The BBC’s radio programme Digital Planet did a story recently about Radio Cultura, a not-for-profit station owned by a Catholic foundation in Brazil that uses a radio programme and a website to create multimedia social networks. Listeners to the programme, RadarCultura, can propose songs and discussion topics on the programme’s website and the ones that receive the most votes get played or discussed on the radio.
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.
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.
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.
