To spark ideas for comments in this discussion thread, consider the following questions:
- How have you used mobile phones to amplify voices in your communities? How have you used mobile phones to collect information? How have you used mobile phones to disseminate news and information?
- When sharing your story, please tell us:
- What were you hoping to achieve with the implementation of these tactics?
- What was the impact?
- What did you learn from the experience?
- What would you do differently or recommend to other to do differently?
Share your thoughts, ideas and stories to this discussion thread by adding your comments below, or responding to existing comments.
Rural villages do not have access to all of the variety of media for the purpose of information that city-dwellers have, such as television, radio, and the Internet. But, the village residents do possess mobile phones which they can use to share the local information.
So we have with the help of Rising Voices, been able to build the project "Segou Villages Connection," which connects rural residents to Bamako, the capital of Mali, by SMS on Ségou Info Blog. For that purpose, it is necessary to work with people who live in the villages. In the project, we work with young volunteers in the larger cities of the Ségou region and others in villages around Segou.
How does it work?
Certain blogging platforms such as Wordpress do have options to post by SMS, but for the moment, the option is only available using a US-based phone number. Because of this it was necessary to think about other solutions. For the project I obtained a Malian phone number where participants could send information by SMS. When I receive the SMS, I re-type it and publish the information for them on the blog with a name of the author of each article. The blog can then be seen by residents living in the capital city of Bamako, as well as supporters of the project around the world. However, we are still looking for better ways to send communication back to the original authors of the small posts, since we have to consider the costs of the SMS messages.
How I get the images from the participants for articles?
For the article, the author takes the photograph with his/her telephone and sends it. For that purpose, we provided every participant with three memory cards. By the time he/she sends me a memory card with "mammy-wagons" (cars that go back and forth from the capital to the rural villages), he/she uses another card. When I download the images, I resend the memory cards to the owner and so on. This combines digital tools with traditional forms of physical information relay.
Even though that this method does not take full advantage of all of instant forms of communication available to many parts of the world, it is a good preparation and gets the new bloggers used to creating information. We continue to experiment and find new ways to cut down on costs and the effort it takes to exchange information. Due to the lack of infrastructure, we must find other ways to get these voices heard.
Training:
At the beginning of the project, I noticed that many people have their own mobile phones, but do not know how to use the SMS option. So, it has been necessary to train the participants with in the use of SMS option, to make images and videos by phones. In the idea that one day, the participants will have computers and the Internet connection in villages to share the publications with communities, we also trained them in the computing, in the use of internet, creating photos and videos by digital cameras.
The mobile phone amplifies the voices in the community:
The daily activities, traditions, and cultural expressions that take place in rural villages in Mali should be better known on the web. One of the best ways to amplify these voices is on a blog, where everyone can express his/her ideas. Using mobile phones is sometimes more appropriate because the majority of rural populations in Mali have one. So participants can collect information everywhere in their village and send it to be published on the blog. This gives them a space to amplify their voices, and can be seen on the Segou Info blogs.
What is the ongoing impact?
The impact is that people will have a manner to express their concerns, their needs, and their point of views about things that interests them, their localities. It’s a good way for villagers to share information, knowledge, experience and competence about rural village development activities. This system is also a means of raising awareness of the local populations on practices which are not favorable to them. Yet there is still the obstacle of infrastructure that we are attempting to overcome by using digital and traditional forms of information exchange. We would love to hear how other groups facing similar rural settings can send and receive information in a more economic and sustainable way.
Hi Boukary,
I really enjoyed reading your post, especially the ways in which you have been engaging with the Segou community and offer a platform for them to share their stories!
You mentioned using Wordpress to send SMS messages but that you had problems with it. Have you tried using FrontlineSMS? (Its a free software which helps you to manage text messages) You can use it to set http triggers so you wouldn't need to re-type the text messages (I think in your case you would set an autoforward to email to then create a post in Wordpress). Alternatively, because its difficult to blog in 160 characters this example sounds suited to microblogging, so you could forward SMS to a twitter account and have the feed appear on your blog page.
I also have a question for you: who is the target audience of the website / who do you find uses the information from the site e.g. media institutions or NGOs? There seems to be such diversity in the information published - its so interesting.
Some challenges have been identified in other posts about how people who input via SMS can access the information collected from the community and as you mention that you are still looking for better ways to communicate with the original authors of the small posts, I was wondering whether the villages are given the opportunity to access the photos and texts which are published online? Perhaps in a different format if they do not have internet access like a newsletter or a demo? I'd love to hear your ideas about this. Can you also tell us more about the mammy wagons (they sound very cool!) - do they play a role in communication with the community?
Many Thanks for sharing your story!
Hi Amy O'Donnell, thank you for your comments.
I’m really happy about your comments.
I can say that initiative of new tactics has already served me by Getting the link of FrontlineSMS form you, Amy O'Donnell! It has been a great opportunity for me and will help me a lot if I could install and work with it. Perhaps, you would have time to assist me in the first test. I have already installed it on my computer, but have problems in working with.
Your questions are welcome!
Everybody interested in these informations on the web site is one of our targer audiences. It could be an individual or a simple group of persons in Malian towns or in other countries who would like to discover villages in distance. Medias, NGOs, projects, and Malian diaspora are also our large target audience.
These locale iformations by sms from the villagers themselves will help a lot, the projects which would like to know more about rural daily events so that they come to work there and have no time before to come on place to explore.
For example, http://fasokan.wordpress.com (a blog in french and Bambara) my native language) and http://villagesinfos.mondoblog (a blog in french) have given exact ideas to groups in other countries in building their projects for Malian villages. So, I think would it be better again, if these informations are from villagers themselves by sms on a blog.
The diversity in the information published is about to permit to everybody to get an item in which he/she is interested to discover in villages in distance. We are on the way to add more other categories so that we can get a large target on the web.
Yes, I’m looking better ways that are easy for participants to send sms and images and one of these ways is what you very kindly proposed to me: FrontlineSMS. The other challenge at that level is how to make a feedback between the writers and the readers about the comments. For the moment, I send, as I said in the post, all the comment to original other by sms. It a great pleasure to do it like because “when we like, we do”, but another easier and faster way would be better.
About giving the opportunity to access to the photos and text with the villages is one of our big challenges. But, I think, in everything we do, we must fix some objectives and struggle to reach them even with difficulties. Working with rural villages in these fields is not easy and so, for many reasons. Africa, particularly rural areas are secret societies about culture and traditions. “Everything is not to say”. That’s why, I myself control the site to respect that rule. Villagers think that we make photos and videos and come to sell them, NO!
I really think we are moving towards a digital domain in many fields in the world. Going only with towns in the field of New Information and Communication Technologies is as if the world is walking on only a foot. For the globalization of the world, every small place on the earth must participate. This is very clear in the domain of culture and traditions!
If ICT is a large field of knowledge, if we take from others, we must let for them!
I think, as I always do in that project, it’s necessary to inform villagers about the impacts of sms infos on villages. An example is that, I have been able to lead some projects towards some Malian villages through these activities of publish locale infos on the blogs. These projects are at the beginning and that is one of the big aims of what we are doing: Make discover villages is distance, give opportunities to villages to express themselves, show the real faces of our areas. If we are convinced that what we are doing is a kind of contribution to the development of the country, of villages life, we must do it by informing the populations. For that reason, we print some information publishe with the comments and distribute in villages. We would soon install mobile Internet in some villages so that we can get access to the inoformations with readers' comments. All these initiative will give exact ideas to villagers on what we are doing and the purpose.
I have been asked about the meaning of that expression several times: the mammy-wagon. I really tell that I learnt the expression in books meaning small cars that join villages to cities. The cars are not here for communication, but for transportation.
The fact is that, when we have something to send to the capital or in a city, we give it to the drivers of these cars and we pay. In the same manner, the participants and I exchange photos by sending the on memory cards by the small and old cars.
Thank you
Boukary Konaté
Thank you for sharing this story, Boukary! It's great to hear about the way that you are "giving opportunities to villages to express themselves" in Mali by using mobile phones.
I wanted to share another story that is similar to yours, and it comes from Namibia. Thanks to MobileActive for documenting and sharing this story on their website!
Story: The Namibian, an independent newspaper, has been using SMS for citizen media since 2007. Their SMS program gives their readers the ability to quickly respond to articles by texting in their comments to the newspaper. Those SMS text messages are sent to an online aggregator [I wonder which one], exported to an Excel document, read and edited for grammar. The editor then selects the text messages that best represent the responses and publishes those messages in the (print) newspaper. The Namibian also has a web page where they post text messages.
Impact: The Namibian's SMS program was been very popular. There are now 2 pages dedicated to the SMS program in the printed newspaper. Namibians that are unable to write hand written letters to the editor of the paper, because of illiteracy and other barriers, can simply send a short text message to get their point across. This has allowed for many more Namibians to express their views!
Challenges: One challenge that I think many citizen media programs face are the costs accrued by collecting and/or sending SMS messages. These costs vary depending on the country and the tool. I will add another comment under the challenges discussion thread to raise these questions. In this story of the Namibian newspaper, there are costs accrued for the sender: submitting to the SMS page costs the sender $2 Namibian per text (roughly $.02 USD), the cost of a text message.
Another challenge that the Namibian faced goes back to the discussion on trust/legitimacy/accuracy of citizen media. Some Namibian government officials challenged the newspaper regarding the true authors of the text messages. They claimed that the newspaper itself was actually writing the comments to criticize the government.
And finally, there is the challenge around which language to collect and share messages in. The Namibian has chosen to collect and share messages in English, the official language of Namibia. But this limits Namibians whose language is one of the other 8 common languages!
Questions: What other stories are out there of how mobile phones are being used to encourage, support, enhance citizen media? How have you been able to tackle the challenges such as language barriers, cost and questions around accuracy of information?
Thanks for a great dialogue, everyone!
Boukary,
Thanks so much for answering my questions, its great to learn more about this project as an example of interaction via SMS and how the community is sharing ideas on topics they're interested in. Perhaps you could ask people to use keywords to help categorise the information?
Of course I'm happy to help you set up FrontlineSMS - you could start by watching this video and check out this step-by-step guide. We also offer free technical support on our user forum. Let me know how you get on and if you have any specific questions.
Thanks,
I’m very happy for your suggestions. As I said, I have already installed FrontlineSMS and will watch the videos you sent to me so that I can understand.
Thank you
Boukary Konaté
Hi Kristin Antin,
I’M really happy for your comments and contributions with the Namibian SMS initiatives. That example with Namibians SMS projects gave me other ideas that will help me to do more in Ségouinfos.
The micro-blogs by SMS as Segouinfos can help to encourage, support and enhance citizen media because by the fact that, some informations published in the micro-blogs can help the large Medias as a website, radios and TV. Events happen in every small corner on the earth even if they are unknown by people because of lack of means of information and communication. These small informations could be the solutions for some problems somewhere for somebody, so every small thing is interesting.
In these activities in rural villages of sending information by SMS, language can be a big challenge depending on the fact of low instruction in villages. We are on a program to resolve that problem of language. The program consists to train villagers on how to write SMS on mobile phones in Bambara, the native language spoken by the majority of Malians. Lots of villagers can read and write in their mother tongue because of alphabetization in villages. Malian Education system also takes into account, the teaching of national languages at school. For the SMS project in furor we would like to get a group of persons to send SMS in mother tongue and another will translate in French, the post published in Bambara. So, the blog will be bilingual by that fact of posting in mother tongues and French and the fact of translating between languages. This will also permit to get a larger target on the web with the Malian Diaspora speaking national languages and cut the language barriers.
The cost of sending SMS is little high for villagers where there are less income activities. So, from time to time, we send phone credit to the participants so that they can send SMS easily. For the moment, we have no free SMS option.
For accuracy of information, I always call and discuss with the sender of the information and some time, I get contact with other persons to tell me what happened exactly.
Thanks Kristin Antin, for a great dialogue
Boukary Konaté
Mali
Melissa Ulbricht and I just attended Joburg Radio Days 2011 (http://www.journalism.co.za/joburg-radio-days.html) where we spoke with radio operators from a variety of African countries. One recurring topic was the cost of SMS and the unavailability of data services as a barrier to citizen journalism.
I'm writing to ask some questions of you:
Our project is commited to the gathering of _documentary evidence_.
People using the software we developed were able to capture numerous instances of police misconduct at DUI checkpoints in California. We posted this online and contacted a lawyer to get a complete legal analysis of the evidence we received. These reports then received a lot of media attention.
Our reports are here:
http://openwatch.net/blog/12
http://openwatch.net/blog/5
This evidence has established a trend of police abuse in California, and we are now working with legal groups to bring about a policy change in the state.
R
The mobile phone dialogue sounds really interesting - I am way behind the curve in knowing how much people are doing now. The only direct work that Outer Voices has done with mobile phones was during the election last year in Burma - we went to the Thai/ Burma border to document the elections from the perspective of the ethnic groups, and in the process, we were helping to fund the Karen groups who had informants inside all through the ethnic areas, who were providing on going updates about election related human rights violations as they occurred. They were calling in reports to Karen Information Center, who recorded logged and translated the calls, and then giving the reports to us and to other journalists, who then were able to quote first hand reports in their reporting. It worked out really well, and in the process it built a stronger internal network for the Karen groups who continue to use it in resisting attacks on villages particularly in the karen state. I was a supporter of the program, helped plan the project and was a recipient of their information, but am not actually a direct user of the setup. That was all done by the Karen women.
Let me know if I can be of any use.
Great story, Stephanie! Thanks for sharing this. Mobile phones have proved to be a great tool to ensure transparency around elections (and we have document many examples in our past dialogue on Election Monitoring). What I think is really great about your story is that these citizen monitors took the next step of developing relationships with reporters and journalists that collected and used that information. In this way, citizen media and traditional media reinforced each other - perhaps, this is how the relationship should be between these two forms of media?
I also think it's great that this process helped to build strong and long-lasting relationships between the citizen monitors, NGOs and journalists (examples of the importance of these relationships can be found in our past dialogue on Engaging the Media).
One last New Tactics plug...for those of you interested in sharing other stories of how technology, like mobile phones, are being used to strengthen transparency and accountability, be sure to check out our September dialogue on Using Technology to Promote Transparency.
Thanks again, Stephanie!
Yes, thank you Stephanie and Kristin. Great post and comments. A few thoughts. On the topic of citizen monitoring for elections, I think mobiles are a hugely important tool. That said, though, it's important not to conflate the idea of citizen reporting with election monitoring, as the two approaches have markedly different goals, audiences, and processes -- though I do belive mobile tech and mobile tools have a role to play in both. Check out this MobileActive.post that explains more about the differences between citizen reporting and election monitoring.
Thanks! Great dialogue eveyone!
In another post, Becky of MobileActive.org introduces Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Systems to the dialogue - thanks, Becky! She shared a link to the MobileActive.org guide on Planning and Implementing a Mobile Interactive Voice System. She also shared a short definition of IVR:
So, I wanted to follow this up by sharing some information with you all on a free tool called Freedom Fone:
On their website, you'll find a lot of information on how this technology works and you can even play with a demo! You can read a few stories about how practitioners have used this tool for citizen media:
Have you used Freedom Fone to acheive this two-way communication so important for citizen media? How did it work? What was the impact? Share you story!
In Zimbabwe we found that while 10% of the population has access to the internet, roughly 54% have a mobile line, so we use a combination of SMS, audio via Freedom Fone and email newsletters to get information out to our subscribers.
SMS
We use a combination of a South African gateway to broadcast bulk text messages and we use Frontline SMS to process the feedback that we get from our subscribers. Kubatana maintains an SMS subscriber list of more than 14 000 people. The list is used to send out updates on public events, news headlines and offers on various products. Some of these products include booklets, reports, CDs and DVDs.
We also encourage citizens to become participatory is through encouraging them to become citizen reporters and text us their witnessing of violence and intimidation. During the recent violence in Harare we sent out a text alert warning people of violence in the city centre and asked them to text us their experiences. We received a variety of reports, which we then shared with the broader public via our community blog. The similarity of these reports served to corroborate the reporting.
Freedom Fone
In 2010 we collaborated with the Minister for Constitutional Affairs Eric Matinenga to provide a Q+A on the constitution. Zimbabweans could dial into our Freedom Fone numbers and listen to information on the constitution. This information was available in three languages, English, Shona and Ndebele.
Another interesting mobile phone initiative that we undertook in 2010 was providing the general public with an opportunity to phone in and listen to a short audio drama on sexual harassment in the workplace called Tariro on Top. Our surveys indicate that the public prefers to use their money to access “edutainment” rather than straight politics.
Hello Upenyu!
Thank you for the post on your work and experiences in Zim. You are encouraging citizens to participate through texting in reports of vioelence and intimidation. Are you offering a free shortcode for people to text in to? In conversation, I've found that the cost of sending a text, as a citizen journalist, is prohibitive in many cases. Do you find this to be true? And if so, how do you deal with the issue of cost?
Thanks, and looking forward to more great dialogue on this topic of mobiles in media. Thanks!
Melissa
Permitting to populations to get information on the constitution by dialling Freedom Phone Numbers is very interesting and inspiring in other countries!
Thank you all for sharing your work, experiences and ideas in this dialogue. It has been most interesting to read and very informative.
While I agree that for some citizens, especially those in rural areas, the cost of sending a text message may prohibit them from participating and sharing their stories, the fact remains that mobile phones are by far the most used technology and are an invaluable resource.
Upenyu, you mention that only 10% of the population in Zimbabwe has internet while over 50% has a mobile phone. Because even rural areas have mobile access, and often experience worse hardships than in the cities while also having less access to any news or information on the situation in the country, organizations can put a greater focus on providing these groups with information, with short news updates and encourage them, if and when they are able to, to provide the organizations with their own stories and information from their areas. Furthermore, it may be encouraging for these rural groups to know that they can so easily share their stories, experiences, fears through text messaging. Finally, establishing more toll free numbers for all citizens to call, and informing people of these numbers, may prove to be highly beneficial, although there may still be fear of being listened in on in highly censored states.