Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2010
Posted by PrabhasPokharel on May 12, 2010
I had the pleasure of attending the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit in Santiago, Chile last week. The summit brought together bloggers, activists, and thinkers working to advance citizen media all around the world. While the discussions that took place were informative, most presentations and panels fell short in recognizing the role mobile phones have played and exploring the potential mobile phones can play in citizen media. I'd like to highlight some of the potential for mobiles in citizen media that were not adequately discussed.
Posted by PrabhasPokharel on May 12, 2010
At the recent Global Voices Citizen Media Summit in Santiago, Chile, I facilitated as session on "Mobile Phone as a Tool for Reporting." We started off the discussion with the question of whether SMS is useful for reporters.
David Sasaki of Global Voices expressed skepticism about SMS as a reporting tool. Sasaki noted that Rising Voices, a Global Voices project that provides small funds to budding citizen media projects, had tried to find an SMS or mobile-based reporting project to fund, but hasn't been able to. Instead, David saw projects using technologies like Twitter for reporting. The 160 characters of SMS messages is simply not enough, David proposed, and pointed out that similar technologies like Twitter are more useful because they are able to transcend the character limitations as they can include links to much lengthier content.
