A global network of people using mobile technology for social impact.
The devastating floods in Pakistan have been covered by trained reporters and mainstream media outlets around the world. Citizens, often on the front lines of the flood, have also been contributing thousands of reports though mobile phones, in part enabled by the citizen journalism service SeenReport.
SeenReport (from “see ‘n report”) is a citizen journalism service through which users can submit photos, videos, and text accounts of news as it is happening via SMS, MMS, or e-mail. SeenReport won a 2010 mBillionth award, a first-ever contest which recognizes mobile content in South Asia. A YouTube video explains more about the service.
The SeenReport platform is designed to augment stories on online news sites. The platform has been purchased and customized by other media organizations in Pakistan, which helps to both promote citizen journalism in the country and to create a revenue stream for SeenReport.
The SeenReport platform is designed to augment stories on online news sites. The platform has been purchased and customized by media organizations in Pakistan, which helps to both promote citizen journalism in the country and to create a revenue stream for SeenReport.
SeenReport is a citizen journalism service through which mobile users can submit photos, videos, and text accounts of news as it is happening via SMS, MMS, or e-mail.
The target audience is any individual in Pakistan with a mobile phone who wishes to submit news content for broader dissemination.
SeenReport is highly customizable, which allows purchasers to adapt the service to their unique needs. It has received 500,000 reports across the spectrum of adopters.
Funding is a challenge, though the monthly recurring license fee model for adopters is a significant source of revenue. At launch, there were technical issues because the initial response was beyond expectation. The SeenReport group had to scale the technology, rebuild it, and roll out additional features.
Jasmine News sends between 60 and 90 SMS news updates per month to subscribers on general topics such as politics, law, current events, business, sports, and entertainment. The goal is to provide accurate and speedy news information, for a low fee, to all mobile users in Sri Lanka.
In 2006, Jasmine News began sending SMS news headlines to subscribers in Sri Lanka, the first to do so in the country. Today, the service sends 60 to 90 messages a month to 170,000 subscribers, who pay Rs.30 per month ($0.30) for the service.
Jasmine News provides brief news headlines sent via SMS on general topics including politics, law, current events, business, sports, and entertainment. The organization also has a website, though content is mostly of SMS length. SMS messages are available in multiple languages, including Sinhala, Tamil and Singlish (Sinhala in transliterated English).
To become a subscriber, a mobile user types a code such as "reg JNW" and send its to an established shortcode (2233) to subscribe for the push service. A local number is required.
The target audience is mobile users in Sri Lanka. To receive SMS news updates, a mobile user must subscribe for Rs.30 per month ($0.30). Subscribers must also have a local number, though Jasmine News partners with 6 mobile providers to ensure that news can be delivered to subscribers on any network in the country.
At 170,000, Jasmine News has a notable number of paid subscribers. According to one of the founders, SMS news headlines fill two important needs: inclusion and empowerment through information. And it does so at a price that many people can afford: Rs30 per month.
First, the environment was ideal. With 15 million mobile phone subscribers in Sri Lanka, there was a clear need for an affordable and convenient method to receive news via phone, Ariyadasa said.
Another success for Jasmine News comes from a good working relationship with many telecom operators in Sri Lanka. This ensures that news can be delivered to subscribers on any network in the country.
A rather obvious problem for paid subscription-based models is that text messages are easy to forward. But, a founder of Jasmine News said that is not a large issue because while people do forward content, it costs more to forward (at $0.05 per SMS) than to actually subscribe at $0.30 per month for 60 to 90 messages.
Bubble Motion, a provider of mobile messaging and social media applications, launched Bubbly this year in India, making strides in the mobile audio blogging world. Audio blogging is a form of blogging in which the medium is audio content. Bubbly works by call and record, and thus can be adapted in areas with high mobile penetration and low Internet access, such as India.
A Bubbly user calls the service and through an integrated voice response (IVR) menu can record a name and message, usually less than 30 seconds. When other users choose to follow a user’s posts (or “Bubbles”) they receive an SMS message every time new audio content is added. A video by Pi Social Media on YouTube demonstrates how to record and listen to a Bubble; this one about an office party meet-up.
MobileActive.org spoke with Bubbly and the BBC, a user of the service, to find out how it works.
Bubbly is a mobile-based service that allows users to record voice content and follow the voice content of others.
Bubble Motion, a provider of mobile messaging and social media applications, launched Bubbly this year in India, making strides in the mobile audio blogging world. Audio blogging is a form of blogging in which the medium or main content is audio. Bubbly works by call and record, and thus can be adapted in areas with high mobile penetration and low Internet access, such as India.
A Bubbly user calls the service and through an integrated voice response (IVR) menu can record a name and message, usually less than 30 seconds. When other users choose to follow a user’s posts (or “Bubbles”) they will receive an SMS message every time new audio content is added.
Because it works in close partnership with mobile operator providers, Bubbly users must be on a network that offers the service. Bubbly is currently deployed in India. The Bubble Motion group plans to expand next to Indonesia, the Philippines, and Japan.
The Bubbly service works closely with mobile operators, so it is able to leverage the billing systems of providers to have a built-in business model and collection system. It also allows people in regions with high mobile phone penetration and low Inernet access to participate in social communication via mobile phones.
Use is restricted to subscribers of specific mobile networks. Users also incur either subscription fees or the airtime costs required to record or listen to an audio message. Another challenge is the discoverability of the service, requirig extensive maketing investments.
Mobile phones have become a critical mobile news reporting tool. They can be a very effective way to produce content and transmit that content back to the studio very cheaply. The presentation presents real world examples of how mobile phones have been used in reporting contexts to great effect, tools that can help reporters do this reporting, and things to keep in mind (such as battery levels). The presentation also includes the author's recommendations for the best apps for mobile journalism.
As a part of the Mobile Media Toolkit, we are producing how-to screencasts that show how to use various mobile tools that have to do with the production and dissemination of content and media.
I argued recently that content publishers should publish for the mobile web rather than build more apps. So it only felt appropriate to do a how-to screencast on how to actually produce content for the mobile web. One way is to use the polular and open source blogging software Wordpress as the back-end of the website, and optimize it so the front end is suitable for mobile viewing. We help viewers go through this process in a brief how-to screencast. See it below or click through to the How To article.
Mobile Media Toolkit Screencast: Mobile Optimize your Wordpress-based Website from MobileActive.org on Vimeo.
Publishing for the mobile web is an important way to reach audiences on mobile phones. This screencast demonstrates an easy-to-use tool that can enable many content producers pubish for the mobile web. Wordpress.org has developed software which lets many around the world create websites fairly easily. This tool, the Wordpress Mobile Pack, makes it easy for those content producers to also publish on the mobile web.
In this short how-to video, we show how easy it is install the Wordpress Mobile Pack and generate a mobile version of websites, along with pointers to the more advanced features of the software.
Publishing for the mobile web is an important way to reach audiences on mobile phones. This screencast demonstrates an easy-to-use tool that can enable many content producers pubish for the mobile web. Wordpress.org has developed software which lets many around the world create websites fairly easily. This tool, the Wordpress Mobile Pack, makes it easy for those web publishers to now publish on the mobile web.
In this short how-to video, we show easy it is install the Wordpress Mobile Pack and generate a mobile version of websites, along with pointers to the more advanced features of the software.
There are now over 5 billion mobile subscriptions around the world. Smartphone ownership is steadily growing, both in the United States and abroad. Smartphone ownership is projected to be above 50% of all mobile phones in the United States by next year. This has many NGOs and other content and media prodicers wondering about how best to produce content for mobile phones (high-end devices, in particular). SMS and voice-based applications have their use cases, but many content producers today are wondering whether to produce a mobile website or a mobile application (app) to distribute their content.
[Updated with images] In Grahamstown, South Africa, getting and sharing news is a mobile experience. Grocott’s Mail, a local paper, incorporates mobile phones into many aspects of its news service – from disseminating headlines via SMS, to encouraging readers to text in their opinions, to a Knight Challenge-winning citizen journalist training program.
We have another new case study up where we report on an innovative audio-based citizen journalism project in Chhattisgarh, India. Tribal citizen journalists have been reporting news in their own languages through a new service called CGNet Swara. CGNet stands for Chhattisgarh Net). The service allows citizen journalists to call in and record news in one of four local languages. The news that has been produced has been picked up in India's mainstream media, and some reports have led to concrete action: in one case, teachers whose salaries hadn't been paid for months were paid after a news report elicited a calling campaign from listeners. We've previously mentioned the project in a short blog post. This much more extensive case study is a part of some work we have been doing on citizen media projects using audio, radio, and mobile
CGNet Swara is a new audio-based citizen journalism service in Chhattisgarh, India. Citizen journalists can call a phone number to record news, and listeners can call in to hear news recorded by citizens around them. When citizen journalists call, they simply press 1 to record news and record some audio onto the system. Listeners can call the same number, press 2, and hear the last three items that the moderators have selected to be published on to the service.
The moderators receive requests via email when a citizen journalist posts content, after which they verify the report (sometimes adding notice that a report isn't verified, sometimes investigating more, on a case-by-case basis), edit the recording, and publish it. There are currently three moderators, all professionally trained journalists.
The state of Chhattisgarh was founded in 2000 and has a large population of indigenous tribal people. Illiteracy is high in the state, and the tribal languages spoken by the population provide for few mediums for expression. In Kudukh and Gondi, two of the languages of the population CGNet Swara serves (spoken by an estimated 4 million people), project implementers could not find any source of news that existed before Swara. The tribal populations also speak Chattisgarhi and Hindi, but most sources of news available in those languages are largely irrelevant and not local in nature. Additionally, there isn't much presence of community radio in the region. Community radio licenses are difficult to obtain in India, especially in Chhattisgarh, where there is significant activity from the Naxalite Maoist insurgency and licensing is even more restricted.
CGNet Swara has two main goals: to provide a news channel for tribal people in the state, and to allow tribal populations a form of expression in their own languages. Because of high illiteracy rates and a strong oral tradition in the region, CGNet Swara focused on audio as the preferred channel. As a secondary goal, the project would also like to provide a venue for those interested in the local affairs of Chhattisgarh to be able to listen to the news produced with the help of local citizens.
CGnet Swara created a citizen journalism channels that allows citizen journalists and interested parties to call a phone number to record or listen to news content. The project trained 29 individuals in Chhattisgarh in the basics of citizen journalism, and instructed them how to record news on the audio system. The news that these and other individuals record onto the citizen journalism platform is then edited, and made available for callers to listen to. All news items are also uploaded to the web, and some content is highlighted in an online email list.
The primary target audience is the tribal people of Chhattisgarh. They speak one of four languages: Gondi, Chattisgarhi, Kudukh, and Hindi. The languages and the population served have a strong oral rather than written tradition. There is no other news media in two of the languages, Kudukh and Gondi, that the project implementers could identify. The population in the region has high levels of illiteracy, and low levels of political representation. The anti-government Naxalite-Maoist insurgency is also active in the area.
The secondary target audience is people around the world with an interest in local Chhattisgarh affairs. This target audience is mainly meant to receive the news that is collected by local reporters in Chhattisgarh.
The audio news service is clearly meeting a need that is reflected in the call volume received. Unlike many audio-based content dissemination or reporting projects, CGNet Swara doesn't provide a toll free number for reporters or listeners to call or a free call-back function. Both listeners and reporters have had to pay to get and post content. In fact, most callers have paid long distance fees in the first five months of the system (about twice that of local calling fees, project lead Choudhary estimates) because the server for Swara is located in Bangalore in another state.
Choudhary estimates that calling costs could be up to one-half of daily spending for some callers (callers report paying 5-10 rupees per call, and the government of India estimates 77% of Indians spend less than Rs. 20 per day; tribal populations are among the poorest in India). The fact that so many calls have come through means that Swara is meeting a need that both tribal citizen journalists and listeners felt. Choudhary also stressed that the majority of the reports come from reporters that had not been trained by Swara, and were reporting on their own after finding out via word of mouth.
The second is the impact that some of the stories have had on the life of the tribal journalists. Many messages are sent to an email list with journalists, activists, and other with an interest in the Chattisgarh region. In one specific case, this led to concrete action. In response to a report about school workers in the Dantewada district who hadn't been paid for more than a year, the CGNet moderators posted a message to the email list that included the number of the responsible government authority to call. After the authority was flooded with calls, all the school workers were paid in a week's time.
Another example included a first-hand report of police brutality in the region. Bill Thies, the original Audio Wiki developer who has been involved with the project, told Stanford students in a question and answer session that "the mainstream media picked up the story, and probably would have anyways," but that the first-hand report provided an interesting perspective from those directly affected by the brutalities, very recently after they happened.
The third is how well the service seems to fit the oral tradition of the populations it is serving. When Choudhary described the journalism training, he mentioned teaching participants how to record an audio clip to tell a story in 2 minutes. He told me, however, that much of that training had been unnecessary. The tribal journalists, having been surrounded by a tradition of oral storytelling, have an intuitive sense for recording short clips that tell a story. Choudhary, a former BBC journalist, said some of the recorded stories were better than stories he has recorded. The citizen journalists who have started using the system without training are also posting high-quality content.
The foremost challenge is political. CGNet Swara operates in a region with political unrest. The audio news service lets anyone record and listen to news content which authorities could consider developing a 'loose cannon,' Choudhary worried.
In India, the only FM radio station allowed to broadcast news and current affairs is All India Radio, and community radio licenses are difficult to obtain, especially in Chhattisgarh. In many ways, the CGNet Swara system sidesteps these political hurdles by creating an audio service that so far has escaped regulation.
That is not to say that regulations will not change. A more political attempt to broadcast audio news over mobiles in Zimbabwe resulted in the mobile service provider shutting down several of the SIM cards for the service, fearing retribution from government. A similar fate could await here. In fact, Swara's servers have been shut down twice by their hosts without any explanation. IPSnews puts the issue well: "longevity remains challenged by the political nature of the area CGNet Swara serves, where police and administrative officials have the powers to shut down any operation perceived as "helping" the Naxal movement."
There are some technical challenges entangled with the political challenges as well. Technology that bridges PSTN (Public Switch Telephone Network) with VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) is illegal in India, and VoIP numbers are tough to obtain. As a result, CGNet Swara had to sometimes operate over analog telephone lines. Analog telephone lines support fewer concurrent calls, have lower voice quality, and are less reliable.
In addition, the software that Swara is using doesn't allow for identification of the phone numbers that are calling in. This means that the moderators cannot see who is calling in to record and listen to news (from where), and modify their system accordingly. While Choudhary feels this lack of identification enhances security, mobile operators already have much of the information available to them.
This relates to another challenge: the security of reporters and listeners. Because Swara users are making phone calls from their mobile phones, mobile network operators have a record of exactly who is calling into the system. This could theoretically enable authorities to harass individuals who make use of the system if they end up taking an unfavorable stance against the system.
Another potential challenge is effective moderation of the recordings. As usage grows and more reports are called in, moderation will become more expensive and time-consuming. Choudhary notes that now when the reports come in, every report is either verified through examination (or labeled as unverified, on a case by case basis). Each audio clip is also edited for sound and clarity. As the service scale, more moderation will be required.
Finally, the project faces a challenge in soliciting content from the marginalized languages Kudukh, Gondi, and Chhatisgarhi. Half of the content that has been reported to the system is in Hindi, the least marginalized of the languages. Choudhary said the team was keen to receive messages especially in Kudukh and Gondi, but reaching areas when only those languages are spoken will require innovative ways of advertising, like partnering with cultural song and dance troupes. The Swara team has not done so yet.
In 2008, Bruce Girard concluded in a MobileActive.org guest post that the addition of text messaging technology into the community radio toolkit was still in its infancy. SMS use at radio stations was informal, he wrote, and the few cases of more complex use of SMS messages accompanied political crisis or natural disaster and were largely donor financed.
Two years later, we delve once again into the state of SMS and mobile technology at community radio stations, by way of an informal survey. While advances have been made and creative projects have emerged, integration remains an ad-hoc and individual enterprise.
This report summarizes existing projects and success stories, highlighting the most popular uses of mobile technology. It concludes with a discussion of the challenges that community radio stations face in adopting SMS and mobile technology.
This study explores how news journalists' working conditions are changing in an African developing country due to the growth in information communication technologies (ICTs). The special focus is set on news journalists' use of mobile technology because the rate of mobile penetration in to Africa is so significant these years that the region is actually driving the mobile market’s growth worldwide with a teledensity of over 50%. Although mobile technology has been in the Africa continent for almost two decades it is only within the last two to five years that people have made regular use of these technologies due to recent improvements in accessibility and cost-efficiency.
Interviews with several Kenyan news journalists and other media actors conducted in January and February 2010 were used as the prime empirical data in the study. Thus, to the extent that mobile technology has an effect on the journalistic working process, the following problem statement and research questions served as a guide for this study and were answered in the analysis that drew upon the theoretical framework of journalistic working processes, gatekeeping theory, disruptive technologies, and ICT for development (ICT4D):
• PS: How do Kenyan news journalists use mobile phones in their work?
• RQ1: In which ways does mobile technology affect the journalistic working process?
• RQ2: How does mobile technology affect public interaction with the news media?
The findings suggest that Kenyan news journalists use mobile technology in several ways in their work: they set up interview appointments by calling their sources; they conduct telephone interviews; they record interviews using the mobile phone’s microphone which is particularly useful in conflict-sensitive reporting; they send Internet links to their sources whom can read the online news from their mobile phone’s browser. The consequences of journalists’ use of mobile phones are, for instance, that in the past two to five years mobile technology has linked journalists with sources from Kenya's remote areas and enabled the news media to publish reliable stories which would have been difficult to verify a few years ago. Also, the Kenyan public has gained easy access to the news media, for example by participating in radio call-in shows and the information they provide is sometimes researched by journalists and turned into news stories. The traditional gatekeeper role of the press has changed to fact controller, and it is likely that the public's knowledge contribution can help to promote democracy in the country.
We are very interested in the role of mobile phones in citizen media, including how mobile phones can function as a portable newsroom or radio studio. To that end, our latest how-to guide, Mobile Audio Recording in the Field (and how to get a clear sound on the streets), walks you through the process of recording audio content on your mobile phone, whether you are recording from a studio, your home, or in the field.
This how-to is part of the Mobile Media Toolkit, which includes many other case studies, how-to guides, resources, and tools to use mobile phones for reporting, content delivery, and citizen participation.
The how-to provides:
This How-To article provides tips for recording and sharing clear-sounding audio from a mobile phone. Often, recording on a handset is done in less-than-ideal environments. This article offers recording tips to help you capture quality audio to ensure a clear sound, even when you report on the ground and outside of a professional recording studio. We'll describe the best way to create, share and edit audio content depending on what resources you have (or do not have). You will also find a brief outline of some of the most popular and easy-to-use tools for creating, editing, and sharing audio content.
Your mobile phone is an instant audio-recording and storage device, and it can be used anywhere. This How-To article provides tips for recording and sharing clear-sounding audio from a mobile phone. Often, recording on a handset is done in less-than-ideal environments. This article offers recording tips to help you capture quality audio to ensure a clear sound, even when you report on the ground and outside of a professional recording studio. We'll describe the best way to create, share and edit audio content depending on what resources you have (or do not have). You will also find a brief outline of some of the most popular and easy-to-use tools for creating, editing, and sharing audio content. Some tools require a specific call-in number and thus are geographically limited in scope. Other tools are Internet-based and widely available while others are specific to smartphones or iPhones. This article will give you a solid overview of what is available depending on your locale and resources, and will offer guidance for further tips and techniques.
A recently launched campaign at a popular youth radio program in Nepal focuses on the voices of youth - or at least, text messages of youth. Regardless, the SMS campaign seems to be making strides.
UNICEF in Nepal has teamed up with the popular Nepali radio program Saathi Sanga Man Ka Kura, which means "chatting with my best friend." The program, also called SSMK, is run by the non-governmental organization Equal Access Nepal. SSMK has been on the air for 10 years and reaches millions of youth listeners (primarily ages 13 to 26) throughout Nepal. In April, UNICEF and SSMK launched a campaign that allows young listeners to take an active role in a conversation, all via SMS.
Rupa Joshi, a communications specialist with UNICEF, explains the origins of the campaign.
The goal of the project is to maximise participation of young people and reflect their voices on issues that affect their lives.
UNICEF in Nepal has teamed up with the popular Nepali radio program, Saathi Sanga Man Ka Kura, which means "chatting with my best friend." The program, also called SSMK, is run by the non-governmental organization Equal Access Nepal. SSMK has been on the air for 10 years and reaches millions of youth listeners (primarily ages 13 to 26) throughout Nepal. In April, Unicef and SSMK launched a campaign that allows young listeners to take an active role in a conversation, all via SMS.
Every week on the program, the radio team frames a topic or a question and invites the listeners to respond via a free text message to an established short code, 4400. The responses are then posted on a forum on the UNICEF Voices of Youth website.
The target audience of the project are the current listeners of the SSMK radio program. It has been on the air for 10 years and reaches millions of youth listeners, primarily ages 13 to 26, throughout Nepal.
The project worked in conjunction with the ongoing success and popularity of the SSMK radio program. It adapted a technology that was highly accessible (and free) to the target audience. Start up and maintenance costs have been relatively low. The project has also benefited from a positive working relationship with a local mobile technology sevice provider to trouble-shoot technical issues that have come up.
The group has had to perform ongoing fixes to various processes. In its current state, it also requires significant administrative time to monitor and post incoming responses.
This article seeks to explore the influence of the mobile phone on the public sphere, in particular with regard to its effect on news agendas, gatekeepers and primary definers. Using the examples of the Chinese SARS outbreak (2003), the south-east Asian tsunami (December 2004), and the London bombings (July 2005), the author questions the extent to which the mobile phone is challenging conventional and official sources of information.
At times of national and personal calamity, mobile phone is used to document and report events from eyewitnesses and those closely involved. Using multimedia messages (MMS) or text messages (SMS) to communities of friends and families, as well as audio phone calls, mobile phone users may precede and scoop official sources and thwart censorship and news blackouts. They can also provide valuable evidence of what actually occurred. Users are able to take pictures and short films and transmit these rapidly to others along with reports of what is happening where they are; they are also able to access other media broadcasts and the internet. They are what have become known as `citizen journalists'.
The evidence suggests that mobile phone usage is contributing to the public sphere and in some instances is circumventing official repression or inadequate information. There is also an indication that the `mobcam' is capturing images that would otherwise be lost. However, the mainstream media has been quick to take advantage of this citizen journalism and mediate it within its own parameters.
I had the pleasure of attending the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit in Santiago, Chile last week. The summit brought together bloggers, activists, and thinkers working to advance citizen media all around the world. While the discussions that took place were informative, most presentations and panels fell short in recognizing the role mobile phones have played and exploring the potential mobile phones can play in citizen media. I'd like to highlight some of the potential for mobiles in citizen media that were not adequately discussed.
At the recent Global Voices Citizen Media Summit in Santiago, Chile, I facilitated as session on "Mobile Phone as a Tool for Reporting." We started off the discussion with the question of whether SMS is useful for reporters.
David Sasaki of Global Voices expressed skepticism about SMS as a reporting tool. Sasaki noted that Rising Voices, a Global Voices project that provides small funds to budding citizen media projects, had tried to find an SMS or mobile-based reporting project to fund, but hasn't been able to. Instead, David saw projects using technologies like Twitter for reporting. The 160 characters of SMS messages is simply not enough, David proposed, and pointed out that similar technologies like Twitter are more useful because they are able to transcend the character limitations as they can include links to much lengthier content.
Finding data on media consumption can be difficult, but the real trouble comes in interpreting it – what does it mean if people in one country get most of their news from radio, while in another from television? How are mobile phones changing the media and communications landscape? How can this data be used to help keep the greatest number of people informed? And why does this information matter?
AudienceScapes, a project of InterMedia, tracks media and ICT consumption in developing countries around the world. Currently the site has detailed information about Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Columbia, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Peru. The site is a useful resource for detailed breakdowns on how different communities are using and consuming media.
We’ve written before about mobile giving during disasters, and the dramatic results such campaigns can have. But mobile giving can be used for non disaster-related fundraising drives as well and This American Life, a show on the US public radio network, is one of the latest organizations to embrace this trend.
Have an opinion about what you’ve read in the news? Why not text the editor? While many news organizations use SMS to send out news alerts, The Namibian has set up “SMS Pages” in which readers send in text messages to the paper that are then published online and in the physical newspaper.
The Namibian, an independent daily newspaper with news stand sales of 27,000 a day (with an estimated 10-person pass-along rate) and a popular website edition, launched the SMS pages in August 2007.
There are two new projects in India that are taking advantage of the ubiquity of mobile phones and cheap voice calling there in order to get news to rural villagers. Widespread illiteracy makes newspapers and SMS alerts inadequate as news delivery systems, and irregular electricity makes television and radio unreliable. Voice calls are also very inexpensive in India, with per-second billing and a downward price-war among the main operators. Voice calls over mobile phones are an easy way for villagers to stay informed.
In the region of Uttar Pradesh, Gaon Ki Awaaz delivers twice-daily news updates via voice calls to villagers in their native Avhadi language. Launched in December 2009, the project now has 250 subscribers spread throughout 20 villages. Read our case study on the project here.
Further south, a similar project is operating among the members of the Adivassi tribe in India. Like Gaon Ki Awaaz, it allows villagers to share and receive news over their mobile phones in their native language (in this case, Gondi). Launched by Shubhranshu Choudhary of the International Center for Journalists, the project focuses on citizen reports with dozens of citizen journalists reporting throughout the region. Watch the video below to see how the project works. For more on audio services, see also our recent scan of projects and tools, Talk to Me: A Survey of Voice-Based Mobile Tech.
These two projects highlight the promise of the mobile phone for targeted news reporting; mobiles can provide cheap, reliable access to hyper-local news that may be more independent than government-controlled media. As mobiles become more common in rural areas, similar projects can provide a way to keep citizens connected.
Anne-Ryan Heatwole is a writer for MobileActive.org
Image courtesy screenshot of IFC Journalists video
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