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.
Mobile Media Services at Sub-Saharan African Newspapers data sheet 1388 Views
Author:
Kristina Bürén
Publication Date:
Aug 2011
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
Published by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) and the African Media Initiative (AMI), this guidebook aims to help African newspapers implement mobile platforms.
Billed as a guidebook, and not a one-size-fits-all rulebook, the guide aims to help Sub-Saharan African news publishers develop and implement mobile services. The report is based on a series of on-site interviews with newspapers in Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa, including The Observer and the Daily Monitor in Uganda, The Standard and the Daily Nation in Kenya, and Grocott's Mail, Mail & Guardian, Avusa Group, and News24.comin South Africa.
See also this blog post with more information on the guidebook.
A just-published guide from the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) is all about making media mobile, specifically at newspapers in Sub-Saharan Africa. The full report is available for download here.
Billed as a guidebook, and not a one-size-fits-all rulebook, the guide aims to help Sub-Saharan African news publishers develop and implement mobile services. The report is based on a series of on-site interviews with newspapers in Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa, including The Observer and the Daily Monitor in Uganda, The Standard and the Daily Nation in Kenya, and Grocott's Mail, Mail & Guardian, Avusa Group, and News24.com in South Africa.
Though the primary audience of the guidebook is media managers, there are lessons and tips for anyone interested in the current state of and potential future for mobile print media in Sub-Saharan Africa.
We would have wished that there was a greater focus on online media as the guide is almost entirely focused on print. Given the fast growth of online media outlets in a number of African media markets, this is an unfortunate limitation.
At the same time, the guide provides a detailed landscape of mobile telephony in Africa, including usage and infrastructure and access points (including SMS, mobile Internet and data, Sim Tool Kit, USSD, voice and interactive voice response). See explanations and examples of these access points in the Mobile Media Toolkit Glossary, here.
The Mobile Media Toolkit helps you make sense of the growing role of mobile tech in media. The Toolkit provides how-to guides, mobile tools, and case studies on how mobile phones can (and are) being used for reporting, news broadcasting, and citizen media. We cover it all, from basic feature phones to the latest smartphone applications.
It's an exciting day for us here at MobileActive.org as we launch the Mobile Media Toolkit. For the last year we have been interviewing people, researching projects, and testing tools, to bring you this free resource. It is designed to help you evaluate and effectively deploy the right tools for reporting and sharing content on and to mobile devices.
Please visit the Toolkit. Share it with others. Add to it! It's available in English, Spanish, and Arabic. So, please join us and say Welcome, Bienvenidos, and مرحبا to the Mobile Media Toolkit!
Reports from the Frontline: How Small World News Trains Citizen Journalists and Captures Footage from Libya data sheet 3206 Views
Armed with a few Kodak Zi8 cameras, 6 HTC Wildfire mobile phones, energy, expertise in training citizen journalists, Small World News is working to share stories from Libya with the larger world.
Small World News is on the ground in Benghazi training Libyans to capture and tell video stories of events in this volatile region. Along the way, the team has also captured footage that no other main stream media outlet has been able to get. MobileActive.org chatted late last night with Brian Conley, founder of Small World News, to hear how things were going. What we learned is that capturing and sharing stories from Libya is as much about technology as it is about establishing trust and connections with the journalists on the ground.
Small World News and Alive.in
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. We wrote about Small World News last when it helped an independent Afghan news agency integrate mobile phones and SMS into news reporting.
As part of its work in Libya, Small World News captures audio reports from individuals on the ground to broadcast to a larger international audience. It does this via Speak2Tweet, a collaborative project from Google, Twitter, and SayNow, which allows a caller to Tweet by calling a phone number and leaving a voicemail.
Our latest case study features Small World News, reporting live from Benghazi with citizen media efforts in Libya. About a dozen young Libyan citizen journalists are capturing and sharing video content of life on the ground in Benghazi, right now. And they are scooping many major media outlets in the process -- check out their footage captured yesterday from the eastern gate of Ajdabiyah, a city east of Benghazi where heavy artillery is moving in.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Mobile users can use a Ping application to post content via SMS and MMS. Ping supports iPhone, iPod Touch, WAP and SMS text messaging for US, Canada and Europe. Seesmic acquired Ping in January 2010. It is regularly adding social networks to those it already supports. Some main supported social networks include: Twitter, Facebook, Ning, Delicious and Flickr. It is free to sign-up for the service. There have been over 100 web and desktop applications created by third party developers.
Tool Category:
App resides and runs on a mobile phone
Key Features :
Ping.fm is a free social networking and micro-blogging web service that enables users to post to multiple social networks simultaneously.
Making an update on Ping.fm pushes the update to a number of different social websites at once. This allows individuals using multiple social networks to update their status only once, without having to update it in all their social media individually. Ping.fm groups services into three categories – status updates, blogs, and micro-blogs – and updates can be sent to each group separately.
Mobile phone users want to upload content to multiple sites but do not have the time and/or ability to do so. ShoZu allows content to be shared on multiple sites by clicking one button. Users can also view friend's content updates through this application.
ShoZu is a provider of mobile social media services that connect mobile consumers with their online social networks, personal blogs, photo storage sites and other Web 2.0 properties from the handset. The company was founded in 2001 in London and now has offices in San Francisco, France, Spain and Italy. The company is funded by investors, which include Atlas Venture, Crescendo Ventures, TLcom Capital partners and TTP Ventures.
Tool Category:
App resides and runs on a mobile phone
Key Features :
The main sites ShoZu collaborates with are: Flickr, Facebook, Dailymotion, Photobucket, Twitter, MySpace, Friendster, 23, Box, CNN and a few more. The main kinds of sites the company works with are: photo sharing, online communities, blogging and journalism Users can choose their mobile phone platforms on ShoZu's website and then purchase the application.
Beyond the Demographic: How Sourcing Through Texting Connects Journalists and Citizens in Detroit data sheet 3145 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.
Digitally Networked Technology in Kenya's 2007-2008 Post-Election Crisis data sheet 2226 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.
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.
If You Build It, They Will Come: SeenReport and Mobile Citizen Journalism in Pakistan data sheet 4251 Views
The devastating floods in Pakistan have been covered by trained reporters and mainstream media outlets around the world. Citizens, often on the front lines of the flood, have also been contributing thousands of reports through mobile phones, in part enabled by the citizen journalism service SeenReport.
SeenReport (from “see ‘n report”) is a citizen journalism service through which users can submit photos, videos, and text accounts of news as it is happening via SMS, MMS, or e-mail. SeenReport won a 2010 mBillionth award, a first-ever contest which recognizes mobile content in South Asia. A YouTube video explains more about the service.
The SeenReport platform is designed to augment stories on online news sites. The platform has been purchased and customized by other media organizations in Pakistan, which helps to both promote citizen journalism in the country and to create a revenue stream for SeenReport.
[Updated with images] In Grahamstown, South Africa, getting and sharing news is a mobile experience.Grocott’s Mail, a local paper, incorporates mobile phones into many aspects of its news service – from disseminating headlines via SMS, to encouraging readers to text in their opinions, to a Knight Challenge-winning citizen journalist training program.
Camera Phone Images, Videos, Live Streaming: A Contemporary Visual Trend data sheet 2881 Views
Author:
Gaby David
Publication Date:
Mar 2010
Publication Type:
Journal article
Abstract:
Writing for a new media review is like writing history as events unfold. In a short time, this article will be out of date and perhaps no more than a few personal 2.0 snapshots taken of a slice of our lives circa 2009. Nevertheless, it is useful to draw a clear picture of how this medium is being used today, to define some of its emerging social properties, and to document and pay closer attention to its influence on our daily experiences and self-mediations. By self-mediations I refer to how each one of us decides his or her digital imprint: what we post online, whether they are videos, photographs, CVs, and the like. Due to the enormous quantity of content produced by users – now usually called prosumers – we should pay close attention to these doings.
My focus will be on how camera phones affect how news is created and shared, reminding us of how closely the concept of ‘newsworthiness’ is linked to immediacy. Then I will briefly compare the camera phone video experience to the cinematic experience and discuss how film narrative and conventions have affected camera use for better or for worse. Finally, I will pose some open questions that touch on the academic and social value of the camera phone images, and on how contextualising them remains a crucial ingredient in all analysis. I will conclude by considering the visual impact that this handheld object is having on our lives and relationships.
We have another new case study up where we report on an innovative audio-based citizen journalism project in Chhattisgarh, India. Tribal citizen journalists have been reporting news in their own languages through a new service called CGNet Swara. CGNet stands for Chhattisgarh Net). The service allows citizen journalists to call in and record news in one of four local languages. The news that has been produced has been picked up in India's mainstream media, and some reports have led to concrete action: in one case, teachers whose salaries hadn't been paid for months were paid after a news report elicited a calling campaign from listeners. We've previously mentioned the project in a short blog post. This much more extensive case study is a part of some work we have been doing on citizen media projects using audio, radio, and mobile
CGNet Swara is a new audio-based citizen journalism service in Chhattisgarh, India. Citizen journalists can call a phone number to record news, and listeners can call in to hear news recorded by citizens around them. When citizen journalists call, they simply press 1 to record news and record some audio onto the system. Listeners can call the same number, press 2, and hear the last three items that the moderators have selected to be published on to the service.
The moderators receive requests via email when a citizen journalist posts content, after which they verify the report (sometimes adding notice that a report isn't verified, sometimes investigating more, on a case-by-case basis), edit the recording, and publish it. There are currently three moderators, all professionally trained journalists.
Kenya Connected: Mobile Technology is Linking Journalists to Local Sources data sheet 2376 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.
We are very interested in the role of mobile phones in citizen media, including how mobile phones can function as a portable newsroom or radio studio. To that end, our latest how-to guide, Mobile Audio Recording in the Field (and how to get a clear sound on the streets), walks you through the process of recording audio content on your mobile phone, whether you are recording from a studio, your home, or in the field.
This how-to is part of the Mobile Media Toolkit, which includes many other case studies, how-to guides, resources, and tools to use mobile phones for reporting, content delivery, and citizen participation.
The Mobile Phone and the Public Sphere data sheet 4413 Views
Author:
Janey Gordon
Publication Date:
Jun 2009
Publication Type:
Journal article
Abstract:
This article seeks to explore the influence of the mobile phone on the public sphere, in particular with regard to its effect on news agendas, gatekeepers and primary definers. Using the examples of the Chinese SARS outbreak (2003), the south-east Asian tsunami (December 2004), and the London bombings (July 2005), the author questions the extent to which the mobile phone is challenging conventional and official sources of information.
At times of national and personal calamity, mobile phone is used to document and report events from eyewitnesses and those closely involved. Using multimedia messages (MMS) or text messages (SMS) to communities of friends and families, as well as audio phone calls, mobile phone users may precede and scoop official sources and thwart censorship and news blackouts. They can also provide valuable evidence of what actually occurred. Users are able to take pictures and short films and transmit these rapidly to others along with reports of what is happening where they are; they are also able to access other media broadcasts and the internet. They are what have become known as `citizen journalists'.
The evidence suggests that mobile phone usage is contributing to the public sphere and in some instances is circumventing official repression or inadequate information. There is also an indication that the `mobcam' is capturing images that would otherwise be lost. However, the mainstream media has been quick to take advantage of this citizen journalism and mediate it within its own parameters.
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Armed with a few Kodak Zi8 cameras, 6 HTC Wildfire mobile phones, energy, expertise in training citizen journalists, 
CGNet Swara is a new audio-based citizen journalism service in Chhattisgarh, India. Citizen journalists can call a phone number to record news, and listeners can call in to hear news recorded by citizens around them. When citizen journalists call, they simply press 1 to record news and record some audio onto the system. Listeners can call the same number, press 2, and hear the last three items that the moderators have selected to be published on to the service.
