Radio and Mobiles in-a-box

Tactical Tech is a group of people working to help NGOs and human rights advocates to make better use of technology in their work. One of the ways they do this is with their excellent NGO in-a-box project, a series of toolkits complete with software, information about on-line tools, tutorials, case studies and lots of ideas for how to make innovative use of practical technology within the technical and financial grasp of NGOs. The latest addition to the series, Mobiles in-a-box, is a candidate for inclusion in our ICT / local and community radio essential toolkit.

Mobiles in-a-box doesn’t specifically address the use of mobile phones by local and community radio, but many of the tools and ideas it presents will nevertheless be useful. The toolkit is organised around a series of tactics, tools, tutorials and case studies. The tactics and the case studies are a source of ideas, and the tools and tutorials provide support for putting the ideas into action.

Tactics are organised in 4 categories, all of which have relevance for local and community radio stations. They are People’s Media, Outreach and Participation, Fundraising and Resource Mobilisation, and Coordinating and Mobilising.

I was immediately attracted to the People’s Media category as potentially the most interesting and directly relevant to combining radio and ICTs. The bad news is the category isn’t as well-developed as it might be, and it says nothing about combining ICTs with traditional media. The good news is that mobil media is set to be the subject of an upcoming toolkit, Message in-a-box. There have been some experiments with SMS messages and traditional media, for example the local news SMS project in Grahamstown, South Africa and other projects discussed in a survey of community media and SMS text messages that I posted a couple months ago. The short length of an SMS message is a challenge for reporting news, but encouraging listeners to become community correspondents by sending in their 160 character observations of meetings, conflicts, concerts or other events that a radio station is covering is a good way of getting fresh eye-witness accounts.

While novels have been written by SMS, there is no need to restrict use 160 character messages since many phones have audio and video recording capacity in addition to a still camera. This can be used by reporters or listeners to send information back to the station. While you can only play the audio on the air, the videos and stills can be described by on-air staff and placed on a the station’s website, even a mobile friendly website.

The outreach and participation category includes ideas for information services via simple SMS messages, interactive SMS messages and interactive voice response (IVR). The examples provided include monitoring elections and emergency situations, but interactive SMS services can also be used to provide information about schedules, to run surverys, etc.

Fundraising and resource mobilisation also offers some possibilities. Premium SMS numbers cost more for users to send a message to but the owner of the number keeps the extra charge. They are often used by services that reply to your message by sending you your horoscope or a joke, and charge 5 or 10 times the cost of a normal SMS message. A radio station can use a premium SMS number to receive announcements, music dedications or classified ads from listeners, automatically receiving a certain amount from the listeners pre-paid calling credit.

An enterprising radio station with a bit of technology can even make money by producing and selling its own ringtones or by making custom ringtones for advertisters or to support campaigns.

Finally, the toolkit has a category on coordination and mobilisation that explores how mobiles can help with coordinating station or public meetings or mobilising support for campaigns. Emergency communications also fit into this category, for example when an important public event occurs or an emergency happens an SMS message can alert them to turn on the radio for more information.

The boom in mobile telephones offers a vast array of possibilities for local and community radio stations looking for new ways to engage their listeners and to enable participation. Unfortunately, few stations have begun to exploit the possibilities. If the reason is a lack of ideas, know-how and tools, this toolkit might inspire them to start acting. And if it doesn’t, we can hope the new Message in-a-box toolkit will. According to the Tactical Tech website this was supposed to be released in September 2008, so we can expect it soon.

Click here to read and download the Mobiles in-a-box from Tactical Tech’s website