The Role of Digital Networked Technologies in the Ukrainian Orange Revolution data sheet 2655 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.
Digitally Networked Technology in Kenya's 2007-2008 Post-Election Crisis data sheet 2810 Views
Author:
Joshua Goldstein and Juliana Rotich
Publication Date:
Sep 2008
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
Written largely through the lens of rich nations, scholars have developed theories about how digital technology affects democracy. However, primarily due to a paucity of evidence, these theories have excluded the experience of Sub-Saharan Africa, where meaningful access to digital tools is only beginning to emerge, but where the struggles between failed state and functioning democracy are profound. Using the lens of the 2007–2008 Kenyan presidential election crisis, this case study illustrates how digitally networked technologies, specifically mobile phones and the Internet, were a catalyst to both predatory behavior such as ethnic-based mob violence and to civic behavior such as citizen journalism and human rights campaigns.
The paper concludes with the notion that while digital tools can help promote transparency and keep perpetrators from facing impunity, they can also increase the ease of promoting hate speech and ethnic divisions.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage on Australia's record mobile web usage during the recent elections there, how telecom's price wars in Kenya have pushed down prices, why carriers may have raised the price of Google's Nexus One, a project Ugandan refugees using mobiles to find missing family, and competition for data-enabled handsets in Africa.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage on using SMS to access social networks in Nigeria, Organizing for America's new iPhone app that aids political canvassers, HTC's development of a dual GSM and CDMA phone, a pilot project that uses SMS to send information to pregnant women in Peru, and a Pew Research Center report on U.S. adults' mobile phone usage habits.
Today's Mobile Minute's coverage will feature release of the data-aggregating program SwiftRiver, feature phones' allure in developing countries, Nokia's entrance into the dual SIM card market, a new book that investigates how ICTs will have an effect on politics and culture in the Muslim world, and how RIM's response delayed India's proposed ban on BlackBerry services.
This month, NYC will be abuzz (and grid-locked in traffic) with leaders and practitioners in town for two high-profile gatherings focused on international development: The UN Summit on the Millennium Development Goals and the Clinton Global Initiative’s Annual Meeting.
With that opportunity and energy in mind, this month’s MobileActive.org Tech Salon (on Thursday Sept. 23rd) is themed “Mobiles for Women & Women in Mobile” - calling attention to the growing role of mobile technology in development, and particularly the role and needs of women in this field.
Through a mix of short presentations on projects & research, we will take a closer look at:
Factors Influencing Citizen Adoption of SMS-Based e-Government Services data sheet 2631 Views
Author:
Susanto, T, D and Goodwin, R.
Publication Date:
Jan 2010
Publication Type:
Journal article
Abstract:
This paper identifies the factors that determine citizens’ acceptance of SMS-based e-government services. It reports on a web-based survey, paper-based questionnaires, and phone-call interviews that collected 159 responses from 25 countries. The results indicate that there are fifteen perceptions toward using SMS-based e-government services that may influence citizens to use or to reject the services:
perceived ease of use
perceived efficiency in time and distance
perceived value for money; perceived usefulness
perceived responsiveness; perceived convenience
perceived relevance, quality and reliability of the information
trust in the SMS technology
perceived risk to user privacy
perceived reliability of the mobile network and the SMS-based system
trust in government and perceived quality of public services
perceived risk to money
perceived availability of device and infrastructure
perceived compatibility; and
perceived self-efficacy in using SMS.
Whether or not a citizen adopts an SMS-based e-government service is influenced by these perceptions. To increase the acceptance of SMS-based e-government services, the systems should address all of these belief factors. An intensive advertising campaign for the services in all mass media channels is critically important to make citizens aware of and to provide detailed knowledge about the services. The advertising campaign should involve people who influence individuals’ decision making. These people include friends, family, teachers, experts, public figures, and government officials. This study found that Notification services are the most frequently used followed by Pull SMS, Listen, and Transaction SMS services. Notification services could be an appropriate starting point for governments who want to establish SMS-based e-government services.
[NEW EVENTS ADDED] After a slow August, September is bursting with events. Mark your calendars, there's something for everyone this month! And, as always - if you know of other events of note for this community, please add them in the comments!
Our Events:
23 September, Women and Mobile Tech Salon (New York, NY, USA) MobileActive is hosting a tech salon this month to discuss mobile tech and the particular needs of women to improve their lives, health, and economic status.
We will have short talks by women leaders in the mobile tech-for-social-change field. Register here!
The Mobile Minute is here to keep you up-to-date on mobile and ICT news. Today's Mobile Minute covers National Public Radio's (NPR) metrics in America, why FM radio could be coming to your mobile handset, the decline of landline phones in the US, a program that delivers email over SMS in the Philippines, and why advertisers should use mobile marketing in developing countries.
The Rules of Beeping: Exchanging Messages via Intentional "Missed Calls" on Mobile Phones data sheet 2113 Views
Author:
Jonathan Donner
Publication Date:
Jan 2008
Publication Type:
Journal article
Abstract:
This article explores the practice of ‘‘beeping’’ or ‘‘missed calling’’ between mobile phone users, or calling a number and hanging up before the mobile’s owner can pick up the call. Most beeps are requests to call back immediately, but they can also send a prenegotiated instrumental message such as ‘‘pick me up now’’ or a relational sign, such as ‘‘I’m thinking of you.’’ The practice itself is old, with roots in landline behaviors, but it has grown tremendously, particularly in the developing world.
Based on interviews with small business owners and university students in Rwanda, the article identifies three kinds of beeps (callback, pre-negotiated instrumental, and relational) and the norms governing their use. It then assesses the significance of the practice using adaptive structuration theory. In concluding, the article contrasts beeping with SMS/text messaging, discusses its implications for increasing access to telecommunications services, and suggests paths for future research.
A Large Scale Study of Text Messaging Use data sheet 3861 Views
Author:
Agathe Battestini, Vidya Setlur, Timothy Sohn
Publication Date:
Sep 2010
Publication Type:
Journal article
Abstract:
Text messaging has become a popular form of communication with mobile phones worldwide. We present findings from a large scale text messaging study of 70 university students in the United States. We collected almost 60, 000 text messages over a period of 4 months using a custom logging tool on our participants’ phones. Our results suggest that students communicate with a large number of contacts for extended periods of time, engage in simultaneous conversations with as many as 9 contacts, and often use text messaging as a method to switch between a variety of communication mediums. We also explore the content of text messages, and ways text message habits have changed over the last decade as it has become more popular. Finally, we offer design suggestions for future mobile communication tools.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage on the debate between native apps and web apps, an Android application that uses Spyware to mine GPS data, questions about how to define "mobile" devices, an infographic that details texting habits in the US and around the world, and a controversy over a mobile water-finding app for people crossing the Mexico/US border.
Today's Mobile Minute covers the unfolding BBM security controversy, Ushahidi's new Crowdmap online platform, a roundup of mobile apps for the disabled, a break down of what mobile ownership numbers actually mean, and the take-away on mobile remittances from the Tech@State conference.
Press One for Freedom Fone, Press Two for Farm Radio: How Stations Use Integrated Voice Response data sheet 5260 Views
Two years ago, Bev Clark, the co-founder of Kubatana.net, was awarded a large grant as part of the Knight News Challenge for Freedom Fone, an open-source software platform for distributing news and information through interactive voice response (IVR) technology. Freedom Fone was officially launched in late February of this year and has since been downloaded about 200 times, said Amy Saunderson-Meyer of Freedom Fone.
Freedom Fone leverages audio as a mobile function using IVR, a technology that allows a system to detect voice and keyboard input. IVR allows a user to call, enter or say specific numbers, and listen to or contribute audio content. (Many readers are already familiar with IVR - you’ve likely encountered it when you call a customer service number and are prompted with instructions to press numbers for different issues or service departments.)
Since the launch, Freedom Fone has provided support to specific organizations including Equal Access in Cambodia, Small World News TV, TechnoServe, One Economy Corporation, and Africa Youth Trust.
We've got news on Saudi Arabia's and the United Arab Emirates' moves to ban BlackBerry, the release of the TakingITMobile mobile youth activism survey, a review of livestreaming services for mobiles, USAID's mobile financial services risk matrix, and a report that reveals the niche uses for location-based mobile services.
Mobile Activism or Mobile Hype? data sheet 2749 Views
Author:
Firoze Manji
Publication Date:
Jan 2008
Publication Type:
Journal article
Abstract:
Based on two experiences using mobile phones in Africa to address women’s rights and social development, the author tries to understand whether mobile technology will bring social progress to the economically poor of Africa.
The author first examines mobile phone use in the campaign for the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, adopted by the African Union (AU)in 2003 and in need of ratification by 15 countries. The technical barriers to message transmission in the campaign and the message spamming that it attracted inhibited the success of this particular application of mobile technology but did not reduce the campaign effectiveness because the uniqueness of the cell phone campaign strategy drew a large amount of publicity for ratification.
In the second example, the UmNyango Project intended to promote and protect the rights of rural women in the province of KwaZulu Natal (KZN), South Africa, from domestic violence against women and landlessness amongst women. The project created "an SMS gateway through which messages could be distributed to all those enrolled in the project, and it enabled every individual to send messages to the organisers and to the local paralegal officers where they needed assistance with regard to any incidence of violence or threat to their access to land....In practice, the project found SMS to be prohibitively expensive, despite the fact that some level of subsidy was provided by the project towards the cost of SMS." The author states that, "Mobile phones, after all the hype, are like pencils, tools for communication.... Like all technologies, tools do not themselves do anything." He uses the example of SMS hate mail messages to support the position that effects of technology result from the underlying values and morals of its developers, not from the tools themselves, and concludes: "In capitalist societies, all technologies have the potential for magnifying and amplifying social differentiation. It is only through the imposition of the democratic will of citizens can this inherent tendency of technologies be overcome."
As part of our “Mobile Research at Your Desk” series, this week we present a white paper written by Hernán Galperin in collaboration with the Diálogo Regional sobre la Sociedad de la Información (DIRSI) and International Development Research Centre (IDRC). He attempts to shed some light on the affordability of mobile phones between Latin American and Caribbean countries and compare tariffs with the rest of the world.
Recognizing that developing a single standardized metric for mobile affordability is a challenge, the author used a well-established OECD method - a basket of services - to estimate the cost of a set of mobile services specified for low-volume users.
The data exposes the reality of mobile affordability for the bottom of the pyramid.
Hernán Galperin offers a quantitative analysis using a sound approach to predict affordability of mobile tariffs. In the report, it is acknowledged that price of handsets or connection charges are not accounted for, and it is clarified that per-minute calculation can result in an over-estimation of cost.
In another report, Galperin and colleague Judith Mariscal share mobile opportunities informed by survey results of 7,000 individuals in low income households. Discussed there are perceptions of mobile service costs, and patterns of mobile usage, and both reasons for and barriers to mobile adoption. With colleague Roxana Barrantes, Galperin demonstrates the relationship between costs of mobile services and mobile penetration and discusses the savings incurred by low income users with micro-prepayment and per-second billing schemes.
All three papers can be accessed in our mDirectory for your reading.
MobileActive.org's content license is here. Please note that some materials in this slidecast may be separately copyrighted by the respective authors of the papers we presented. Images and materials are used here with the author's permission.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage on why the the idea of a "cyber-utopia" is flawed, a demonstration of a hacked phone tower, a report on Alabama's increasingly mobile-based news consumption, licensing iPad and iPhone apps from the New York Times, and mBillionth's mobile awards.
Mobile Diffusion and Development: Issues and Challenges of M-Government with India in Perspective data sheet 2749 Views
Author:
Kavita Karan and Michele Cheng Hoon Khoo
Publication Date:
Jan 2008
Publication Type:
Journal article
Abstract:
Mobile telephony has emerged as the new frontier where governments around the world are making themselves more accessible through the remote delivery of government services and faster rate of data transfer. In developing countries, the lower cost of mobile technology as compared to Internet has allowed for the expansion of mobile government or m-government services to the poorer segments of the population. From a literature review on m-government, including the various strategies required and successive practices across the world, we build five parameters for a framework for evaluation of m-government services. These include Infrastructural Investment, Regulatory and Political environment, Awareness and Acceptance, Security and Privacy, and Equitable Acceptance.
Using these factors, we review the m-government initiatives in selected countries both in the West, Asia and India. This paper provides an updated review of the current mobile government initiatives, including: m-government’s facilitation of development; the issues and challenges in India; and, finally, proposes some strategies that can be adopted by India.
While August may be the month when the Northen Hemisphere is taking vacations, the mobile world is still cranking out events for developers and practitioners. Here's what's happening this month. As always, add an event in the comments if we missed it!
2 Aug. Tech@State (Washington, DC, U.S.A.) The occasional series of tech events at the US State Department in Washington DC., is hosting a morning of talks on mobile money. If you are in DC, register to come or watch the live stream from afar.
5 Aug. Mashable U.S. Summer Tour (Washington, D.C., U.S.A.): On August 5th, Mashable brings its web and social media tour to D.C.. The popular blog's event brings together contributors from Mashable and attendees interested in Web 2.0 and social media. (The tour also stops in New York City on August 9th and Chicago on August 11th.)
Today's Mobile Minute brings you news about the relationship between consumers and telecoms in Sierra Leone, potential problems with mobile phones for transparency in elections, law enforcement officials pulling evidence from iPhones, how international roaming charges were dropped in East Africa, and why geotagging photos may not be in your best interest.
Today's Mobile Minute covers the mobile gender gap, mobiles in the classroom that allow deaf children to learn alongside hearing children, a study about mobile over-sharing, mobile credits on cell phones during disasters, post-Haiti disaster management with ICTs, and a 90-second interview with Patricia Mechael about mobile health.
The Child Africa International School in Kabale, Uganda encourages the use of SMS at school in order to foster communication between hearing and non-hearing students, as described in "Deaf Children are Being Heard in Africa." (Hat tip Textually.org)
According to a Webroot Study of 1,645 social network users, 55% of people polled said "they worry over loss of privacy incurred from using geolocation data" on mobile phones."
"Disaster Response 2.0: Learning from Haiti" looks at how ICTs were used after the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, covering mobile donations, Ushahidi, and how ICTs can help during emergencies.
[Mobile Minute Disclaimer: The Mobile Minute is a quick round-up of interesting stories that have come across our RSS and Twitter feeds to keep you informed of the rapid pace of innovation. Read them and enjoy them, but know that we have not deeply investigated these news items. For more in-depth information about the ever-growing field of mobile tech for social change, check out our blog-posts, white papers and research, how-tos, and case studies.]
The Mobile Minute, our new feature, is here to keep you up-to-date on mobile-related news. Today's stories are about the number of Google searches made on mobile phones, an updated version of the PDA survey kit, the relationship between ICTs and accountable governments, and an octopus-themed mobile app.
"Mobile Accounts for 10% of Google Searches, Says Analyst" This Read, Write, Web article looks at comScore search market data – and found that mobile phones are used to make more than 1 billion monthly Google searches in the U.S.
"WFP PDASurvey" The World Food Program released an updated version of its PDA-based data collection tool. The group says that the program "allows very large questionnaires to be built very rapidly and deployed onto many PDAs using flash memory cards."
"Full Circle: ANSA-Africa Newsletter" The latest ANSA-Africa Newsletter looks at government accountability and the role ICTs can play in giving citizens a means of expression. Other topics include local government social media and responsibility, ICTs in Kenya, and creating connections in Bangladesh. (via Accountability 2.0)
"Paul the Psychic Octopus Gets an App" If you find yourself without psychic guidance now that Paul the Octopus (who gained fame by correctly predicting all of Germany's World Cup matches, as well as the final) has retired, a new iPhone app called "Ask the Octopus Oracle" can fill the void.
[Mobile Minute Disclaimer: The Mobile Minute is a quick round-up of interesting stories that have come across our RSS and Twitter feeds to keep you informed of the rapid pace of innovation. Read them and enjoy them, but know that we have not deeply investigated these news items. For more in-depth information about the ever-growing field of mobile tech for social change, check out our blog-posts, white papers and research, how-tos, and case studies.]
We have a new feature! We want to keep you updated with fresh content all the time - in addition to our-indepth content. So - it’s time for the Mobile Minute, your daily guide to the latest mobile news and information. Today's post covers Google's App Inventor, SMS farming alerts, using a phone for eye exams, why your nonprofit needs a smartphone, and reaching another milestone: 5 billion worldwide mobile subscriptions.
• “Philippines Farmers to Get Rice-Growing Advice Via Text Message.” International Rice Research has developed an SMS program that will text rice farmers information about crops. Farmers fill out information about their crops over their mobiles, and receive back information about timing, fertilizer, and growing amounts. (via Textually.org)
• “Eye Exams Using a Mobile Phone.” MIT researchers developed an eye exam that runs on mobile phones. The article quotes the MIT News, describing the tool as, “In its simplest form, the test can be carried out using a small, plastic device clipped onto the front of a cell phone's screen. The patient looks into a small lens, and presses the phone's arrow keys until sets of parallel green and red lines just overlap. This is repeated eight times, with the lines at different angles, for each eye.”
• “Over 5 Billion Mobile Phone Connections Worldwide.” This BBC article looks at the rapid growth and high penetration rates of worldwide mobile phone subscriptions, examining the mobile boom in India and China, multiple mobile phone ownership, and what those numbers might mean. The article is based on information from Wireless Intelligence, the database for the GSMA. As of this mobile minute, the exact number of subscriptions is at 5,019,477,554.
[Mobile Minute Disclaimer: The Mobile Minute is a quick round-up of interesting stories that have come across our RSS and Twitter feeds to keep you informed of the rapid pace of innovation. Read them and enjoy them, but know that we have not deeply investigated these news items. For more in-depth information about the ever-growing field of mobile tech for social change, check out our blog-posts, white papers and research, how-tos, and case studies.]
