In the Horn of Africa, Somalia makes headlines but often only because of drought, famine, crisis, and insecurity. Al Jazeera recently launched Somalia Speaks to help amplify stories from people and their everyday lives in the region - all via SMS.
Somalia Speaks is a collaboration between Souktel, a Palestinian-based organization providing SMS messaging services, Ushahidi, Al Jazeera, Crowdflower, and the African Diaspora Institute. Al Jazeera's Soud Hyder said in an interview with us, “We wanted to find out the perspective of normal Somali citizens to tell us how the crisis has affected them and the Somali diaspora.”
The goal of Somalia Speaks is to aggregate often-unheard voices as well as from the Somalia diaspora by asking via text message: How has the Somalia conflict affected your life? Responses are translated into English and plotted on an online map. Since the launch, approximately 3000 SMS messages have been received. Here is just one example:
I was born in the city of Wanlaweyn, and some of the people there are destroying things. I am poor now.
For Al Jazeera, Somalia Speaks is also a chance to pilot and test innovative mobile approaches to citizen media and news gathering. Visit the Mobile Media Toolkit to read the entire case study and learn more.
PBS MediaShift is hosting a live chat on Twitter about the use of SMS technology by journalists, news organizations, radio shows and more around the world. In many developing nations Internet access is less prevalent, and the main means of interaction is with mobile phones and SMS. Many projects are using SMS to help connect communities to important news and information, and to create a feedback loop for programs.
The chat takes place on Nov. 2 at 10:30 am PT/1:30 pm ET/6:30 pm CET, hashtag #SMSChat.
MediaShift's executive editor Mark Glaser (@mediatwit) will be moderating the live Twitter chat on SMS use, with these special guests:
Melissa Ulbricht: MobileActive.org and the Mobile Media Toolkit (@MobileMediaKit)
Sean McDonald: FrontlineSMS (@McDapper)
Zach Peterson: Radio Free Europe/Radio Azadi (@zachprague)
How to follow the discussion:
To follow the discussion, please log on to Twitter and search for the #SMSchat hashtag. Glaser will be sending out questions to the guests and audience in the format of Q1, Q2, Q3, and if you want to answer them, please reply with the Q number as well as the hashtag #SMSchat. All participants will need to use the hashtag in every tweet so we can see that as part of the discussion stream.
The discussion will be archived on PBS Idea Lab on Thursday using Storify.
Help us spread the word! We'll make it easy:
If you'd like to tweet about the chat please use this language or something similar: Live Twitter chat about SMS and journalism, with @mediatwit, @MobileMediaKit, @McDapper, @zachprague, 11/2 at 10:30 am PT at #SMSchat
Smartphones (iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Symbian) and many feature phones allow you to download and install mobile applications (“apps”). Apps do many useful things. However, some apps (and other types of software, such as your mobile operating system) can also present security risks. These include:
Apps and other software may have access to information stored on or generated by your phone.
Apps and other software may have the ability to transmit this information using your phone’s Internet connection.
Maliciousapps or other mobile software installed on your mobile device can expose you to the following risks:
With smartphones gaining market share, malicious apps are beginning to pose a serious threat. In an article titled “YourAppsAreWatchingYou”, the Wall Street Journal tested popular iPhone and Android apps, and found that of 101 apps tested, 56 transmitted a unique identifier for the phone without informing the user or asking for consent. 47 apps also transmitted the phone’s location, while 5 sent age, gender or other personal details to various companies. The AppGenomeProject reports that 28% of all apps in the Android Market and 34% of all free apps in the Apple App Store have the capability to access location, while 7.5% of Android Market apps and 11% of Apple App Store apps have the capability to access users’ contacts.
It can be very difficult to tell which apps are safe and which are not. App behaviours that might not bother most users, such as transmitting the phone’s location to an advertising server, can be unacceptable to people with higher privacy and security requirements.
This article offers suggestions on how to assess risks to security and privacy posed by apps.
Designing with Mobile Digital Storytelling in Rural Africa data sheet 1505 Views
Author:
Nicola J Bidwell, Thomas Reitmaier, Gary Marsden, Susan Hansen
Publication Date:
Apr 2010
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
We reflect on activities to design a mobile application to enable rural people in South Africa’s Eastern Cape to record and share their stories, which have implications for ‘cross-cultural design,’ and the wider use of stories in design. We based our initial concept for generating stories with audio and photos on cell-phones on a scenario informed by abstracting from digital storytelling projects globally and our personal experience. But insights from ethnography, and technology experiments involving storytelling, in a rural village led us to query our grounding assumptions and usability criteria.
So, we implemented a method using cell-phones to localise storytelling, involve rural users and probe ways to incorporate visual and audio media. Products from this method helped us to generate design ideas for our current prototype which offers great flexibility. Thus we present a new way to depict stories digitally and a process for improving such software.
SMS Uprising:Mobile Phone Activism in Africa data sheet 1634 Views
Author:
Ekine,Sokari, Nathan Eagle, Christian Kreutz, Ken Banks, Tanya Notley, Becky Faith, Redante Asuncion-Reed, Anil Naidoo, Amanda Atwood, Berna Ngolobe, Christiana Charles-Iyoha Joshua Goldstein, Juliana Rotich, Bukeni Waruzi.
ISSN/ISBN Number:
2147483647
Publication Date:
Jan 2010
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
This compendium of articles (available at a cost) attempts to critically investigate the use and utility of mobile phones in Africa. Contributors include Nathan Eagle who writes about ‘Economics and power within the African telecommunication industry’, Amanda Atwood’s report on Kubatana’s experiences in Zimbabwe setting up mobiles as a means of sharing news outside of government propaganda, to Bukeni Waruzi’s essay on collecting data on children’s rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2004. SMS Uprising is published by Fahamu, a British-based organization with a focus on information services for Africa. For a critique of the book see our aticle here.
Citizens in @ction: Collaboration, Participatory Democracy and Freedom of Information data sheet 1132 Views
Author:
Nugroho, Yanuar
Publication Date:
Mar 2011
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
The purpose of this research is to empirically examine the ways in which Indonesian civil society organisations and groups engage in civic activism by means of the use of Mobile phones, Internet and social media; and how this civic engagement impacts upon the shaping of civil society in Indonesia.
With technology and its use continuously shifting and being shaped, the appropriation of the Internet and social media in Indonesian civil society is more about process than outcome. The technologies are continuously modified and adapted to bring them into alignment with the organisations’ routines. ‘Citizens in action’ are therefore never fixed in format, but rather ‘constituted and reconstituted’ through the everyday practices of the civil society groups and communities involving citizens and activists alike in ongoing actions – where technology serves as a convivial means.
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.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage on an iPhone security hole, how mobile phones are used to transfer music in Mali, Facebook's continued mobile marketing strategy, and the Guardian's updated mobile web site.
Over 10,000 citizen reports relating to widespread flooding in Pakistan have been submitted across the spectrum of organizations using the SeenReport platform. The service allows anyone to create a profile and submit text, photos, and videos from a mobile phone for immediate publication on the Web.
The case study is part of the Mobile Media Toolkit that will include many other case studies, how-to guides, resources, and tools on how use mobile phones for reporting, content delivery, and citizen participation, to be puplished this Fall.
For citizen reporters, Fromdistance Mobile Citizen Reporter enables anyone with the application to send high-resolution images and videos from a mobile phone directly to a publisher or the web. This makes delivery quick and easy.
For publishers, Mobile Professional Reporter delivers content that is fit to the publisher's needs (video and images are automatically converted and resized) and the system is integrated with a publisher's existing content management system.
It also enables reporters and publishers to make themselves more accessible and better manage incoming content.
Fromdistance Mobile Journalism includes two tools: Mobile Citizen Reporter and Mobile Professional Reporter. For citizen reporters, Fromdistance Mobile Citizen Reporter enables anyone with the application to send high-resolution images and videos from a mobile phone directly to a publisher or to the web. Users may download the Mobile Citizen Reporter application for free.
For publishers, Mobile Professional Reporter delivers content that is fit to the publisher's needs (video and images are automatically converted and resized) and the system is integrated with a publisher's existing content management system. To become a publisher, a user must contact Fromdistance. Publishers can define their own terms of use for acquiring content (size and copyright, for instance). The service can work with large files.
For citizen reporters, Fromdistance Mobile Citizen Reporter enables quick and easy delivery in an all-in-one tool for citizen and independent journalists. Users may download the Mobile Citizen Reporter application for free. It supports all Nokia multimedia handsets and other Series 60 devices.
For publishers, Mobile Professional Reporter delivers content that is fit to the publisher's needs and the system is integrated with an existing content management system, making content delivery standardized and efficient. To become a publisher, a user must contact Fromdistance. Publishers can define their own terms of use for acquiring content. The service can work with large files.
Main Services:
Stand-alone Application
Tool Maturity:
Currently deployed
Platforms:
Other
Program/Code Language:
Other
Organizations Using the Tool:
The Fromdistance website says that "many leading media companies and publishers" have chosen the Mobile Professional Reporter tool, but it does not provide a list of company names. A datasheet also includes screenshots of use cases.
In 2008, Bruce Girard concluded in a MobileActive.org guest post that the addition of text messaging technology into the community radio toolkit was still in its infancy. SMS use at radio stations was informal, he wrote, and the few cases of more complex use of SMS messages accompanied political crisis or natural disaster and were largely donor financed.
Two years later, we delve once again into the state of SMS and mobile technology at community radio stations, by way of an informal survey. While advances have been made and creative projects have emerged, integration remains an ad-hoc and individual enterprise.
This report summarizes existing projects and success stories, highlighting the most popular uses of mobile technology. It concludes with a discussion of the challenges that community radio stations face in adopting SMS and mobile technology.
Kenya Connected: Mobile Technology is Linking Journalists to Local Sources data sheet 2444 Views
Author:
Camilla Karlsen
Publication Date:
Jun 2010
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
This study explores how news journalists' working conditions are changing in an African developing country due to the growth in information communication technologies (ICTs). The special focus is set on news journalists' use of mobile technology because the rate of mobile penetration in to Africa is so significant these years that the region is actually driving the mobile market’s growth worldwide with a teledensity of over 50%. Although mobile technology has been in the Africa continent for almost two decades it is only within the last two to five years that people have made regular use of these technologies due to recent improvements in accessibility and cost-efficiency.
Interviews with several Kenyan news journalists and other media actors conducted in January and February 2010 were used as the prime empirical data in the study. Thus, to the extent that mobile technology has an effect on the journalistic working process, the following problem statement and research questions served as a guide for this study and were answered in the analysis that drew upon the theoretical framework of journalistic working processes, gatekeeping theory, disruptive technologies, and ICT for development (ICT4D):
• PS: How do Kenyan news journalists use mobile phones in their work? • RQ1: In which ways does mobile technology affect the journalistic working process? • RQ2: How does mobile technology affect public interaction with the news media?
The findings suggest that Kenyan news journalists use mobile technology in several ways in their work: they set up interview appointments by calling their sources; they conduct telephone interviews; they record interviews using the mobile phone’s microphone which is particularly useful in conflict-sensitive reporting; they send Internet links to their sources whom can read the online news from their mobile phone’s browser. The consequences of journalists’ use of mobile phones are, for instance, that in the past two to five years mobile technology has linked journalists with sources from Kenya's remote areas and enabled the news media to publish reliable stories which would have been difficult to verify a few years ago. Also, the Kenyan public has gained easy access to the news media, for example by participating in radio call-in shows and the information they provide is sometimes researched by journalists and turned into news stories. The traditional gatekeeper role of the press has changed to fact controller, and it is likely that the public's knowledge contribution can help to promote democracy in the country.
Bubbly is a voice-blogging service for mobile phones where individuals and celebrities record voice updates heard by friends, family, fans and followers. Bubbly is like Twitter with a voice and is bringing social networking to mobile phones. Bubbly's mobile operator partners include: Airtel, Vodafone, Turkcell, Digi, Indosat, AIS, CSL/New World Mobility.
Tool Category:
App resides and runs on a mobile phone
Key Features :
Venturebeat has covered Bubbly and the service has gained 500,000 users in India. "Bubbly is cell phone service that aims to bring social media to the masses. It builds on the foundation set by Bubble Talk, which has 100 million users who use the service to send voice messages to on other individuals. With Bubbly, messages go to a bigger audience — followers." By offering features that drive phone usage (text and voice), operators are able to use Bubble Motion to drive new sources of revenues that have previously been untapped.
Users can record, edit, and publish stories with their iPhones. It was created with radio in mind and enables users to easily record and then edit interviews on an iPhone mobile device.
Hindenburg Mobile is an on-the-phone audio recording and editing suite. It lets journalists media producers concentrate on telling stories without having to deal with technical hassles. Hindenburg allows a user to drag & drop and plug & play to record and then edit audio on the phone. Users do not need to worry about bit rates, sample rates, codecs, etc. Hindenburg Mobile integrates with the desktop editing suite from the same company, Hindenburg Journalist (in beta). The Hindenburg products are tested by radio professionals, journalists, content providers, and university students.
Tool Category:
App resides and runs on a mobile phone
Key Features :
Application is available for download from iTunes. There is also a beta version of Hindenburg Journalist, a desktop audio editing suite, available for download.
PixelPipe gives users the ability to post content to many social networks simultaneously. One does not need to log into each site to post with Pixel Pipe's platform.
Pixelpipe is a media distribution gateway that allows users to publish text, photo, video and audio files once through Pixelpipe and have the content distributed across over 100 social networks, photo/video sites and blogs, and online storage. PixelPipe provides a number of mobile and desktop applications for users.
Tool Category:
App resides and runs on a mobile phone
Is a web-based application/web service
Key Features :
Upload media via destop or mobile phone and share it with numerous social networks, sites, and blogs. The platform has been built from the ground up and is automated. The architecture allows for changes and capacity additions when needed. PixelPipe has tools for most mobile and web platforms available for download.
There are two new projects in India that are taking advantage of the ubiquity of mobile phones and cheap voice calling there in order to get news to rural villagers. Widespread illiteracy makes newspapers and SMS alerts inadequate as news delivery systems, and irregular electricity makes television and radio unreliable. Voice calls are also very inexpensive in India, with per-second billing and a downward price-war among the main operators. Voice calls over mobile phones are an easy way for villagers to stay informed.
In the region of Uttar Pradesh, Gaon Ki Awaaz delivers twice-daily news updates via voice calls to villagers in their native Avhadi language. Launched in December 2009, the project now has 250 subscribers spread throughout 20 villages. Read our case study on the project here.
Further south, a similar project is operating among the members of the Adivassi tribe in India. Like Gaon Ki Awaaz, it allows villagers to share and receive news over their mobile phones in their native language (in this case, Gondi). Launched by Shubhranshu Choudhary of the International Center for Journalists, the project focuses on citizen reports with dozens of citizen journalists reporting throughout the region. Watch the video below to see how the project works. For more on audio services, see also our recent scan of projects and tools, Talk to Me: A Survey of Voice-Based Mobile Tech.
These two projects highlight the promise of the mobile phone for targeted news reporting; mobiles can provide cheap, reliable access to hyper-local news that may be more independent than government-controlled media. As mobiles become more common in rural areas, similar projects can provide a way to keep citizens connected.
Anne-Ryan Heatwole is a writer for MobileActive.org
Gaon Ki Awaaz: News Alerts for Rural Villagers data sheet 5807 Views
One call can bring news to hundreds in rural villages in India. Gaon Ki Awaaz, which means “Village Voice” in the Avhadi language, sends out twice-daily news calls to subscribers directly over their mobile phones. Launched in December 2009, the project recently expanded to 250 subscribers spread over 20 villages.
Ruder Finn's Mobile Intent Index examines the underlying motivations or reasons – intents – people have for using their mobile phones. The representative and Census-balanced online study of 500 American adults 18 years of age and older who "use their mobile device to go online or to access the Internet" was conducted in November 2009 by RF Insights among respondents who belong to Western Wats' large consumer panel, Opinion Outpost. The Mobile Intent Index asked respondents how frequently they use their mobile phones to go online for 295 reasons.
The study reveals that 95 percent of mobile phone owners use their devices to stay informed, including 60 percent who browse news on current events and 39 percent who read a local newspaper. Among other findings, 100 percent of those studied used their phones to simply pass the time and 93 percent connected with others via social networks.
Broadband Use and Adoption in America data sheet 2133 Views
Author:
John B. Horrigan
Publication Date:
Feb 2010
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
The FCC conducted a survey of 5,005 Americans in October and November 2009 in an effort to understand the state of broadband adoption and use, as well as barriers facing those who do not have broadband at home. Pages 21-23 contain data about mobile usage.
The report indicates that 86 percent of American adults own a cell phone, and 30% use their devices to access the mobile web. In contrast, 66% have sent or received text messages. The numbers are higher for minorities; 36% of African-American and Hispanic users use their devices to access the mobile web. There is also a generational gap; 48% of those 19-29 access the mobile web, compared to only 5% of those over 65.
A Guide to Mobile Security for Citizen Journalists data sheet 15341 Views
Author:
Melissa Loudon
Abstract:
Citizen journalism, and with it the rise of alternative media voices, is one of the most exciting possibilities for mobile phones in activism.
Mobile phones are used to compose stories, capture multi-media evidence and disseminate content to local and international audiences. This can be accomplished extremely quickly, making mobile media tools attractive to citizens and journalists covering rapidly unfolding events such as protests or political or other crises. The rise of mobiles has also helped extend citizen journalism into transient, poor or otherwise disconnected communities.
However, for those working under repressive regimes, citizen journalism can be a double-edged sword. Anything you create and disseminate can be used against you, whether through the legal system or in other more sinister forms of suppression.
This guide for Mobile Security gives an overview and provides recommendations for secure browsing, secure content uploading, and using "throw-away phones" for organizing and communications. We note that secure solutions for mobile communications are currently lacking, however!
Citizen journalism, and with it the rise of alternative media voices, is one of the most exciting possibilities for mobile phones in activism.
Instead of cracking open a book, try sitting back with a short story on your phone. CellStories, which launched in September, offers a new short (1500-2500 words) story every weekday to readers on mobile phones. The website only shows its daily short stories to visitors coming to the site on mobile phones – those on a desktop see a welcome page and are encouraged to come back on a web-enabled mobile.
For eight years, the Indian government dragged its feet until, in 2003, it finally permitted mobile phones in conflict-torn Kashmir. Intelligence officials had feared that Kashmiri and Pakistani militants would use the phones to plan attacks on Indian army outposts throughout the region, but in '03 they relaxed the ban, and the past six years have been the most peaceful since the conflict began in 1989. Causation? Probably not. But correlation, anyway.
Online computers, Africans do not have. Cellphones are a different story.
So why aren't journalism schools around the continent integrating the use of mobile devices fully and squarely into their courses? It's a question that could also apply in many other places - even in media dense environments.
Answers - and solutions - to this challenge were forthcoming in Grahamstown, South Africa, last week, when MobileActive's Katrin Verclas - a Knight grantee - ran a workshop with a selection of African journalism teachers at Rhodes University.
(This is part of a series of posts reporting on mobile media project from Highway Africa 2009 and Digital Citizen Indaba 4.0. Both were held in Grahamstown, South Africa, September 2009).
Brenda Burrell of Kubatana.net in Zimbabwe runs Freedom Fone, an audio tool for information services. She presented Freedom Fone in a workshop titled “Bringing down the barriers: Interactive audio programming and mobile phones” at Digital Citizen Indaba 4.0.
FreedomFone comes from the desire to deliver information to “those who need it most,” people with simple phones without GPRS connections. Freedom Fone integrates a content management system (such as Drupal) with information services via SMS and voice.
