reaching youth. The book clearly and concisely details the ways in which new media has been used successfully –and unsuccessfully– to recruit, organize, and engage young people. Importantly, it ties online efforts to offline action. Chapter 4 focuses on mobile phones, using sms text messaging, what it is, how it works, and how to get started.

This practical guidebook is a must-have for every nonprofit and political organization interested in reaching youth. The book clearly and concisely details the ways in which new media has been used successfully –and unsuccessfully– to recruit, organize, and engage young people. Importantly, it ties online efforts to offline action."

This 16-page policy briefing from the BBC World Trust Service analyses the role of the media in the Kenyan [January 2008] post-election violence. It is designed to enable an understanding of what has happened in Kenya in the belief that these issues have important policy implications and consequences in many countries. It situates its analysis within debates on democratic governance and poverty in order to contribute to a process of extracting lessons from the crisis. The briefing examines political polarity in the media and its function as a political tool. It discusses the inciting of violence and the role of the local language or vernacular media, as well as the media's role in calming the violence. "The role of the media in Kenya's violence has ...raised questions of whether media can be too free in fragile states such as Kenya....[The] briefing argues that the role of the local language media during the crisis was the product of a chaotic regulatory policy and the lack of training - especially of talk show hosts, whose programmes provided the platform for most of the hate speech....It argues that many local language radio [stations] played a role in calming tensions as well as inflaming them, and could be a powerful mechanism for reconciliation."

Serious crises and disasters have micro and macro social arrangements that differ
from routine situations, as the field of disaster studies has described over its 100-year history.
With increasingly pervasive information and communications technology (ICT) and a
changing political arena where terrorism is perceived as a major threat, the attention to crisis
is high. Some of these new features of social life have created real change in the sociology of
disaster that we are only beginning to understand. However, much of what might seem to be
new is not; rather ICT makes some behaviors more visible, in particular first response and
altruistic activities. Even so, with each new crisis event, the calls for technological solutions
and policy change come fast and furious, often in absence of empirical research. Our lab is
establishing an area of sociologically informed research and ICT development in the area of
crisis informatics. Here, we report on some of the challenges and findings when conducting
empirical study where the subject of attention is disperse, emergent and increasingly
expanding through on-line arenas. We specifically consider the challenge of studying citizen-
side information generation and dissemination activities during the April 16, 2007 crisis at
Virginia Tech, which we have investigated both on-site and on-lin

Collaboration supported by mobile devices has brought advantages for users and also challenges for software developers and mobile computing devices manufacturers. Every kind of device used to support mobile collaboration has strengths and weaknesses depending on the work context where it is used. The idea is to use a specific device when advantages are most relevant and disadvantages do not affect team work. This paper proposes an evaluation framework that helps developers to identify the type of device that can be used to support mobile collaboration in specific work contexts. In addition, three mobile collaborative applications are analyzed using the evaluation framework. The results of the analysis are then compared with the empirically observed suitability.

Cell phones introduce a range of new possibilities for social networking and communication, media use and production, political activism, as well as education. Young people in South Africa have adopted a range of innovative communicative practices, notably those which exploit low-cost mobile applications, as well as a growing host of rich-media and Internet-based applications. Until now, little quantitative data has been available to describe exactly to what extent and how young people access and use cell phones. This paper reports an extensive study, which surveyed 500 students from very low-income areas in Cape Town, South Africa. The students reported intensive use of cell phones, at a level which overshadows their use of less widely accessible technologies such as desktop computers. Notably, the extensive use of mobile Internet applications which students reported shows that many young urban South Africans first access the Internet via their phones, and that their concepts of the Internet and media in general are consequently strongly shaped by a distinct set of mobile applications.

Mobile technology lets the users implement several strategies in order to minimize their spending. This paper documents the study of the determinants of the use of different strategies for a sample of users surveyed during May 2007 in developing countries as Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. This survey is focused in low income people and includes about 5500 people. The methodology used includes two steps. First, the study of the determinants of use of each strategy by means of a probabilistic model. It was found that educative level and age are important determinants of the use of the alternatives. Second, the use of a Poisson regression model to capture the intensity of use of these set of strategies. The findings differ among countries.

The title of this workshop, ‘beyond voice’, is illustrative of one of the central questions currently surrounding mobile communication in the developing world. Put simply, there is a great deal of enthusiasm around the notion that a large group of users will access the internet for the first time via data enabled mobile handsets. Recent estimates from India, for example (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, 2007), suggest there may be more mobile Internet connections than traditional PC Internet connections operational in the country. Concurrently, high-end smart phones promise browsing experiences which are steadily closing the gaps in speed and ease of use which have hampered earlier incarnations of the mobile internet, such as WAP.
But the raw enthusiasm, the aggregate statistics, and the glossy marketing images from the top-end of handset markets fail to capture the reality of mobile internet use in the developing world. The crux of this paper’s argument is that the research community knows comparatively little about this supposed community of users who access and use the Internet exclusively via mobile phones. We know little about who they are, how they discover and access the mobile internet, and how the mobile internet fits into their lives.
This paper reports on ongoing qualitative/exploratory research in low income communities in urban South Africa. Through convenience and snowball sampling, the researchers have sought out ‘early adopters’ among mobile-only internet users. The analysis of the interviews will delineate and describe distinctive new “paths” to Internet use that largely bypass PCs. We draw on a domestication approach (Haddon, 2003; Hahn & Kibora, 2008; Silverstone & Hirsch, 1992) to move beyond an ‘adoption’ or ‘diffusion’ paradigm and to complement aggregate statistical perspectives.
As exploratory research, this project cannot definitively identify all the new paths to the internet, nor the relative frequency with which individuals choose these paths. However, early findings will illustrate current and emerging practices in mobile-only internet use, as well as opportunities and constraints for policymakers interested in promoting or leveraging internet use among a much broader community of the world’s inhabitants

This paper takes a look at the potential evolution of mobile technology and services over the next ten years and discusses an mServices framework for building and deploying diverse mobile services. The paper also looks at the challenges of such an endeavor and the steps needed to achieve the vision.

The report suggests how mobile devices will be used for much more than voice communications in the coming years in mHealth, mGovernance, mEnterprise, and mPublic Safety. Supporting the projections are: a mapping of mobile penetration, mobile ecosystem dynamics and deployment and adoption of mobile technology in the developing world. The report summarizes the building blocks of a mobile services platform and concludes with an emphasis on public-private partnership and the innovative business models that will accompany these changes.

Mobile Surveillance Basics

Mobiles can be useful tools for collecting, planning, coordinating and recording activities of NGO staff and activists. But did you know that whenever your phone is on, your location is known to the network operator? Or that each phone and SIM card transmits a unique identifying code, which, unless you are very careful about how you acquire the phone and SIM, can be traced uniquely to you?

With cameras, GPS, mobile Internet come ever more dangerous surveillance possibilities, allowing an observer, once they have succeeded in gaining control of the phone, to turn it into a sophisticated recording device. However, even a simple phone can be tracked whenever it is on the network, and calls and text messages are far from private. Where surveillance is undertaken in collusion with the network operator, both the content of the communication and the identities of the parties involved is able to be discovered, sometimes even retrospectively. It is also possible to surreptitiously install software on phones on the network, potentially gaining access to any records stored on the phone.

This is understandably disquieting to activists involved in sensitive work.

Obviously, the most secure way to use a phone is not to use one at all. Even so, most organisations, even if they understand the risks involved, find that phones are too useful to discard completely. The best approach then becomes one of harm reduction: identifying and understanding the risks involved, and taking appropriate steps to limit exposure. In this article, we try to identify these risks, and to offer some suggestions for securing your mobile communications.