In this report we explore the dynamics of the role of mobile phones in enhancing access to and creating information and citizen-produced media. We explore trends in the use of mobile telephony with a focus on software and platforms that make content creation and broadcasting easier. We also present an inventory of current and potential uses of mobile phones to promote citizen media and freedom of information, and present short case studies of examples--all from the MobileActive.org community.
In our ongoing reviews of mobile tools focused on the NGO sector, here is our latest edition: A review of FrontlineSMS, the much-written-about desktop SMs bulk messaging tool. We take a look at some use cases, outline technical considerations in using Frontline, and describe the tests that we ran.
Firstly, and most importantly for many users, FrontlineSMS provides a simple way to send and receive SMS on a laptop or desktp, with contact management and grouping ability for bulk messaging. Provided installation comes off without a hitch and you are using a supported phone, this should allow new users to get started quickly, after which they can explore some of the more advanced functionality.
In our ongoing and ever-expanding series of how-to resources for NGOs and grassroots organizations using mobile technology in their work, we are releasing a new primer on "Mobile Surveillance." Our reviewer, Melissa Loudon, gives an overview of mobile surveillance risks and tips and tools on how to prevent surveillance for secure communications.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran reported recently that SMS use in Iran is now regulated. According to the article, the Organization of Communications Regulations in Iran has imposed restrictions on sending SMS, requiring a security check by the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) to receive clearance for using the service.
The article details the regulation: "Sending SMS deemed contrary to national security will be punishable by law. Any change of address by the subscriber of the service must be reported promptly to the relevant authorities. It is the security agents who decide which SMS are in breach of national security." The article further states that "according to some figures every day over 20 million text messages are received in Iran, the peak hours are between ten in the evening and one in the morning. The SMS has become a tool to exchange messages by opponents of the regime."
The 2008 election in America has seen a much greater use of mobile technology than in any election before in this country. The Obama campaign in particular has been touted as very innovative innovative in its use of using text messages as part of their voter and volunteer engagement, culminating in the unprecendent text message announcement of the vice-presidential pick that went to an estimated million new text subscribers.
But these are not the only innovations. In the waning days before the election, a number of other efforts stand out that take advantage of mobile phones. Here are a few:
With the advent of ubiquitous mobile phones recording video, audio, and photos and easily connecting to a worldwide audience, everyone has the potential to become a citizen reporter on the spot, as news and events are happening. Traditional news organizations (aka mainstream media) are struggling to keep up and find relevance among the new voices from around the world. Al Jazeera, the Arab news company (and arguably not exactly mainstream media) has been testing mobile phones with its reporters and for its media coverage. Safdar Mustafa, head of Al Jazeera's mobile media unit, explains how in this coverage from MobileActive08.
It's amazing working with a team of African student citizen journalists to document MobileActive '08. Students are from CSDF and Rhodes University and are from countries including South Africa, Mozambique, and Zambia. Blogging of sessions was divided up according to a students' particular interest in gender or democracy or citizen journalism. They're certainly getting a lot of on-the-job training, and MobileActive is lucky to have their perception and insight.
For the last year there has been quite a bit of talk about mobile phone reporting in Africa. For good reason too, since this lowers the technology barrier to getting stories out of hard-to-reach places. Imagine, all you need to do is find a journalist and equip them with an adequate mobile phone Now you can record interviews in video and audio, take pictures and upload in almost any part of the continent.
At first glance SMS text messages would seem like a natural for inclusion in a community radio station’s essential toolkit. SMS messages are inexpensive and easy-to-use and in recent years the mobile phones that are needed for sending and receiving them have become ubiquitous. However, an informal survey of recent projects indicates that use of SMS messages among community media in the developing world is still at an early stage. In most stations SMS use is informal. The few cases identified of community stations making more complex use of SMS messages have accompanied political crises or natural disasters and have inevitably been donor financed. There are few, if any, experiences of complex uses of SMS by community media without external funding and technical support, even though the financial and technical resources required are minimal.
The news is coming. Or at least that's what Guy Berger titled his Knight News Challenge project, which aims to connect diverse populations in Grahamstown, South Africa to news through mobile phone- based citizen journalism and news delivery. Berger, head of the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University was recently awarded a Knight News Challenge grant, which funds "digital information innovations that transform community life."
Berger talked with MobileActive about the project. "This is hyperlocal," he said. "It is to expand the town square of Grahamstown in terms of information and opinion flows." The "citizen journalists" will be high school students. In August, Berger's group will conduct workshops with 80 students separated into classes of 20. Each class will have two Saturday workshops about what it means to be a citizen journalist. The students will then submit news stories via SMS.
Dr. Joel Selanikio believes in the value of the news. "It's one of my core beliefs that the more people know, the better decisions people are going to make," he said. Selanikio, the director of DataDyne.org, was recently awarded a Knight News Challenge grant for a project that distributes news on mobile phones.
Selanikio sat down with MobileActive for a discussion about his project. Selanikio isn't new to mobile phones. As director of DataDyne.org, he has used mobile phones for data collection with EpiSurveyor (read more about this in Wireless for Social Change: Trends in NGO Mobile Use.) He is also part of a consortium on mobile data collection, OpenROSA.
As we've written before, QR codes (a mobile bar code like the one in the image) have great potential for use by nonprofits and advocacy organizations to provide "just-in-time" issue information, be used as a recruitment tool, or provide an easy way to connect with an organization or make a donation. As QR codes become more widely used in the commercial sector, and as more people download the necessary software on their phones to be able to read the codes, nonprofits are likely to take advantage of the codes as well.
Streaming video from your mobile almost feels like magic. A video taken on your mobile phone appears, in real time, on the web and even allows users to interact with the mobile phone user through real-time chat functions. "It's immediate, it's there, and it's one click away," Flixwagon CEO Eran Hess told the BBC in a recent video interview. "It's very easy to do."
MobileActive tested two streaming video applications, Qik and Flixwagon, to see how they measured up for use by nonprofits and advocacy organizations that want to document and feature video content in real time. Lastly, we discuss how streaming video can be used for social impact.
This video about women's rights is one of three mobile phone videos made by Egyptian artist Ahmad Sherif, designed to be spread virally on mobile phones.
The text, translated into English, says
Muslim? Great. Christian? Perfect. Jewish? Shalom. Veil? Why not. Niqab? Be my guest. No Niqab? Your choice. Atheist? Whatever. You're ready to die for God? It's your life. You would die for Adel Imam? Who wouldn't...
Imagine if every member of the legislature could see a message from your constituents, just by looking out of the window. A text-to-screen campaign allows for exactly this: A large screen, placed right outside the State House, for example, that brings your constituents’ text messages to legislators' eyes.
Not only can people in front of the screen see the message, but anybody can watch a live feed of the messages on a website. "Text to screen allows people in remote locations to interact in a meaningful way with one location," says Jed Alpert of Mobile Commons, a vendor providing a text-to-screen platform.
Individuals interact with the screen by sending a text message or SMS to a short code (a five or six-digit phone number). The SMS is then displayed on jumbatron screen, as well as on a web screen.
MobileActive has aggregated dozens of videos focused on the use of mobile phones in civil society on our new MobileActive YouTube channel.
The MobileActive channel features playlists about mobile phones used in a variety of different fields. On the Mobile Phones in Advocacy playlist, you can watch videos about Greenpeace Argentina's work to pass the Ley de Bosques (Forest Law) by using mobile phones and an advertisement for FishMS, a South African SMS infoline that allows users to text in the names of fish and get a rating about their environmental sustainability. Watch the Mobile Phones in Global Development channel for videos on mobile banking, the Village Phone program, and the growth of mobile phones in the developing world. Check out the Mobile Phones in Human Rights playlist for a variety of videos of human rights abuses taken on mobile phones, including the mobile videos of Egyptian police brutality by blogger Wael Abbas.
Over the last several years, it’s become clear that mobile phones are becoming one of the most influential devices in our social, political, and civic lives. Savvy nonprofit organizations and NGOs are experimenting with using mobile phones as persuasive devices to recruit new supporters, organize groups, and advocate for causes.
Thus far, most of the successful mobile-phone campaigns have relied on text messaging as their persuasive technology of choice. It’s the only mobile phone technology that works reliably across the majority of mobile phones in most countries. In addition, most people in most countries are familiar with text messaging.
Twitter might tell you what the friend of a friend ate for breakfast or when your cousin is doing his laundry. But, charges Nate Ritter, Twitter is way more than a social networking tool used to communicate the mundane details of everyday life. The mobile phone service has potential -- and in fact, has been used in the past -- for emergency communication and response.
This February 5th isn't just any Tuesday in the United States. It's Super Tuesday, so named because 23 of the 50 states are holding presidential primaries, making it the contest that could potentially determine the all-important presidential Democratic and Republican nominees.
Television station MTV (Music Video Television) has an innovative new effort to get out the youth vote and merge citizen journalism with mainstream media. The effort, dubbed "Street Team '08," is made possible through mobile phones.
Can I get HIV after having sex for the first time? So goes one of the ten thousand SMS messages that teenagers in Nigeria have sent to Learning about Living.
Learning About Living is a project by One World UK, Nigerian NGOs, the MTN Foundation, and the Nigerian Department of Education using computers and mobile phones to teach Nigerian teenagers about sexuality and HIV/AIDS prevention.
Groundviews is now featuring its latest content on mobile devices. Go to http://groundviews.mofuse.mobi/ to access articles from the award-winning Sri Lanka citizen journalism site on a mobile phone. Groundviews mobile works with Blackberry’s, the iPhone and all recent Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG, Samsung and other mobile phones capable of and set up for Internet access. Our site does not require 3G or high speed connectivity and is not tied to any mobile operator or service.
Groundviews - http://www.groundviews.org - Sri Lanka's first and award winning citizens journalism website features ideas, opinions and analyses on humanitarian issues, media freedom, human rights, peace, democratic governance and constitutional reform.
MobileActives are increasingly making the news as mainstream press is picking up the potential of mobiles as organizing, advocacy, and mobilization tools in social change movements. In an article in the Financial Times today, the focus is on young social change leaders using technology, and increasingly, cell phones in their work. Profiling Maft and its (former) leader Erion Veliaj of Mjaft, an Albanian young people's political movement, it's clear that good organizing and social change is unthinkable today without mobile phones.
SEND YOUR Mobile FILMS AND PROJECTS! REGISTRATIONS ARE OPEN UNTIL MARCH, 1st, 2008 . The 4th edition of the Pocket Films Festival, organized by the Forum des Images, will take place at the Pompidou Center, Paris, France, on June, 13-15th 2008.
1. INTERNATIONAL CALL FOR PROJECTS We are looking for all types of audiovisual participatory projects using mobile technologies, to be presented in Paris and confronted with French projects. Keywords : education, activism, information, art. For more infos, pocketfilms@forumdesimages.fr
2. INTERNATIONAL COMPETITIVE SECTIONS : CINEMA SCREEN and MOBILE SCREEN Main Jury Prize for each section : 1,500 euros
Post-election violence has exploded in Kenya in the wake of the December 27 presidential elections. Ethnic killings -- which today's New York Times suggests may have been carefully planned -- have increased, and estimates of the death toll range from 650 to over 1000. In the midst of this, people both in and outside the country are using mobile phones in innovative ways to communicate political knowledge and circumvent the media blackout.
Mobile phones and global internet dissemination are important tools in citizen "sousveillance" and reporting of human rights abuses, notes an article in the BBC. Reporting on a panel at the UN in honor of Human Rights Day on the significance of new media in human rights. I, as a representative of MobileActive.org was part of the panel. The article notes rightly some of the potential of mobiles in documenting abuses through video and audio:
The footage, often shot on mobile phones and digital cameras, can be instrumental in alerting the international community to human rights violations.
