Aaditeshwar SethJoint work with Balachandran C, Zahir Koradia, Mayank
Shivam, Vidya Venkat, Ankita Agarwal, Achal Premi, Ishani Ahuja, Arvind Mahla, Deepak Martin, Quamar
Niyaz, Abhishek Katyal, Rohit Bhatia,
and Huzur Saran, Sanjiva Prasad
Gram Vaani and IIT Delhi
Using Mobile Phones to Amplify the Potential of Community
Media
Community media in rural areas
Variety of mechanisms
Community radio
Community video
Wall newspapers
…
2
Community media and development
3
Gender
Profession
Caste
CM station
Representation
Contextual info
Empowerment
Communication, entertainment
Power
NGOs
Change agent
Role of intermediaries, identity of the media, text-free interfaces, low access cost, in-person community interaction
How can we make this more efficient? more scalable? more accessible?
Community radio
Single console for playout, scheduling, preview, archiving, telephony, SMS, faceted content management
Don’t have to switch headphonesTelephony and radio integration for community engagement
4
Phone and SMS integration with radio
5
Voice applications [Patel, CHI 2010] [Rajput, NSDR 2008]Press 1 to cast your vote for Bundeli idolPress 2 to give us feedback or ask
questionsPress 3 for community forum…
Multiple use-cases for radio + telephony
Live Panchayat group discussionsAntakshari competitions across schoolsCommunity reportingNREGA helpline, agriculture helpline…
Suggestion of new worksProject announcements and vacancies
Stratified database of community membersGroup updatesPersonalizationAssessment of campaign effectiveness
through micro-surveys
6
Achieving visibility in non-radio settings
Complaints made over phoneWebsite encourages the MLA and councilor
to participateMonthly status reports put up on wall
newspapers
7
Community news reporting in voice
8
Tribals in ChattisgarhLocal languages:
Gondi, Kuruk, Hindi, Chattisgarhi
Local newspapers and NGOs take up the issues
A YouTube for the bottom of the pyramid
15% penetration of DVD players [Thies, ICTD 2010]
“DVD a month” magazineGraphical menus to browse through
information streams from different areasUse mobile phones for voice and photos as
feedback
Dial 1-800-528-6444 to tell your story: Video ID 153
Key message
Mobile phones combined with traditional broadcast media can be an appropriate technique to use community media for development of poor income communities
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One-to-one One-to-many
Uni-directional Telegraph Television, radio, newspapers
Bi-directional Cellphones Community media