The competition asks for promising innovations to boost media access and participation around the world. Media helps connect people, gives voice to ideas, and equips inidviduals with knowledge to improve their lives and communities. Finalists were chosen from a pool of 426 entries from 75 countries.
Mobile Journalist on an SD Card
Our entry from the Mobile Media Toolkit is the Mobile Journalist on an SD Card. We think one of the most promising and innovative ways to boost media access and participation around the world is via mobile phones.
Most citizen journalists and reporters already use mobiles phones, but the sheer number of tools available makes it difficult to know the best way to use them. Mobile Journalist on an SD Card tests these tools with reporters working in the field, and then makes accessible the best of the tools for journalists and citizen journalists, downloadable and on micro SD cards ready to plug into any phone. Tools will be selected to work in varying situations, including low-resource reporting environments where Internet access is unreliable.
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.
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.
With the advent of ubiquitous mobile phones recording video, audio, and photos and easily connecting to a worldwide audience, everyone has the potential to become a citizen reporter on the spot, as news and events are happening. Traditional news organizations (aka mainstream media) are struggling to keep up and find relevance among the new voices from around the world. Al Jazeera, the Arab news company (and arguably not exactly mainstream media) has been testing mobile phones with its reporters and for its media coverage. Safdar Mustafa, head of Al Jazeera's mobile media unit, explains how in this coverage from MobileActive08.
