citizen media

Below are some awards and funding opportunities that we have come across that might be of interest to the MobileActive community. None of the opportunities listed are adinistered by MobileActive; we are just the messenger!

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By Bruce Girard, reposted with permission.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Pictures and video out of Lhasa and Xiahe are slowly emerging, yet again initially mainly taken with camera phones and transmitted clandestinely across the border to transmit to a global audience.

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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.

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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.

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When most mainstream media report on Kenya's upcoming elections, they focus on the perspectives of people in cities or urban areas. However, since this October citizen journalists using cell phones have reported on news and political perspectives from rural Kenyan communities. A new collaboration between Media Focus on Africa and the Arid Lands Information Network (ALIN) gives mobile phones to "Community Information Volunteers" to use as a reporting tool.

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Reuters and Nokia Research Center have teamed up to advance the usage of mobile journalism with the release of a new mobile toolkit and reporting try-out. Although the initiative is currently aimed at professional reporters, the project has implications for citizen journalists around the world.

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