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.
Continue reading ‘Local News with SMS’
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.
Continue reading ‘Podcasting for the developing world’
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′
I got a CD in the mail yesterday with the final report from the World Electronic Media Forum (WEMF III) that was held in Kuala Lumpur last December. I was invited to speak in a session on Role of ‘own-time media’/’any place media’ in the service of development. The session was chaired by Abdul Waheed Khan, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information and the panelists were: Lucy Hooberman, Innovation Executive, Research and Innovation, BBC Future Media and technology; Seema B. Nair, Project Leader UNESCO India; Bruce Girard, Expert in community radio and local media, Comunica; and Kristine Pearson, Chief Executive, Freeplay Foundation.
The session report and a few photos that were included on the CD are below, along with a link to the full WEMF III report.
Continue reading ‘World Electronic Media Forum - own time / any place media’
I wrote about about FrontlineSMS a few months ago. It’s a piece of software that turns a laptop and a mobile phone into a powerful system for sending and receiving SMS messages and that I think should be part of the essential digital toolkit for local and community radio. FrontlineSMS creator has just come out with a new version of the program, as well as a new website.
I haven’t tried the software (although I have requested it and we want to test it at a community radio station somewhere in Latin America) but Sanjana Hattotuwa gave it a pretty good grade in a blog post on mobileactive.org, although she questions whether it might be too complicated for some grassroots organisations and complained about compatibility problems with her Nokia 3110 (one that FrontlineSMS does NOT claim to support fully).
Continue reading ‘Frontline SMS’
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