The World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC), in collaboration with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and UNESCO, recently published a book about community radio use of digital technologies. Fighting Poverty: Utilizing Community Media in a Digital Age is based on a series of reflections raised during a roundtable on community radio and new technologies at the World Congress on Communication for Development (Rome, October 2006) and later further developed by workshop participants and others.
The ostensible subject of this publication is community media. The real focus of the text is on democratic and sustainable development. It reflects the main interest of those who support or are active in community radio, an interest that does not centre on technology, equipment, infrastructure or spectrum. Their interest focuses on participation.
The publication and additional audio and video material can be downloaded from AMARC’s website or you can order a print copy from here.
Continue reading ‘Community media in a digital age’
At first glance SMS text messages would seem like a natural for inclusion in a community radio station’s essential toolkit. SMS messages are inexpensive and easy-to-use and in recent years the mobile phones that are needed for sending and receiving them have become ubiquitous. However, a survey of recent projects indicates that use of SMS messages among community media in the developing world is still at an early stage. In most stations SMS use is informal. The few cases identified of community stations making more complex use of SMS messages have accompanied political crises or natural disasters and have inevitably been donor financed. There are few, if any, experiences of complex uses of SMS by community media without external funding and technical support, even though the financial and technical resources required are minimal.
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The mobileactive.org website has an article about a project in Grahamstown, South Africa that will use SMS to enable citizen journalists to contribute to the local community newspaper. Eighty high school journalists trained as citizen journalists will send their news and views via SMS messages. A selection of the messages will be printed in the newspaper while others will be redistributed via SMS to community members.
Guy Berger, the project coordinator and head of the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University, admits that it will be difficult to fit the news into the 160 characters that an SMS message can have, but they are already thinking of how to overcome the problem.
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An article on the Science and Development Network (Pod-ready: Podcasting for the developing world) takes another look at podcasting and development, with a focus on the SIRU project by Practical Action (formerly ITDG) in Peru and the e-TukTuk that is part of Sri Lanka’s Kothmale Community radio project. Both of the projects are presented elsewhere on this blog.
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The AMARC Japan Working Group, in cooperation with AMARC’s Asia Pacific and the association’s international secretariat is planning a Radio Forum in the city of Saporro where the G8 leaders will meet in July. The invitation to attend, reproduced below in English, French and Spanish, invites community radio journalists to bring their laptops, radio equipment and sleeping bags, so it looks like their planning some do do programming from the site. I’ll be watching for further announcements of their plans. If you have any information or ideas, feel free to post a reply or email me.
Continue reading ‘Radio and internet activism and the G8′
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