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

10

One-to-one One-to-many

Uni-directional Telegraph Television, radio, newspapers

Bi-directional Cellphones Community media