Small World News is a documentary and new media company dedicated to providing tools to journalists and citizens around the world to tell stories about their lives.
Safer Photos: How to Remove Location Information from Mobile Images data sheet 12969 Views
Author:
Melissa Ulbricht
Abstract:
This article and screencast shows you how to remove location information from photos taken on a mobile phone.
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.
ICTs and Political Activism - a Zimbabwean Experience data sheet 1666 Views
Author:
Burrell, Brenda
Publication Date:
Dec 2010
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
To counter the Zimbabwean government’s tight grip over the traditional media, activists integrated old fashioned tactics of leaflets, graffiti, and small covert meetings with electronic media: short wave radio, pocket sized video cameras, digital cameras, fax machines, the Internet and email.
An early adopter of this mix of ICTs was Kubatana.net, a locally based non-profit which became an important aggregator of civic and human rights information on Zimbabwe. Its free online archive, established in 2001, offered articles, reports, documents and interviews with much of the information sourced from local civic organisations and international watch dogs. Its electronic NGO directory made civil society organisations accessible at a time when contact details were extremely fluid. Its email newsletter mailing list kept thousands of ordinary Zimbabweans regularly informed of events, opportunities and newly added resources to the web site. And its early adoption of SMS proved crucial to keeping Zimbabweans informed during the critical 2008 elections.
Mobile Reporting as a Child Abuse Detection Tool data sheet 1360 Views
Author:
Nyirubugar, Olivier
Publication Date:
Apr 2010
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
The concept of mobile reporting, combined with community reporting is changing the way we perceive previously ignored local issues. While they hardly make it into mainstream media, they are now flooding into the cyberspace and the blogosphere thanks to the Web and the mobile phone technologies. The power of the mobile phone in the context of community reporting approach resides in its simplicity, both through the ordinary tools used by reporters – the phones which almost everyone knows or owns by now – and through the reporters themselves, who are members of the community being reported about.
In this presentation, I want to highlight how one issue – childabuse – is being ‘naturally’ captured and documented by mobile reporters following a training offered by Voices of Africa Media Foundation in various African countries. The capturing is ‘natural’ in the sense that, viewed locally, the abuse is tolerated, justified, or even approved by communities, who do not perceive them as abuse. The idea is to draw the attention of political leaders and decision makers, who mostly rely on mainstream media, the ones known for neglecting non-profit generating local issues.
In this paper, I want to deal with three main points. In the first place, I will conceptualise mobile reporting combined with community reporting in the light of existing theories on culture convergence and participatory media. Secondly, I will focus on one case, child abuse, which our reporters have covered spontaneously. In the end, I will discuss the potential impact of this way of approaching local news on local leadership and politics.
Recent events in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya have been on the minds -- and on the screens -- of people around the world.
News organizations are covering the events in innovative ways, and people have noticed. More generally, the role of social media itself in protests and revolutions is also being debated. But, as Charlie Beckett writes on his blog, let’s “put aside the silly debate about whether Twitter 'caused' revolution and look instead at how it helped tell the story.” Twitter is just one platform being used to help tell the story, as we see from our conversation with Al Jazeera, one of the most innovative newsrooms in the mix.
How to Add Location Information to Mobile Content data sheet 5745 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.
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.
Mobile Governance: Empowering Citizens to Enhance Democratic Processes data sheet 1909 Views
Author:
Poblet, Marta
Publication Date:
Sep 2010
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
This paper offers an overview of the emerging domain of mobile governance as an offspring of the broader landscape of e-governance. Mobile governance initiatives have been deployed everywhere in parallel to the development of crowdsourced, open source software applications that facilitate the collection, aggregation, and dissemination of both information and data coming from different sources: citizens, organizations, public bodies, etc. Ultimately, mobile governance can be seen as a tool to promote the rule of law from a decentralized, distributed, and bottom-up perspective.
Antoni Abad is the founder and Director of Megafone.net, a platform which uses mobile phones, or ‘digital megaphones’, to create webcasts to amplify the voices of individuals and groups who are often overlooked or misrepresented in mainstream media. The concept is a communal one. One ‘megaphone’ is shared by up to four participants who meet in weekly editorial meetings to discuss the content of the webcasts.
The Sudan Vote Monitor - Preliminary Report data sheet 3176 Views
Author:
The Sudan Institute for Research & Policy
Publication Date:
Sep 2010
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
The purpose of the Sudan Vote Monitor (SVM) project was to utilize simple information and communication technology (ICT) tools in the independent monitoring and reporting of the Sudan national elections held in April 2010. This initiative built on the successful recent experience of civil society organizations (CSOs) and volunteers in several countries (e.g., Ghana, India, Sierra Leone, Montenegro) in harnessing ICT to support the conduct of fair and credible elections. The project’s primary focus is the process of observing and reporting rather than the election results or their implications as significant as these are. Accordingly, SVM, and this report, is only concerned with the reporting activity with no regard to the political climate or political orientation of reporters, CSOs,or candidates. The main objective is to cooperate with and facilitate technological knowhow for civil society organizations in the Sudan (grassroots and other NGOs, media organizations, journalists, and interested private citizens and individuals in general).
The project was led by SIRP in collaboration with Asmaa Society for Development and several other Sudanese NGOs, with technical support from eMoksha.org, Ushahidi.com, and Khotawat Consultancy. During the April national elections, the Sudan Monitor website enabled reporting of the election process by many different organizations and individuals. Through the use of open source software civilians in Sudan were able to report general observations or irregularities via e-mail, short code text message (SMS), or by logging on to the Internet and visiting the sudanvotemonitor.com website. Using the Ushahidi platform reports could be aggregated along with direct feeds from news sites, blog posts, photos, videos and tweets related to the elections from all relevant sources, in one place, on an interactive map. Users had up-to-date information including streaming video from election centers or polling stations around the Sudan, and were able to comment and rate the credibility of the submitted reports in collaborative manner. The site was accessible to all individuals and organizations regardless of their political affiliations or views. The reporting facility was available for public reporting from April 10 to April 30, 2010.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage on how the Egyptian government shut down the country's Internet and mobile services, work-arounds for communicating during a government-ordered Internet blackout, problems with keeping customers engaged in mobile banking and payment services, Android's new place as the top-selling mobile operating system in the world, and a prediction for huge increases in mobile data traffic by 2015.
In the aftermath of the Egyptian telecommunications blackout, ArsTechnica looked at both how the Egyptian government managed to limit the country's communications so effectively (mainly through ordering major ISPs and Telcos to shut off service) and if a government-mandated Internet/mobile lockdown could be recreated in other countries. In related news, Wired.com has created a wiki on how to communicate if the government limits/shuts down Internet access.
Vodafone announced that the Egyptian government invoked emergency powers and forced it and the other telcom providers in Egypt to send pro-government text messages to Egyptian subscribers. In a press release, Vodafone claims that the messages were not scripted by Vodafone, and that although they protested the government's involvement, they "do not have the ability to respond to the authorities on their content." Since then, a much-nedeed debate has begun on the responsibility of telcoms to resist this interference.
OpenWatch is a participatory citizen media project to provide documentary evidence of uses and abuses of power. This consists of two components, Android applications which secretly record media and a server, which the applications automatically upload media to.
The radio station WNYC is creating on-air and online stories from two things very familiar to people in the Northeastern United States: mobile phones and snow. A snowstorm over the holidays was the heaviest December snowfall in six decades and dumped up to 20 inches in many parts of New York City. The story quickly became one of snow removal and how the city was not removing the snow as quickly as people had hoped.
Jim Colgan and the WNYC newsroom wanted to get a sense of what was happening on the streets. Problem was, there was no good or easy way to do this. The station couldn’t rely on the city for real-time information, and reporters couldn’t get to many of the areas. The answer was to have the listeners share their own reports and stories, via mobile phone.
Sasaki, David, Renata Avila, Sopheap Chak, Jakub Górnicki, Rebekah Heacock, Victor Kaonga, Sylwia Presley, Manuella Maia Ribeiro, Namita Singh, Carrie Yang
Publication Date:
Jan 2010
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
The World Wide Web and the movement for transparency and accountability in government have grown up together over the past two decades, though often in parallel, and with little research evaluating the role and potential of online technologies to bring about greater transparency, accountability and civic engagement. This report is the culmination of four months of research examining the objectives, challenges, successes and effects of online technology projects that aim to promote transparency, political accountability and civic engagement in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, South Asia, China and Central & Eastern Europe.
A team of eight regional researchers documented a total of 37 case studies of relevant technology projects. Though this report contains only executive summaries of each case study, full interviews including audio podcasts and related documents, are available on our website.1 In addition to the in-depth case studies, we have also documented over 30 project listings, which provide basic descriptive information and context about related projects. This report is structured in three sections.
The introduction examines the differing aspects between traditional watchdog journalism and online media that rely on raw data sources, often directly from government websites. The introduction also aims to contextualize the benefits of transparency, accountability and civic engagement from a grassroots, networked perspective.
The second section of the report consists of regional overviews authored by each of our eight researchers. These overviews document the history of the good governance movement in each region, the role of technology in promoting transparency and accountability, and summaries of the case studies they documented. The concluding section groups case studies thematically in order draw out trends, conclusions and recommendations that apply across a number of projects.
Radio Azadi in Afghanistan Goes Mobile data sheet 4180 Views
In 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.
Happy New Year from MobileActive.org! In 2010 we saw mobiles go mainstream as non-tech organizations the world over learned about the power of reaching users right through their phones.
From SMS donations in the wake of disasters to mobile health care, from mobile money transfers to mobile organizing, this has been a time of enormous innovation. Read on for a few of the highlights of 2010 and some thoughts on what's to come in 2011. Mobiles in the Wake of Disaster
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:
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.
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.
Have you ever texted a fish? Or graffitied a wall with your mobile?
Thanks to the ever-present mobile devices and connectivity, artists and activists are experimenting with how we interact with each other, organize ourselves, and our surroundings.
We've written about interactive texts messages in activism before, and are very excited to devote our December Tech Salon to how artists and activists use mobile phones for expression.
RSVP here to join us on Thursday December 9th for "Mobiles + Art + Activism": an evening of conversation with artists, and live demos & exhibits of mobile art projects exploring public spaces, calls to action, crowd engagement and participation.
This week, the US Center on Citizen Diplomacy is hosting the U.S. Summit for Global Citizen Diplomacy in Washington, DC. in partnership with over 1,000 NGOs conducting citizen diplomacy activities. MobileActive.org is participating in a roundtable discussion on the Role of New Media in Advancing Citizen Diplomacy. The panel will address both policy recommendations and recommended tools for facilitating the use of new media in citizen diplomacy. A live webcast of selected Summit sessions will be available here beginning Wednesday.
In Afghanistan, a documentary media company and an independent news agency have teamed up to integrate mobile phones and SMS into news reports. From election day text messages to stories of homemade airplanes, one news agency shows how a willingness to adapt mobile platforms to the landscape can contribute to a successful intersection of technology and media.
Small World News is a documentary and new media company that provides tools to journalists and citizens around the world to tell stories about their lives. Pajhwok Afghan News is an independent news agency headquartered in Kabul with eight regional bureaus and a nationwide network of reporters delivering stories in Dari, Pashto, and English. Together, the two launched Alive in Afghanistan, a website originally meant to showcase reports from the 2009 election in Afghanistan.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you news about the continuous lack of Facebook privacy, the disagreement between IDC and Nokia on Nokia sales figures in India, a ranking of the top five free Android apps for journalists, a TNS study that found social media trumps e-mail as the most popular use for online mobile activity, and mapping indoor spaces with smartphone apps.
Beyond the Demographic: How Sourcing Through Texting Connects Journalists and Citizens in Detroit data sheet 3208 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.
The Role of Digital Networked Technologies in the Ukrainian Orange Revolution data sheet 2279 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.
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. 
In Afghanistan, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (
