citizen journalism

Drumroll, please... It's the Mobile Media Toolkit!

Posted by MelissaUlbricht on Jul 28, 2011

Introducing the Mobile Media Toolkit, the newest project from MobileActive.org that is all about Making Media Mobile.

The Mobile Media Toolkit helps you make sense of the growing role of mobile tech in media. The Toolkit provides how-to guides, mobile tools, and case studies on how mobile phones can (and are) being used for reporting, news broadcasting, and citizen media. We cover it all, from basic feature phones to the latest smartphone applications.

It's an exciting day for us here at MobileActive.org as we launch the Mobile Media Toolkit. For the last year we have been interviewing people, researching projects, and testing tools, to bring you this free resource. It is designed to help you evaluate and effectively deploy the right tools for reporting and sharing content on and to mobile devices.

Please visit the Toolkit. Share it with others. Add to it! It's available in English, Spanish, and Arabic.  So, please join us and say Welcome, Bienvenidos, and مرحبا to the Mobile Media Toolkit!

Introducing SaferMobile: Mobile Security for Rights Defenders, Activists, and Journalists

Posted by SaferMobile on May 16, 2011

Activists, rights defenders, and journalists use mobile devices for reporting, organizing, mobilizing, and documenting. We have written about many of these uses for years now, describing how mobile phones provide countless benefits to activists and rights defenders. Mobile tech is relatively low cost and allows for increased efficiencies and vast reach, for example. But, there is a darker side.

Mobile Phones present specific risks to rights defenders, journalists, and activists. We believe that is is critically important to know that mobile communication is inherently insecure and exposes rights defenders and those working in sensitive environment to risks that are not easy to detect or overcome. (We provide an overview of those risks in this Primer, for instance)

To address mobile safety and security for rights defenders, we are introducing SaferMobile, to help activists, human rights defenders, and journalists assess the mobile communications risks that they are facing, and then use appropriate mitigation techniques to increase their ability to organize, report, and work more safely.

What is SaferMobile? 

  • Online and offline educational and tactical resources (risk evaluation tools, case studies, how-to guides, security tool reviews); 
  • Trainings and curricula for use in various countries and with different constituencies; 
  • Specific mobile security software focused on the needs of rights defenders, activists, and journalists.

As will all that we do, we believe that there certain values and principles that are paramount in this work. For SaferMobile, we are following these principles:

  • We believe that skilled, trained, and knowledgeable activists, journalists, and rights defenders are key to democratic changes. We also believe that the smart and effective use of technology constitutes an integral piece of their skill set.
  • The better activists, journalists, and rights defender are able to work, the more safely they are able to organize and communicate, the more likely it is that their work is effective and heard. 
  • We are committed to accessible, useful, actionable, and technically accurate and secure content, materials, and software. 
  • We are also committed to describing technological vulnerabilities in terms that non-technical users can easily understand. 
  • We work with activists on the ground to ensure that the content we produce addresses real uses and risks. 
  • We also seek responsive connections between activists and security professionals so that both are more able to assess and respond to changing risks.  
  • Lastly, we are maintaining information that reflects current security risks and technological vulnerabilities and is vetted for security and technological accuracy by knowledgeable experts.

Roadmap and Process

The SaferMobile project is just beginning its second Phase. Phase 1 included needs assessment with users and peers – activists, rights defenders, journalists, technologists, security experts, and mobile developers. Through this research, we outlined plans for web content, training curriculum and tools (software) and are now creating these pieces in Phase 2 of the project (May-August 2011). 

Our approach is iterative and open – we work as a team to develop ideas and welcome review and comments from peers. We maintain a wiki for this initial phase that will act as a living lab for content and code as we develop both. 

Posted by on Jan 01, 1970

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Safer Photos: How to Remove Location Information from Mobile Images

Posted by MelissaUlbricht on Mar 10, 2011
Safer Photos: How to Remove Location Information from Mobile Images data sheet 13052 Views
Author: 
Melissa Ulbricht
Abstract: 

This article and screencast shows you how to remove location information from photos taken on a mobile phone.

Location

In a previous post, we described how to add location information to mobile content, including images and stories. For some reports, location information adds value, context, and interest to venue-specific reports. But today, we talk about how to remove that same location information. This is also detailed, step by step, in this screencast.


How to Add Location Information to Mobile Content

Posted by MelissaUlbricht on Feb 27, 2011
How to Add Location Information to Mobile Content data sheet 5760 Views
Author: 
Melissa Ulbricht
Abstract: 

This how-to focuses on the tools and techniques that you can use to add location-based information to mobile content.

Map Marker Location information can add value to your stories  and content and can help journalists who report on specific communities, reporters who create venue-specific multimedia, or citizen journalists who cover events in which location is relevant.

Location information has many advantages: It provides more context. It helps journalists and publishers find an interested audience; users searching for information around specific locations will most easily find information that is tagged with a location. Location information lends itself to aggregation; content with location information can be put on maps and other visualizations, which makes it more appealing for audiences to examine. Through this, it can be used in pattern-finding. Aggregations may show interesting patterns that would not be evident from individual reports. Finally, location information can leverage social media.


Radio Azadi in Afghanistan Goes Mobile

Posted by MelissaUlbricht on Jan 10, 2011
Radio Azadi in Afghanistan Goes Mobile data sheet 4187 Views

RFE/RLIn Afghanistan, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is three months into an interactive SMS service that allows listeners to access content and participate in the program via mobile phone.

Through the interactive SMS service, Radio Azadi is now able to both send and receive SMS messages from subscribers. As a news organization, the main goal of RFE/RL is reaching an audience. “We want to make sure our content is available on whatever platform Afghans want to consume it on,” Julian Knapp of RFE/RL said. The service allows listeners to become texters, and people around the country have sent in messages to the radio station, to the tune of about 200 messages per day.

Basic Information
Organization involved in the project?: 
Project goals: 

The goal of the project is to reach an audience and provide content and information on a mobile platform.

Brief description of the project: 

In Afghanistan, RFE/RL and Radio Azadi uses an interactive SMS service that allows listeners to access content and participate in the program via mobile phone.

Target audience: 

The target audience is Etisalat subscribers who sign up for the free service.

Detailed Information
Status: 
Ongoing
What worked well? : 

The project has seen good uptake, especially from subscribers in small villages or rural areas where people don’t have as much access to officials or media.

What did not work? What were the challenges?: 

Because it is a straightforward service that has been implemented by the mobile provider for other projects, there were no significant technical problems. Currently, only Etisalat subscribers can sign up for the service.

 


Delivering Audio Content to Mobile Audiences

Posted by MelissaUlbricht on Dec 20, 2010

Prabhas Pokharel contributed research and writing to this article.

We turn now from producing video on your mobile to audio to show you different ways that people are delivering content to mobile phones. Sending audio content can help you reach new and increasingly mobile audiences. It can also be a great way to reach semi- or illiterate populations or others for whom written content is not suitable.

There are many channels to deliver audio content to mobiles: calling listeners, providing numbers for them to call, having mobile web or app-accessible radio, or leveraging radios that are included in many mobiles. This post will focus primarily on projects and tools that use phone calls, or the "voice channel," to share content.

There are quite a few projects that disseminate audio content using the voice channel:

Mobile Media: How To Record Quality Video on Your Mobile

Posted by MelissaUlbricht on Dec 13, 2010

Many mobile phones can capture video footage. This has enabled both trained journalists and citizen reporters to more easily capture footage including images that were rarely seen before. The Polk Journalism Award in 2009, for example, was awarded to a video from Iran captured on a mobile phone. Today, more and more journalists are using mobile phones to record video and quickly transfer content to their newsrooms via mobile data connections.

Using mobiles to capture video isn't new news. But there is good news: You don't need a high-quality video camera to do high-quality reporting, be you in the U.S. or elsewhere. Many journalists and citizen reporters today use smartphones to capture video footage. Examples abound. Vancouver journalism students use an iPhone with some additional hardware and software to do all their video editing on the phone. Voices of Africa uses a Nokia N-series smartphone. In his book Mobile Journalism in the Asian Region, Stephen Quinn uses both iPhones and Nokia smartphones. This post will provide some tips and tools on how you can record quality video and audio from your mobile phone.

Make Sure Your Phone is Capable

Phone hardware is constantly improving and getting cheaper. With an older phone, you may consider video enhancement software, which can offer a cheaper way to get better quality video content. For high quality video recording on a mobile, the best phones available today feature 640 x 480 pixels at 30 frames per second. 320 x 240 pixels at 15 frames per second produces acceptable web-quality video.

Lower resolutions will look grainy and pixelated without software enhancement, and video below 15 frames per second will look choppy. On the high quality end, these are some good mobile phones with excellent video cameras:

  • PC Magazine featured these five video-phone models with varying price ranges. The article includes lengthy reviews and a matrix comparison of the phones.
  • For high end phones, take a look at these articles: CNet's top 5 video phones of 2009, Wirefly's top 10 2009 video phones, MSNBC's video phone review with 5 recommendations, the iPhone 3GS, and the Motorola Droid.
  • The GSMArena.com database features 1800 phones with video capabilities, 70 of which are listed on this page. The site allows you to search for cameras based on various criteria and links directly to carriers around the world who are selling these phones.
  • The Nokia N series phones are generally highly recommended for video recording. The N82, N93, and N95 are mentioned often by independent reviewers.

Go Shoot (good) Video

When it comes to shooting video, the major difference between mobiles and mainstream camcorders is that mobile phones have simpler (and smaller) cameras. It is important to understand what makes for good quality video given these limitations. Some suggested tools and tips are listed here.

Beyond the Demographic: How Sourcing Through Texting Connects Journalists and Citizens in Detroit

Posted by MelissaUlbricht on Oct 06, 2010
Beyond the Demographic: How Sourcing Through Texting Connects Journalists and Citizens in Detroit data sheet 3214 Views

If a large truck illegally barrels through a neighborhood and no reporters are around to see it, does it make the story? It does if local residents with mobile phones can text truck sightings to a local public radio station. This is the premise behind a new pilot project called “Sourcing through Texting” from a team at The Takeaway radio program. Sourcing through Texting provides a way to connect citizens with journalists via mobile phones.

The Takeaway is a radio program produced in New York City (a co-production of Public Radio International and public radio station WNYC in collaboration with the BBC World Service, The New York Times, and WGBH Boston) which can be heard live online or on the radio at about 60 stations in “Takeaway cities” across the U.S.

Basic Information
Organization involved in the project?: 
Project goals: 

The goal of "Sourcing Through Texting" is to connect journalists and people in communities where public radio is not typically popular, all through a standard mobile phone.

Brief description of the project: 

"Sourcing through Texting" provides a way to connect citizens with journalists via mobile phones. It allows people to communicate with journalists by sending tips or information via text message in response to story topics or specific questions.

Target audience: 

The target audience for "Sourcing through Texting" are mobile users who do not typically listen to public radio on the air or online.

Detailed Information
Mobile Tools Used: 
Status: 
Ongoing
What worked well? : 

An experimental approach to the development of the project worked well. Such an approach allowed stakeholders to brainstorm, talk, and try out ideas.

What did not work? What were the challenges?: 

Challenges included: the best way to promote the service and the right level of interaction via texting. Adjusting to language and culture is another potential issue, as is cost. The 160-character limit of text messages may prevent users from submitting longer, more complete stories or sources of information. Local relevance is also needed for people to feel engaged.




The Role of Digital Networked Technologies in the Ukrainian Orange Revolution

Posted by MohiniBhavsar on Sep 16, 2010
The Role of Digital Networked Technologies in the Ukrainian Orange Revolution data sheet 2285 Views
Author: 
Joshua Goldstein
Publication Date: 
Dec 2007
Publication Type: 
Other
Abstract: 

This working paper is part of a series examining how the Internet influences democracy. This report is a narrative case study that examines the role of the Internet and mobile phones during Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution. The first section describes the online citizen journalists who reported many stories left untouched by "self-censored" mainstream journalists. The second section investigates the use of digital networked technologies by pro-democracy organizers. This case study concludes with the statement that the Internet and mobile phones made a wide range of activities easier, however the Orange Revolution was largely made possible by savvy activists and journalists wililng to take risks to improve their country.


SeenReport and Citizen Journalism in Pakistan

Posted by MelissaUlbricht on Sep 07, 2010

Check out our newest case study on SeenReport, a platform for citizen journalism in Pakistan.

Over 10,000 citizen reports relating to widespread flooding in Pakistan have been submitted across the spectrum of organizations using the SeenReport platform. The service allows anyone to create a profile and submit text, photos, and videos from a mobile phone for immediate publication on the Web.

The case study is part of the Mobile Media Toolkit that will include many other case studies, how-to guides, resources, and tools on how use mobile phones for reporting, content delivery, and citizen participation, to be puplished this Fall.

SeenReport and Citizen Journalism in Pakistan data sheet 2776 Views
Countries: Pakistan

If You Build It, They Will Come: SeenReport and Mobile Citizen Journalism in Pakistan

Posted by MelissaUlbricht on Sep 01, 2010
If You Build It, They Will Come: SeenReport and Mobile Citizen Journalism in Pakistan data sheet 4327 Views

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 through 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.

Basic Information
Project goals: 

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.

Brief description of the project: 

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.

Target audience: 

The target audience is any individual in Pakistan with a mobile phone who wishes to submit news content for broader dissemination.

Detailed Information
Status: 
Ongoing
What worked well? : 

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.

What did not work? What were the challenges?: 

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.


Fromdistance Mobile Journalism

Posted by MelissaUlbricht on Aug 17, 2010
Fromdistance Mobile Journalism data sheet 687 Views
Organization that developed the Tool: 
Main Contact: 
Fromdistance
Problem or Need: 

For citizen reporters, Fromdistance Mobile Citizen Reporter enables anyone with the application to send high-resolution images and videos from a mobile phone directly to a publisher or the web. This makes delivery quick and easy.

For publishers, Mobile Professional Reporter delivers content that is fit to the publisher's needs (video and images are automatically converted and resized) and the system is integrated with a publisher's existing content management system.

It also enables reporters and publishers to make themselves more accessible and better manage incoming content.

 

Main Contact Email : 
Brief Description: 

Fromdistance Mobile Journalism includes two tools: Mobile Citizen Reporter and Mobile Professional Reporter. For citizen reporters, Fromdistance Mobile Citizen Reporter enables anyone with the application to send high-resolution images and videos from a mobile phone directly to a publisher or to the web. Users may download the Mobile Citizen Reporter application for free.

For publishers, Mobile Professional Reporter delivers content that is fit to the publisher's needs (video and images are automatically converted and resized) and the system is integrated with a publisher's existing content management system. To become a publisher, a user must contact Fromdistance. Publishers can define their own terms of use for acquiring content (size and copyright, for instance). The service can work with large files.

This YouTube video explains how it works.

 

 

Tool Category: 
App resides and runs on a server
Key Features : 

For citizen reporters, Fromdistance Mobile Citizen Reporter enables quick and easy delivery in an all-in-one tool for citizen and independent journalists. Users may download the Mobile Citizen Reporter application for free. It supports all Nokia multimedia handsets and other Series 60 devices.

For publishers, Mobile Professional Reporter delivers content that is fit to the publisher's needs and the system is integrated with an existing content management system, making content delivery standardized and efficient. To become a publisher, a user must contact Fromdistance. Publishers can define their own terms of use for acquiring content. The service can work with large files.

Main Services: 
Stand-alone Application
Tool Maturity: 
Currently deployed
Platforms: 
Other
Program/Code Language: 
Other
Organizations Using the Tool: 

The Fromdistance website says that "many leading media companies and publishers" have chosen the Mobile Professional Reporter tool, but it does not provide a list of company names. A datasheet also includes screenshots of use cases.

Is the Tool's Code Available?: 
No
Is an API available to interface with your tool?: 
Yes

Camera Phone Images, Videos, Live Streaming: A Contemporary Visual Trend

Posted by MohiniBhavsar on Jul 09, 2010
Camera Phone Images, Videos, Live Streaming: A Contemporary Visual Trend data sheet 2964 Views
Author: 
Gaby David
Publication Date: 
Mar 2010
Publication Type: 
Journal article
Abstract: 

Writing for a new media review is like writing history as events unfold. In a short time, this article will be out of date and perhaps no more than a few personal 2.0 snapshots taken of a slice of our lives circa 2009. Nevertheless, it is useful to draw a clear picture of how this medium is being used today, to define some of its emerging social properties, and to document and pay closer attention to its influence on our daily experiences and self-mediations. By self-mediations I refer to how each one of us decides his or her digital imprint: what we post online, whether they are videos, photographs, CVs, and the like. Due to the enormous quantity of content produced by users – now usually called prosumers – we should pay close attention to these
doings.

My focus will be on how camera phones affect how news is created and shared, reminding us of how closely the concept of ‘newsworthiness’ is linked to immediacy. Then I will briefly compare the camera phone video experience to the cinematic experience and discuss how film narrative and conventions have affected camera use for better or for worse. Finally, I will pose some open questions that touch on the academic and social value of the camera phone images, and on how contextualising them remains a crucial ingredient in all analysis. I will conclude by considering the visual impact that this handheld object is having on our lives and relationships.


CGNet Swara

Posted by PrabhasPokharel on Jul 08, 2010
CGNet Swara data sheet 4998 Views

The Swara System Flowchart (Bill Thies)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.

Basic Information
Organization involved in the project?: 
Project goals: 

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.

Brief description of the project: 

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.

Target audience: 

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.

Detailed Information
Mobile Tools Used: 
Length of Project (in months) : 
5
Status: 
Ongoing
What worked well? : 

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.

What did not work? What were the challenges?: 

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.

 


Networked Activism

Posted by MohiniBhavsar on Jun 29, 2010
Networked Activism data sheet 1814 Views
Author: 
Land, Molly Beutz
Publication Date: 
Aug 2009
Publication Type: 
Journal article
Abstract: 

The same technologies that groups of ordinary citizens are using to write operating systems and encyclopedias are fostering a quiet revolution in another area - social activism. On websites such as Avaaz.org and Wikipedia, citizens are forming groups to report on human rights violations and organize email writing campaigns, activities formerly the prerogative of professionals. This article considers whether the participatory potential of technology can be used to mobilize ordinary citizens in the work of human rights advocacy.

Existing online advocacy efforts reveal a de facto inverse relationship between broad mobilization and deep participation. Large groups mobilize many individuals, but each of those individuals has only a limited ability to participate in decisions about the group’s goals or methods. Thus, although we currently have the tools necessary for individuals to engage in advocacy without the need for professional organizations, we are still far from realizing an ideal of fully decentralized, user-generated activism.

Drawing on the insights of network theory, the article proposes a model of “networked activism” that would help ensure both deep participation and broad mobilization by encouraging the formation of highly participatory small groups while providing opportunities for those small groups to connect with one another. Drawing on a series of interviews with human rights and other civil society organizations, the article recommends specific design elements that might foster a model of networked activism. The article concludes that although online activism is unlikely to replace some of the functions served by human rights organizations, efforts to create synergies between traditional and online efforts have the potential to provide avenues for real, meaningful, and effective citizen participation in human rights advocacy.


Comm.unity

Posted by nadav on Dec 15, 2009
Comm.unity data sheet 5299 Views
Organization that developed the Tool: 
Main Contact: 
Nadav Aharony
Problem or Need: 

There are different  scenarios where it is more desirable to have a method of communication that does not depend on cellular or Internet backbone infrastructure:

  • Sometimes that infrastructure is down - for example due to natural disaster, or man-made "shocks" to the system,  from a terrorist attack to simply a massive gathering of people who want to communicate all at the same time, for example at a ball-game or in a conference hall.
  • Sometimes infrastructure is just not there - like in some developing countries or regions, or rural areas.
  • Sometimes, one is interested in circumventing censorship, in order to enable civic communications or in order to get news out of a country or conflict zone.
  • Sometimes one just wants to save money and other costs - why use an expensive infrastructure that was made to get information to the other side of the world, and pay a service tax to the operator, when communication is local by nature? For example for internal communication in a rural village, campus, or enterprise.

Aside from the cases where infrastructure-based communication is not the best way to go, close proximity device-to-device communications offer several added advantages of their own:

  • A broadcast can be targeted to a limited geographic area without the need to use heavy GIS servers and requiring all participating end points to report their absolute locations.
  • Opportunistic communications with previously unknown parties, where the co-location serves as a discovery and bootstrap mechanism, and knowing absolute "global" addressing (email address, phone number, etc.) is not required in advance.
  • Natural mobility patterns of people or vehicles carrying the mobile devices can be leveraged to physically rout information from place to place, or from source to destination. People and vehicles can become "data-mules", or a "sneaker-net". For example, a bus carrying wifi enabled device can act as a "data-mule" and collect information from schools or villages along its path, delivering it to the internet when it reaches a connected access point. People moving away from a natural disaster or a civic demonstration can carry with them pictures, messages, and news from the disconnected zone to the outside world.
  • The mobile device can act as a sensor in the physical world - depending on the type of short-range radio used, it can sense peers who are physically proximate with varying accuracy.
  • In some cases the close-proximity communication adds improved security and authenticity, since all parties must be within a certain physical range of one another.

For all of the above scenarios there is a set of common technical requirements and features. The idea behind Comm.unity is to unite them into one core framework that allows development of applications for all of these cases. Different scenarios would call for more specific adaptations (for example added security for some of the scenarios), so Comm.unity is designed to be very modular, and allow developers to use just what they need for the applications that they build on top of it. It is also designed to be extensible by the developer community, so new features and modules could be added. This system is not meant to replace infrastructure, but rather augment it.

Main Contact Email : 
Brief Description: 

Comm.unity is a software framework in development, which is intended to allow developers and researchers to easily create applications that are proximity aware and socially aware, and can run on a large set of existing consumer devices. It implements a wireless, device-to-device information system that bypasses the need for any centralized servers, coordination, or administration. It is designed to span an extensible set of radio interfaces (WiFi, Bluetooth, IR, etc.).

Comm.unity is targeted for field deployment as well as for supporting advanced mobile-phone-based research. The feature-set for field deployment consists of a basic set of functionalities that are simple and explicitly defined. The research aspects include additional features that are more experimental, or support collection of research data - for example modules for performing logging a user's behavior and other sensor data, performing data-mining, machine learning and other types of on-device learning of a user's context and social activity.

Tool Category: 
App resides and runs on a mobile phone
Key Features : 
  • Communications unity: The current state of the close proximity networking space is very fragmented - Many different standards and technologies, and even devices with similar radios (e.g. Bluetooth or wi-fi) are not always able to communicate directly to each other due to limitations imposed by vendor, service provider, or simply lack of appropriate software. Comm.unity aims to resolve that by creating software and protocols that could run on a large set of different mobile and stationary devices, and allow them to directly talk to one another as long as they have similar physical radio interfaces. This means, for example, that iPhones would be able to discover and communicate with Nokia Symbian phones or Android phones via Bluetooth, no matter what mobile operator they belong to, and a WinMobile phone could connect to any Windows, Mac, or Linux computer via wi-fi without any special issues.
  • Unifying close-proximity technologies: There is a growing number of technologies that support close-proximity and device-to-device radio communications, wi-fi (802.11), Bluetooth, Zigbee, near-field technologies, wi-bree, or infrared technolgies, to name a few. If we abstract the common actions that applications using these technologies need to perform, we could define a common set of functionalities, for example: device discovery, sending a short message, or sending a file. With these and similar primitives, a programmer could write an application that can very easily be adapted to run on different network interface technologies.
  • Reusable codebase (sample modules: peer-to-peer networking, social awareness, logging, ...)
  • Extensible Architecture - Modular building blocks
  • Modular Runtime - Not all modules have to be loaded in runtime, this way strong devices could run high-processing load activities, while weaker mobile devices could run a minimal set of features.
Main Services: 
Multi-Media Messaging (MMS) or other Multi-Media
Voting, Data Collection, Surveys, and Polling
Location-Specific Services and GIS
Mobile Social Network/Peer-to-peer
Other
Bluetooth
Information Resources/Information Databases
Stand-alone Application
Display tool in profile: 
Yes
Some of the prototype applications developed over Comm.unity
Tool Maturity: 
Under development/pre-launch
Platforms: 
Android
Linux/UNIX
Mac/Apple
Mobile Linux
Symbian/3rd
Windows
Other
Program/Code Language: 
Java/Android
Python
Other
Is the Tool's Code Available?: 
No
Is an API available to interface with your tool?: 
Yes
Global Regions: 
Countries: 

Voices of Africa: Citizen Journalists Reporting with Mobile Phones

Posted by AnneryanHeatwole on Nov 12, 2009

Mobile phones are the tool of choice for a new group of young reporters in Africa. Voices of Africa Media Foundation, a Netherlands-based non-profit, trains young journalists in Africa to create news videos for the web using mobiles.

The foundation currently has programs in Kenya, Ghana, Cameroon, Tanzania, Mozambique, and South Africa, with plans to expand to more countries in 2010. The training program for the young journalists lasts nine months and teaches the trainees how to create video news reports with cell phones. At the beginning of the program, the small group (there are usually six or fewer participants per program) comes together and is trained for three to four days in the basics of mobile reporting (both how to use the technology and in basic journalism).  Then they return to their communities, and for a period of six months, use the phones to make video reports on local stories.

Voices of Africa: Citizen Journalists Reporting with Mobile Phones data sheet 6560 Views
Global Regions:
Countries: Cameroon Ghana Kenya Mozambique Netherlands South Africa Tanzania Uganda

Citizen Journalism: The Newsroom Question

Posted by PrabhasPokharel on Sep 02, 2009

Traditional news media is a changing industry and conversations discussing the future of news media as it transforms itself abound.  What is the future of the newsroom in citizen journalism?

SaveTheNews.org, an organization that is devoted to bringing public policy into conversation about the future of news media, hosted a forum in late August where former staff of Rocky Mountain News and journalists from around Denver fielded a host of questions regarding the future of news media. Below are a few highlights of the conversation (transcript available in full here).

Wiki Journalism: GroundReport.com

Posted by PrabhasPokharel on Aug 20, 2009

GroundReport.com is a platform for the kind of journalism that has many names: hyperlocal journalism, citizen journalism, wiki journalism. Rachel Sterne's idea is to have a website where anyone can just sign up and submit articles, and become an instant citizen reporter.  Submitted content goes through a plagiarism filter and a group of editors will edit before any content goes live.

Based on the number of hits and the ranking of the author, good articles get filtered to the front page, and the hope is that bad articles will stay at bay with bad rankings and scarcely any hits. Contributors are compensated based on article rankings but compensation averages only a few cents.

Screenshot from GroundReport.com

Press Banned on Reporting Violence, and a Citizen Reporting Tool for Afghan Elections

Posted by PrabhasPokharel on Aug 19, 2009

Af the Afghani elections are coming up this week, there are a projects focusing on the election and citizen media coverage that we like to note.

First, as Taliban has intensified violence and has threatened to disrupt the elections and "kill those who vote," the Afghani government has called for reporters to avoid coverage of violence  so that Afghanis aren't scared away from polling stations. Meanwhile, associations such as the Independent Journalist Association of Afghanistan have refused to take the order and has promised to continue reporting. The ban on reporting is phrased as a "request" in English, and as "strictly forbidden" in Dari (good synopsis of ban and violence here).

Gaza Update: Mapping and Citizen Reporting Via SMS on Al Jazeera

Posted by KatrinVerclas on Jan 03, 2009

Al Jazeera launched a new site today for citizens in Gaza to report incidences of various kinds in Gaza via SMS and Twitter. The deployment is using Ushahidi and Souktel's SMS gateway, one of the few able to deliver SMS in Gaza.  In this latest citizen journalism effort, Al Jazeera is both mapping reports from its own journalists and incidences reported by the public.  So far, there are few citizens texting in, however; the majority of the content consists of Al Jazeera news reports for now.  Al Jazeera and its new media team are doing a great job, however, in their labs  -- very impressive innovations coming from the Arab satellite news service and its New Media folks like Ryaad M, for example. 

The News is Coming: Local News with SMS

Posted by CorinneRamey on Jul 09, 2008

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.

Guy Berger

Super Tuesday: Getting Out the Youth Vote with Citizen Journalism

Posted by CorinneRamey on Feb 05, 2008

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.

Groundviews Mobile - Citizen Journalism from Sri Lanka on the Go

Posted by yajitha on Jan 26, 2008

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.

Groundviews Mobile