Continues on the Mediashify IDEALAB >>

The results reveal that overall the average rate of access to the internet by radio stations in the seven countries studied is 51.8 %, with a large disparity according to the country and type of radio. Indeed, while the rate of connectivity is 72.2% for private commercial radio on the one hand, it is limited to 31.5% for community or non-profit making radio. On the other hand, at a country-wide level, Ghanaian radio has a 93.5% connectivity rate, Senegalese radio 89.7%, whilst only 20% of radio stations in Sierra Leone are connected. In Ghana and Senegal, nearly all commercial radio stations are connected. In addition, 72.7% of Senegalese community radio stations have access to the internet (75% of them have an ADSL line), in contrast to only 8.3% of Nigerien community stations. The rate of connectivity for all radio stations in Burkina Faso, Benin and Mali, is 61.5%, 55% and 34% respectively.

The strong mobile phone penetration on the continent allows stations to use it as an indispensable tool for reporting and communicating with listeners; this has contributed to today’s large number of radio listeners.

The report is available in PDF format in English or French.

Joseph Sekiku of Tanzania’s

FADECO Community Radio is a local radio in NW Tanzania. Its programming is characterised with a strong focus on rural development (65%) with the rest of the air time distributed among 25% news and general information and entertainment (culture, history, arts) at 10%. Agriculture takes the lions share of our programming.

The main challenges for a rural community radio are related to information/ content generation, repackaging, dissemination and feedback (monitoring to see if the message are making any meaningful impact on the listeners). In order to address this challenge, FRC  100.8 FM has sought to use the available ICTs both for content generation and for getting a feed back from the farmers or listeners. And here is how it works at FADECO:

Information gathering/ content generation

Farmers walk to FADECO to ask questions and report agriculture related problems or other concerns facing them. As a one stop centre for information, the staff at FRC 100.8 FM receive the questions, and pass them onto competent staff (who can respond or refer the questions to other experts or identify experts who can respond to the questions). Referrals to experts is normally done via email. Sometime internet searches are made. Sometimes searches are made in our offline resource base (compendia, books, cd-rom libraries).

Sometimes farmers send text messages to our office mobile number. In the past months, FRC 100.8 FM has signed a contract with a SMS management company in Dar es salaam and has been allocated 2 short code numbers. What the farmer does is to use his/ her mobile phone:

Go to write new Message: Write FR.. leave one space, write a question and then send to 15551 or Write EFR .. leave one space, write question and send to 15522.

The question is delivered directly to our computer via a web managed system. We are therefore able to print it off, respond directly or email the question to our experts.

The farmer receives a received note on his/ her mobile phone immediately to confirm the message is received at FADECO.

After the question/ request is processed, we make a radio program with the response. Unfortunately, we cannot call nor text individual farmers who send questions… we do not have the money. So when we have the answer, in a radio program, we just broadcast on radio to the benefit of the individual farmers that asked the question and of many other farmers who may be listening.

Use of ICT infrastructure by journalists

At FADECO COMMUNITY RADIO, the facility is making it possible, not only to provide the traditional telecentres services (internet and library services) but now in a big way, we are able to package, re-package and develop information into radio programs that are broadcast via FADECO RADIO. This is a big achievement.

This therefore also now underscores the involvement of journalists with FADECO TELECENTRE. To start with, fadeco radio has teamed with a number of journalists who provide news to the station; while at the same time, taking news to from the station. But specifically how do the journalists use the telecentre:

1. Accessing news stories from the internet: Journalists use our internet facilities to search news stories from the internet. Some of the stories are used on our radio station.
2. Also they use the internet to communicate with other journalist to send stories or news via email. I have seen also journalists use SKYPE to communicate and provide live reporting to their bureaus in Dar es salaam.
3. One thing at FADECO TELECENTRE is the integration of the different ICTS: we have in place VSAT for internet access, Fax, telephone services (landline and mobile). These ICTS are used integrally for content generation (esp. news) and for communication with others.
4. Journalists come to use the telecentre to send faxes or receive faxes, check their emails as mentioned above, but also most important, they use our facilities for interviewing, recording, and editing. The telecdntre is laos used as a meeting place for journalists in the area. Some of them prefer to use the centre also for their meetings and;
5. One other use has been with ONLINE study. I have seen 2-4 journalists coming to the telecentre, just because they are doing online journalist or media studies.
6. And lastly, journalists use our telecentre for secretarial purposes like to write their stories or to print them or to photocopy documents. A few have borrowed our recorders, after which they download content on the computers, edit them and go away with content edited and stored on CDs.

This is a rather fragmented narration of the general benefits of FADECO RADIO/ TELECENTRE to the general public and on how we are integrating different ICTs.

Regards,

Joseph Sekiku
FADECO Community Radio

From 20-30 April 2009 e-agriculture will be hosting a virtual forum in Spanish on Mobile Telephony in Rural Areas (Foro de telefonía móvil en áreas rurales). The forum is a continuation of an English-language initiative undertaken by e-agriculture in November 2008. Participants will examine the challenges that rural communities face in enhancing the benefits of mobile telephony, and look at some examples of interesting initiatives and good outcomes from around the globe.

Subject Matter experts involved in the forum include:

Expert & Lead Facilitator:
Bruce Girard – Director, Comunica

Subject Matter Experts:
Roxana Barrantes – Instituto de Estudios Peruanos
Héctor Carril – Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL)
Mr. Marcelo Echague – Secretaría de Comunicaciones of Argentina
Marcelo Galarza – Fundación Chasquinet
Karel Novotny- Knowledge Sharing Coordinator Association for Progressive Communications (APC)
Danilo Piaggesi – Inter-American Development Bank
Roxanna Samii – International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)

Facilitators:
Charlotte Masiello-Riome, Communications Expert and e-Agriculture Advisor
Michael Riggs, Knowledge and Information Management Officer, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
Lisa M. Cespedes, FAO

To participate in the forum you must register on the e-Agriculture platform at http://www.e-agriculture.org/regform.html

During a special session on community broadcasting, Jummai Umar, Citizenship Program Manager for Microsoft Nigeria and Anglophone West Africa, presented a paper Amplifying the People’s Voices: Community Broadcasting in a Digital Era. Jummai has kindly allowed us to publish her paper here.

_________________________________

Vox populi, vox dei, “The voice of the people [is] the voice of God”, as stated in a letter in 798 from the scholar Alcuin of York in present day UK to Charlemagne also known as Charles the Great, whose empire included much of present day Western and Central Europe. Through time People’s voices have been and remain a critical instrument in the development and sustenance of any society. This is more so in this era of the ascent of the Information Society, Democracy (government of the people, by the people and for the people) and the rule of law, assertion of human rights, empowerment and development of the people at the grass-roots.

In order to communicate government policies to the people as well as elicit and encourage the people to give voice to their own ideas, which they will own thus ensuring sustainability, on issues such as nation building, government at different levels had always used various media prominent among which is mass media, town hall meetings etc.  Today, though not utilized, the media of choice for our environment is Community Radio (CR). Arguably, CR is the “poor man’s GSM. As Charles Akolo Katsibi in his 08 October 2008 article in the Daily Trust titled Community radio in Nigeria’s democracy! succinctly asserts “The proliferation of media houses (print and broadcast) with diversity to ownership-private, group and or government is a clear definition of what is known as media pluralism.”? However, a closer look at this development indicates that all of these media are concentrated in the urban centres of the society. Except, of course, for the wider coverage and accessibility of radio, village dwellers do not have the presence of a media outfit.This is a gap that only CR can address.

Bruce Girard in a paper presented at the first International Workshop on Farm Radio Broadcasting titled The Challenges of ICTs and Rural Radio posited that “more than ninety years after the world’s first station was founded, radio is still the most pervasive, accessible, affordable, and flexible mass medium available. In rural areas, it is often the only mass medium available. You can corroborate this by taking the time to chat with the typical Nigerian night watchman colloquially called the Maigadi. You will be surprised to be updated on current situations related to the US Election, Chechnya, Palestine, China trade surpluses, global economics and world politics. Predawn Hausa broadcasts from BBC (UK), Deutsche Welle (Germany) and VOA (USA) educate and empower these people with information. We must ask ourselves, why do these nations invest in foreign language radio services?

Low production and distribution costs have made it possible for radio to interpret the world from local perspectives, and to respond to local needs for information.  More than any other mass communication medium, radio speaks in the language, and with the accent, of its community.  Its programming reflects local interests and it can make important contributions to both the heritage and the development of the cultures, economies and communities that surround it.  Again we must ask ourselves, if radio and other mass media give the average person living in the rural areas a voice and how amplified are such voices?

Community Broadcasting:
Community broadcasting as a precursor of present day online social networking is unique in its focus and structure.  Think of community broadcasting as pre-Internet YouTube, FaceBook and MySpace.  According to Liora Salter in an article in the Canadian Encyclopaedia titled, ‘Broadcasting, Community’; “Community broadcasting is designed to fulfil social and cultural needs by allowing members of the audience to participate in decisions about programming and, in the case of radio, in the ownership of stations.  It serves local communities, reflecting the diversity of their views and needs, and provides access to volunteer participants.  It is public broadcasting, but it is not operated by a government or a government agency.”

Sadly, Nigeria has been, and continues to be, left behind and according to Prof. Umaru Pate from University of Maiduguri in an interview with Daily Trust Newspaper of August 23, 2008 said concerning community radio in Nigeria “One thing I must tell you is that in the whole of West Africa today, it is only Nigeria – which is incidentally the biggest of all and the richest, too – that does not have a policy on community radio stations.  All the other West African countries have policies and not only policies; they have existing, robust and very well functioning community radio regimes.  Here in Nigeria, there have been attempts by individuals and groups to convince the government to initiate and promulgate a policy on community radio, there are some impressions being given particularly in some government cycles that we have a policy on that but if you take your time to go through the NBC policy, they cannot be described as community radio per se considering the cost and other prohibitive requirements”.

When broadly allowed, in Nigeria, CR will positively empower our people and crystallize our fledgling democracy.  However there are several challenges as Is’haq Modibbo Kawu, in his 18 September 2008 Daily Trust article observes that “Community broadcasting opens up access which might be very difficult to understand for those who have lived within the dictatorial ambience which unfortunately has operated for a long time in Nigeria’s broadcasting policy.  The bureaucratic argument that the radio spectrum must be tightly regulated had been the ruling mantra in the Nigerian tradition for a very long time.  But that has also gone hand-in-hand with the deformed nature of Nigeria’s democratisation.  So up there, within the ruling elite, the bureaucrats controlling the processes of regulation of broadcasting, and the commercial broadcasters, there is an alliance, which has not been particularly disposed to the opening up of the access to community broadcasting in Nigeria.  Of course, it has been very easy to manipulate the red herring of security, amongst many reasons to slow movement on that track.”

Community broadcasting in the digital era:
Media convergence around digital based Internet Protocols (IP) is a reality.  According to Jennifer Makunike-Sibanda – Regional Director, Federation of African Media Women, Southern African Development Community (FAMW-SADC), in a paper titled ‘Improving Access to Rural Radio by ‘Hard-to-Reach’ Women Audiences’, said: “First and foremost, I wish to underscore the point that the convergence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has to date brought to the fore the emergence of the phenomenon of creative divergence – this positions knowledge as the new prime resource in the world economy.  Secondly, there has been a noted tendency by countries in transition to a knowledge economy (k-economy) to forestall development which is identifiable with the satisfaction of human needs – namely, a needs-oriented development or people-centred development which should be a necessary condition for development”.

To buttress this notion we note Stella Hughes – Senior Programme Specialist, UNESCO, Paris, France, in a paper titled ‘Community Multimedia Centres: Integrating Modern and Traditional Information and Communication Technologies for Community Development.’  Where she declares that “In the era of the knowledge society and the knowledge economy, access to the infrastructure to share information and knowledge is paramount for social and economic development.  It is evident that the traditional forms of knowledge acquisition are insufficient to foster an inclusive knowledge society.  People and communities in the developing world need access to the mechanisms that provide multiple sources of rapid information – and information exchange – which traditional ways of accumulating and exchanging knowledge cannot deliver.”

She further said “only when the Internet and other ‘new’ ICTs are combined with ‘traditional’ community radio, can all members of a community – irrespective of languages spoken or level of learning – be fully included in the process of accessing, identifying, producing and exchanging information relevant to their needs.”

Amplifying the People’s Voices:
There is no doubt that the past decade has witnessed an unprecedented achievement in the area of information and communication technology (ICT) to the extent that even the developing economies like Nigeria now have access to ICT equipment that have great potentials of amplifying the people’s voices.  With many mobile phones being equipped with cameras, and video cameras, internet outlet for posting broadcasts, sites such as You Tube, FaceBook, MySpace, personal online sites and blogs, accessing and uploading information has become easy.  Many media houses now rely on information and live pictures and videos captured by private individuals (i-report) to report on events as they happen.  GSM operators in Nigeria have equipped the rural dwellers with similar opportunity to contribute to information and knowledge sharing, except for the absence of community radios where such generated voices of the people could be amplified.  The digital era has opened up a huge space for often marginalized persons to have a voice.  It was once believed that mobile phones were not for all, or that they might in some manner jeopardise the security of the society.  This has been found NOT to be that case, as I am also confident that CR will enhance the security of the society if allowed to flourish.

We are witnessing digital migration as analogue broadcasting technology gradually gives way to digital broadcasting technology with more sophisticated technological and information transmitting backbone.  The main benefit of digital broadcasting is the efficient use of the radio (broadcasting) frequency spectrum, thereby freeing that frequency spectrum.

However, in line with the adage “use it or lose it” the inability or unwillingness of Federal Government to licence CR stations will be undermined by advances in technology which are providing alternatives.  If Nigeria does not put in place structures to licence and control CR Stations then they will develop via other means in an increasingly globalised environment which the Nigeria state will not be able to control.  For example, a few years ago a prominent Nigerian journalist made unsuccessful efforts to secure a domestic FM Broadcasting licence.  Today, he operates an AM Radio station out of Spain that broadcasts to all of West Africa.

Internet Radio is arguably an advanced form of a digitally converged Community Radio station.  We are not talking about radio stations that stream their media across the Internet like the BBC in the UK, but Radio stations that exist exclusively on the Internet.  Firms like Com One, Revo, Roku, Terratec and Tivoli have each developed and market their own brand of tabletop or bookshelf radios that use Wireless Ethernet/ Wireless Fidelity and commonly known as Wi-Fi which is the most common wireless IP networking standard.  These Internet radio receivers cost from under N10,000.  Users can tune these radios in the same manner that most of us use our existing radio sets.  The reception is digitally crystal clear with no static with the current choice of up to 10,000, and rising, existing Internet radio stations from all over the world.  It is a matter of when, not if, Nigerians will use this media.

Twenty years ago a group of El-Salvadorans and Canadians combined radio broadcasting and new ICTs to help bring about social and political change, democracy and development in Central America in a way that could now be referred to as Radio2.0.  In 2003, a book titled ‘The One to Watch: Radio, New ICTs and Interactivity’ Edited by Bruce Girard asserted that “The Internet and other new ICTs are changing radio in the developing world.  But far from making it less relevant, they are opening up hitherto unimagined possibilities:

• Broadcasters, who used to have to travel for hours or even days to find a public library to research a programme, now have instant access to the Internet;
• National, regional and global radio news agencies are making world news and alternative perspectives available to even the most remote communities;
• The radio/ telecommunications combination is helping to keep communities together, despite the distances imposed by migration.

The cases presented in this book are among the first examples of the convergence of radio and new ICTs for development, and the book underscores the significant potential of the combination.  In this convergence, radio promises to take on even greater significance and value.  For this reason, we believe that radio is the one to watch.”  As many of us are aware Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) and Africa Independent Television (AIT) are watched, while Voice of Nigeria (VON) is listened to, overseas and especially by Nigerians in the Diaspora.

Some aspects of Internet Radio are challenging, especially those areas dealing with international jurisdictions and the limits of national sovereignty.  For example, as Nigeria through the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) facilitates the roll out of last mile IP access how will the Nigeria state control anyone from setting up a Nigeria centric Internet radio station on a web server based in another country.  How will the Nigerian state exercise jurisdictional control over a foreign based “VIRTUAL” Internet radio station that “apparently” broadcasts “from Katsina,” about Katsina, and in a Katsina dialect?

China among other nations have developed sophisticated, expensive and as some have argued in the long-run futile initiatives to comprehensively filter all Internet traffic.  Furthermore, our current IP infrastructure makes this problematic as Nigeria has found in dealing with the relatively less sophisticated problems of “Internet 419” and “Yahoo Yahoo boys.”  As the first in a series of steps, we humbly advice government to open up the CR window, so that there is a framework that it can develop and adapt, which will eventually encompass Internet radio as that sector opens up.

It must be noted no CR station has even been involved in any subversive or anti-people activities anywhere in the world.  As noted earlier, security has been used as a red herring to side track the opening of a CR policy window.  However, in the case of the Genocide of Rwanda, it was found that Government owned Radio stations were culpable of instigating the genocide.

As noted in Spore Vol. No. 109 published by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation, in Feb. 2004 “The next generation of rural radio is already with us.  Once prized for their ‘proximity’ to local news as well as local listeners, progressive rural stations have added on several news layers of quality, thanks to the Internet.  Research by local stations can now easily have a global spread, and programmes can be shared all over the world, as happens between diaspora migrant communities and their home villages.”

In January 2005, LG Electronics released the World’s First Digital Broadcast-Enabled Mobile Phone. Today any of us with minimal exposure can upload, store and broadcast video streams from our mobile phones by leveraging on initiatives from firms like Qik, World TV and Cybersoc.com.  This has been the direction of Community Broadcasting and it is happening around the world without us.  Two years ago CNN asked its views to submit “iReports” and to date CNN has received more than 175,000 videos and photos.  According to the Max Digital Media Newswire article titled ‘CNN Celebrates Second Anniversary of iReport’ of Thu, 21 August 2008 “CNN’s user-generated content initiative now generates an average of nearly 15,000 iReports each month.”  These technology enabled services are empowering other people that we are expected to compete with, and we are not yet empowering ourselves as a nation to even try and successfully bridge this growing divide.  Clearly as a Nation we have not used our opportunities advantageously, and sadly we are all losing.

IP broadcasting and IP radio in particular, leverages on the Internet.  Globally the Internet like radio is pervasive and becoming increasingly so in Nigeria.  The Internet like radio is simultaneously global in scope while being local in nature.  Recent Internet services are making it an oral medium like radio.  Oral media are coming closer to our inherent African comfort zone as a people with our rich oral traditions.  The Internet like radio involves people in an interactive medium.  According to Bruce Girard in his paper ‘The Challenges of ICTs and Rural Radio’ he postulates that “It has been said that the Internet is a window to the world – offering a view that includes a wealth of knowledge and information.  Local radio is a mirror that reflects a community’s own knowledge and experience back at it.  The convergence of the two just might offer us the most powerful tool we have yet known to combine research and reflection to harness knowledge for development.”  Such convergence cannot happen in Nigeria until a critical mass of functional CR stations exist.

CR can pass on knowledge useful to the daily lives of the people much more effectively than GSM phones or the use of cyber-cafes.  Health and wellbeing, agriculture and food security, justice and accountability, national security and democratic stability, business and the economy have all been shown to improve through the knowledge gained and empowerment achieved through CR.
To date (Oct. 2008), Nigeria has issued only ten CR licences and only the station at the University of Lagos is operating.  As of July 2005, Mozambique had 45; Senegal 14, Malawi 10, Ghana 8, Namibia 6, Republic of Benin 5, Sierra Leone 4 and Sudan had 4 functional CR stations.

Way forward:
The Chinese philosopher Lao -Tzu (604 BC – 531 BC) in his book The Way of Lao-tzu stated that “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” We thus request that government through the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) consider issuing CR frequencies/ licences as a first step/ pilot to at least 1 qualified rural cooperative, as guided by NBC rules, in each of the 6 Geopolitical zones.  We understand that the NBC is ready to oblige once they secure the requisite clearance from Mr. President.  Thus, our prayer is that Mr. President, with all deliberate speed and due diligence, approve at least six CR frequencies as pilots so as to open the way for a broader implementation, and full opening up of the CR window.

Nigeria is a signatory to the African Charter on Broadcasting, which is a legally binding multilateral document.  This defines Community Broadcasting as the third tier of broadcasting.  CR that is owned and operated by and for a community and broadcasts in its dialects is in the truest sense the “poor” persons’ ICT.  It should be noted that the basic low-end equipment for CR Stations with a range of 15 to 30 km costs from N700,000 to N2,000,000.  This is exclusive of power, accommodation and overheads.

An excellent draft policy was developed in 2006 by a 17 member committee chaired by the pre-eminent communicator, Prof. Alfred Opubor.  This was deliberated on, by the 37th National Council on Information in Enugu in January/ February 2007.  To the best of our knowledge, all that remains is to present the policy draft to the FEC for deliberation and approval.  We unequivocally add our recommendation for approval by the FEC.

The way forward for Nigeria thus begins when the Federal Executive Council (FEC) considers and approves, in line with due process and the rule of law, the existing draft COMMUNITY RADIO (CR) POLICY which we aver is in line with the National Vision and the laudable development strategies of your administration.

Knowledge is the key to our survival, advancement and salvation. Technology, infrastructure and finance are extremely important.  But human experience demonstrates that it is thinking based on true knowledge that positively develops individuals, societies and mankind as a whole.  Economies grow as a part of this. We humbly pray that this administration considers, endorses and adopts the above suggestions.  A “servant leader” will be considered successful if the people can be empowered with knowledge to sustainably improve themselves, those around them, their own material circumstances and prepare better for the future of those yet unborn and the environment they will live within.

DIGITUS Vox populi, vox dei – The digital voice of the people [is] the voice of God.

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

Download a Spanish-language version of this article

When the GSM mobile telephone standard was developed engineers included the ability to send short text messages, up to 160 characters, between phones. Operators were sceptical about the service’s ability to interest customers or to generate revenue, but consumers massively took it up as a convenient and inexpensive alternative to voice calls.  With time applications and services were developed enabling, for example, broadcast messages, mobile payments, polling and information services. In 2007 global revenue from SMS messages was more than $50 billion with more than 1 trillion messages sent.(1)

As mobile phones become increasingly common, SMS messages are being used by community media in a variety of ways.

At its simplest, announcers and journalists announce their phone mumbers over the air and invite listeners to send messages with comments on the news, questions, greetings, song requests… Some of these are then used on-air. In some cases, stations have devised ways of generating feedback via mobiles without the listeners having to pay even the cost of an SMS message. For example, Xtreme FM, a community-oriented pirate station in the UK, has a mobile permanently in the studio:

“It vibrates every few seconds like a faulty alarm clock, as listeners call and text. Scrolling through its inbox, I notice scores of “missed calls”. Big N explains that this is how pirates gauge a record’s popularity. If listeners like a tune, they call in and then ring off, so the studio mobile registers a “missed call”. This costs callers nothing. If Xtreme receives over 20 missed calls from different numbers before a track ends, the DJs play it again. This is why teenagers listen to pirate radio: it’s interactive in ways legal stations can’t match.”(2)

Another example is Interactive Radio for Justice, a radio programme in Ituri, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that answers listeners’ questions about justice issues sent by SMS. Ethan Zuckerman points out that sending questions via SMS allows for anonymity, an important point when your question is: “Are soldiers allowed to stay at my house and eat my food without paying for it?”

Desktop software and web-based services allow stations to do more. International broadcasters such as the BBC make extensive use of these tools as do some commercial stations. However, there are few examples of local and community radio using them, even though they offer a low-cost and relatively simple way of stimulating participation and interaction.

There are various software and service packages available. Among them is FrontlineSMS(3), a programme that runs on a computer connected by a cable to an ordinary mobile phone. Unlike most other programs and services, FrontlineSMS does not require a connection to the internet – messages are composed, stored and processed on the computer and sent and received on the mobile. There are a variety of tools available with different capabilities and pricing.(4) Basic services useful for community media include:

• - Broadcast messages to dozens or even thousands of mobiles advising them of a special programme or an important community activity

• - Keyword response – when a listener sends the word “ocio” the station replies with a text message listing activities while “noticias” is answered with current headlines and “Colectivo a Lima” is answered with the departure times of the next six buses to the capital

Experiencies combining SMS services and broadcast radio can be found in moments of political crisis and natural disasters. For example, SMS and radio were used to help monitor the 2000 presidential elections in Ghana:

[V]oters who were prevented from voting used mobile phones to report their experience to call-in shows on local radio stations. The stations broadcast the reports, prompting police to respond to the accusations of voter intimidation. Had voters called the police directly, it’s possible that authorities might not have responded — by making reports public through the radio, voters eliminated the possibility of police announcing that there had been no reports of voter intimidation. Similar techniques have been used in Sierra Leone, Senegal, and even in the United States — American voters used mobile phone cameras and Websites to record reports of voting irregularities during the 2006 congressional elections.(5)

The ongoing political crisis in Zimbabwe provides another example of the complementarity of radio and SMS. Faced with one of the most repressive media environments in the world, Gerry Jackson founded SW Radio Africa located in the UK and broadcasting to Zimbabwe on shortwave. The signal is jammed in urban areas (thanks to Chinese technology, according to Jackson), but gets through to rural zones. The station also streams it programming on the internet and podcasts ara available to the very few connected to the internet from Zimbabwe, but increasingly important are the headlines sent to phones in Zimbabwe using SMS. According to Jackson:

Currently we’re most excited about our latest endeavour – sending SMS news headlines into Zimbabwe, via mobile phones. We generate news headlines on a daily basis anyway – so this is just another way of using what already exists.

It’s nice and cost effective… because there is only the one cost, actually sending the texts. In two months we’ve built up an address database of about 2,000 mobile phone numbers.

Like many, Zimbabweans truly love their mobile phones and of course what we’re banking on is the virus effect. We also get up to 100 requests a day to be added to the service so it’s growing rapidly.(6)

During natural disasters SMS and radio have been used to provide emergency communication, for example an earthquake Yogyakarta and Central Java in Indonesia  killed more than 5,000 people and displaced 1.6 million in May 2006. With support from Internews, a U.S.-based NGO, a radio station and SMS text messaging provided news about relief efforts.

The service was run through an emergency AM radio station, Radio Punokawan, established by the Indonesian Press and Broadcast Society, with support from Internews. In addition to radio broadcasts, important information was sent and received from the newsroom via text messaging. Outgoing messages warned of aftershocks and identified communities that had not yet received government assistance. More than 180 Indonesian journalists distributed and received information through the service.(7)

Some stations have incorporated SMS polling into their programming. During Kenya’s 2007 elections a local radio and television stations and newspapers used SMS to poll listeners on a number of questions. While the  results of the polls were posted on a website and discussed in the local media, the questions were designed to provoke debate about democracy rather than to measure public opinion. Examples included: “Have politicians done enough to fight corruption and mismanagment of public resources?”, “Do you think special seats should be created for women in parliament?”, “Does party politics foster national unity?” and “Do you feel your vote has the power to make a difference?”.

A new project in Grahamstown, South Africa proposes to use SMS to create a network of citizen journalists for a local 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. The project coordinator 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.

In the future, Berger hopes that the program will expand and possibly include other technologies like MMS (multimedia) messages. “We want to interface with the newspaper website, and we’re developing open source software to link the two,” he said. Berger said that there would also be research into the effectiveness of the project. “Then we’re also going to research next year the significance of this whole project,” he said. “Is it making a difference? What does it mean for democracy to have a lot of citizen journalism and to have young people contributing to the public opinion?”(8)

Projects combining SMS and radio have been enabled by the rapid takeup of mobile phones. Globally there is one mobile phone for every two people and in many countries of Latin America the majority of poor people now have access to a mobile telephone.(9) Internet connections and fixed line telephones are still out of reach for much of the world’s population, but mobile telephones have spread faster than any other communication technology in history.

“The only technology that compares to the mobile phone in terms of pervasiveness and accessibility in the developing world is the radio. Indeed, considered together, radios and mobile phones can serve as a broad-distribution, participatory media network with some of the same citizen-media dynamics of the Internet, but accessible to a much wider, and non-literate audience.”(10)

A study of mobile telephone use by people from low-income households in seven Latin American and Caribbean countries indicates high level of SMS by the region’s poor, apparently attracted to the technology because of its low-cost.(11)

Lessons learned?

We have not independently evaluated the experiences presented here, relying instead on accounts gathered from various media accounts and websites. As a result we are unable to clearly identify many of the enabling aspects or problems encountered. Certainly the rapid expansion of mobile telephony, the low cost of SMS messages and the aspirations of community radio stations to be accessible and participatory are important factors for enabling SMS messages for encouraging community participation and feedback.

The real question is not what has enabled the projects described here, but why are more community radio stations not making active use of SMS to communicate with their listeners? Certainly the very rapid take up of mobile telephony is one reason. In many countries the number of users has doubled over the past two years or so and it is understanable that radio stations will take some time to devise strategies for using the technology. Other reasons could include the limitations of 160 characters per message and users who do not know how to use SMS.(12)

While there has been some spontaneous use of SMS messages as a way of facilitiating communication with listeners and community members, more complex projects using SMS servers and applications have generally emerged as a response to political crises or natural disasters. There are few, if any, experiences of complex uses of SMS without external funding and technical support, even though the financial and technical resources required are minimal.

A joint research project of AMARC’s Latin America and Caribbean region and ALER, will establish “labs” to experiment with the use of various ICTs in community radio stations in Latin America. Including advanced SMS servers and services in the package of options offered by the labs should provide some information about the appropriateness and potential of this technology for the region’s community media.

Bruce Girard
July 2008
If you know about or are involved in an SMS/community media project, please tell us about it as a reply to this post or by email.  blog2[at]comunica[dot]org

Footnotes

1. http://www.portioresearch.com/Mob_Mess_Fut_brochure.pdf
2. http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0309/msg00107.html
3. http://frontlinesms.com
4. MobileActive has evaluated some of these tools and their use in campaigns http://mobileactive.org/wiki/Desktop_SMS_Campaign_Tools. Also see their comparison of various tools at http://mobileactive.org/wiki/SMS_Tool_Comparison_Matrix
5. Ethan Zukerman, Mobile Phones and Social Activism: Why cell phones may be the most important technical innovation of the decade” http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/index.php?s=vastly+exceeds+internet+usage
6. Texting news to bypass censors, http://www.mediahelpingmedia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=142&Itemid=1
7. Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in Mobile Use by NGOs http://mobileactive.org/files/MobilizingSocialChange_full.pdf
8. Local news with SMS http://mobileactive.org/spreading-news-sms-0
9. A study of 7,000 low income households in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru, and Trinidad and Tobago found that in every country except Mexico a majority of respondents had used a mobile phone in the past 3 months. In 4 of the 7 countries a majority of respondents owned their own mobile phones. http://www.dirsi.net/espanol/content/view/197/71/
10. Ethan Zuckerman http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/index.php?s=%22vastly+exceeds+internet+usage%22
11. A DIRSI study of 7,000 low income households in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru, and Trinidad and Tobago found that in every country except Mexico a majority of respondents had used a mobile phone in the past 3 months. In 4 of the 7 countries a majority of respondents owned their own mobile phones. http://www.dirsi.net/espanol/content/view/197/71/
12. The DIRSI study cited lack of knowledge as the main reason given by people when asked why they did not use SMS. According to the study, this is “not surprising given that most respondents are relatively new users (two years or less). In fact, our results suggest that adoption of services beyond voice increases over time, as users advance along the technical learning curve.”

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).

Fronline SMS is one of a number of packages for managing SMS from your computer. Mobileactive.org compares FronlineSMS with some other Desktop SMS Campaign Tools.

As of 2006 more than 60% of Canadian households had broadband and 93% are currently wired for it, with an existing cable, telephone or other connection already in their home. Also in 2006, 60% of Canadian radio stations stream their programming on the internet but only one Canadian televisions station streams its programming.

In 2007 the Commission also exempted mobile television, but with all the major mobile companies now offering a selection of primarily USA-based mobile TV, the Commission wants to revisit its earlier decision.

To kick off the consultation the CRTC released a compendium of recent research on new and “old” media, Perspectives on Canadian Broadcasting in New Media. The report spends a lot of time examining how much internet access has grown in Canada and how the traditional media are adapting. I’m Canadian (I haven’t lived there for the past 15 years, though) but reading about how radio broadcasters are adapting leaves me with the overall impression that they are no more prepared for it than are most broadcasters in developing countries. Of course radio broadcasters in Latin America and Africa have lots of time to think about it before they have to deal with significant broadband penetration, but if radio broadcasters in Canada and other developed countries didn’t see the internet coming or can’t come up with a viable business model…

Most of the business models presented in the report seem to be for national and specialty services but it seems that at least some local radio stations are making the best of the challenge:

Research data indicates that clearly many radio broadcasters view having a website as an important part of their business plans. Further, where there is no strong local television or daily newspaper presence, some radio stations are seizing an opportunity to expand their role as providers of timely audio and audiovisual local content.

The report also hints at some classic “business models” being developed, such as companies that provide both content and telecom networks that may be giving preferential treatment to their own services so their video streams reach perfectly you while the competition’s are jerky. Mobile service providers are also guilty.

Certain content providers expressed concerns regarding the availability of access to mobile platforms for the purpose of distributing programming to the Canadian public. These stakeholders submitted that some mobile service providers were acting as gatekeepers to their wireless platforms and, in some cases, denying access on just and reasonable terms.

Like broadcasters, Canada’s regulator doesn’t have a very clear plan either, hence the consultation, which has at its core “three simple questions”:

1. First, is it necessary to regulate commercial television delivered over the Internet and through mobile devices?
2. Then, if it is necessary, can it be done?
3. And finally, if it can be done, how should it be done?

(from a speech by CRTC Chair, Konrad von Finckenstein)

CRTC public notice of the consultation

Perspectives on Canadian Broadcasting in New Media

Online consultation (until 15 June ’08)

The Container Project is an innovative, arts-driven engine for community empowerment through creativity. It is based in a bright yellow converted shipping container in the heart of Palmers Cross, a rural community noted for its poverty and associated social problems.

Read about the mobile CMC on UNESCO’s website.