Ordinary voices

Citizen Journalism is a big story everywhere in the world. But my research as a BBC Media

Action Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University highlighted that citizen journalism is developing a different structure in India.

Unlike in the West, where it has been primarily web based and technology driven, in India it has its roots in the lack of an effective mechanism for redressing the grievances of ordinary citizens.

The tools of the internet and new media are still to reach the poor majority in India, who usually lack the necessary resources to express their interests and seek accountability. In a country of 1.2 billion people, India has only 130 million internet users, with even more limited internet penetration in rural India.

In such a context, therefore, it is not surprising that the two most successful citizen journalism initiatives in India have evolved as collaborations between citizen journalists with professional reporters and mainstream media.

Sustainable model

Many organisations have laid claim to being the first citizen journalism initiative in India, including merinews.com and the Indian chapter of the global citizen media initiative, Global Voices online.

But few have managed to survive commercially and sustain editorial independence. A few community radio, video and mobile reporting initiatives largely financed by non-government organisations have managed to maintain a presence, but they lack active involvement from citizens.

CGNet Swara, in contrast, has emerged as one of the most successful, provocative and self-sustaining of them all.

Anybody from anywhere can dial in to a central server that not just records stories from the ground but also plays back recorded, moderated and filtered content. Contact information for the authorities or other people responsible for solving the problem is also provided so that the site’s users can take direct action and demand an answer.

The service is supported by The United Nations Democracy Fund and International Center for Journalists and was founded in 2010 by former BBC producer and reporter Shubhranshu Choudhary. Since then, the portal has published more than 1000 audio reports, many of which have been picked up by the mainstream media which hasn’t ignored the potential of a new source of stories.

Collaboration with mass media

The Citizen Journalist Show (CJ Show), for example, is a half-hour TV programme broadcast on one of the national news channels CNN-IBN. The show broadcasts stories from citizens who want an issue investigated to bring about a positive change in their local community or wider society.

One such story featured Brajesh Kumar Chauhan who lives in Delhi and turned citizen journalist for the CJ show to report the lack of water and illegal selling of drinking water in his district, an unauthorised slum area in the sprawling city.

He recorded interviews with his neighbours on a small camera and took pictures of the contaminated water supply. With support from the channel, his story was broadcast on CNN-IBN and he called for a response from the authorities. 

It proved a long fight, but two years later Brajesh’s area now has a regular supply of fresh drinking water and criminal proceedings have been initiated against the local water mafia. The government officials involved in this case have also been issued warnings and an inquiry is underway.

Not every story reported through such citizen journalism initiatives leads to such direct positive change.   And reports of corruption show no sign of abating. But what’s encouraging is that neither does the determination of people like Naresh and Brajesh to get their voices heard. 

To find out more about citizen journalism in India, read Parul’s complete fellowship paper ‘Citizen Journalism: In pursuit of accountability in India’ and a summary of  her research findings in India’s Media Boom: The Good News and the Bad, a Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism publication on the media landscape of today’s India. 

 

Related links

CGNet Swara

The CJ Show

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

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Palestinian women are engaging with social media for business, discussion and advocacy.

In the small West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, south west of Ramallah, housewife and activist Manal Tamimi photographs soldiers using her mobile phone as she dodges teargas canisters, before tweeting them to the world. In a kitchen at the other side of the village, baker Umm Samer posts pictures of her produce on Facebook to sell them and make a living.

Palestinian women have taken social media by storm: using it for advocacy, women’s rights, marketing their products, or as a tool to voice their opinions, which would otherwise remain veiled due to social, cultural and traditional restraints.

BBC Media Action has made a point of integrating social media into its project in the Palestinian Territories. Our participatory, audience-driven debate programmes Hur Al Kalam (‘Free Speech’), and Aswat Min Filisteen (‘Voices from Palestine’) provide people, (particularly disenfranchised youth), with multimedia platforms (radio, television and online) where they can debate the political and social issues with key decision-makers and hold them to account.

Facebook and Twitter

Our social media team is working hand in hand with the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation to develop the station’s Facebook page, and we are creating social media guidelines for the station, as well as using social media for production. Over the past six months Palestine TV’s Facebook page has seen rising numbers of fans and increasingly professional content.

An objective of the social media team is to engage more women in the debates and issues raised. Before BBC Media Action’s involvement, the majority of the visitors to Palestine TV’s web pages and Facebook page were men. Since our partnership started, we have noticed an increase in the number of women engaging, especially when our programmes raise issues such as marriage and the health sector.

Our research officer Al’a Radi helps to test whether the programmes will be relevant to women. “When choosing the topics we want to use in the shows, we ensure that Palestine TV, along with our research team, conducts research about the chosen topics with relevant women’s organisations and experts,” she said.

In the past year Palestinian women have become a recognisable presence on Twitter – mainly focusing on political activism and advocacy. Female activists have built networks inside and outside Palestine to support each other and have created social media campaigns to tie in with actions on the ground.

Palestine TV already covers topics that interest women; our project manager Raed Sadeq says BBC Media Action wants to involve women in all aspects of the production, “We have the flexibility in our programmes to cover women’s issues,” she says, “but we go further, by having female politicians and experts as part of the panel and present in the audience, whatever topic or issue we raise.”

A version of this blog first appeared on the Southbank Centre blog as part of the Women of the World (WOW) festival in March 2013.  

Ashira Ramadan spoke at WOW 2013 as part of WOW Bites – a series of bite-sized talks.

Related links

BBC Media Action's work in the Palestinian Territories

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That's right. A very basic and battered fake 'nokai' mobile phone, held together with an elastic band and bearing no numbers.  This phone is typical of those used today by people in Bihar, one of the poorest states in India where maternal and child mortality rates are some of the highest in the world.

Over 80% of women in Bihar have access to a mobile phone like this. In contrast, only 18% of women in the state watch TV and 11%listen to the radio.  And what’s more, our research shows that all community health workers in the state either own, or have access to, a mobile phone. 

Recognising this, BBC Media Action is harnessing the most basic mobile phone technology in Bihar to deliver a high-impact solution.

'Key' components 

First, we undertook research to understand how people in Bihar used their phones. We found out, for example, that most people in rural Bihar were unable to send or open text messages  or locate their address book on their phone. So while they have phones, people in Bihar use them for making and receiving phone calls – nothing else.

So we created a simple, audio-based solution designed for health workers to use during their visits to families. Called Mobile Kunji (meaning 'key'), it has two components. The first is a deck of 40 cards with health messages for each stage of pregnancy and post-natal care. On the front of the card is a picture and health lesson, and on the back of the card – the side the community health worker sees – key learning points to be shared. 

But what's unique is the second component: at the bottom of each card is a seven-digit number, a mobile short code. When the community health worker dials this number, she goes straight to the relevant audio message which she can play to the family she's visiting. No complicated list of options, no handset-dependent apps and no new technology skills are necessary. She just has to make a phone call.

The audio messages, voiced by an empathetic, reassuring character called Dr Anita, advises the family on topics such as the importance of preparing for the birth. And Dr Anita will be there right the way through a woman’s pregnancy and after the birth, offering advice at regular intervals.

Going to scale immediately

Because BBC Media Action negotiated some of the lowest call charges in the world with all six of the major network operators in Bihar, all health workers can access the services via the same, common short codes, whatever type or brand of handset or network they are on. 

And because we selected a technology and related skills that health workers already have, we could go to scale immediately. We are currently on course to train the project's aim of 200,000 community health workers who will in turn reach nearly 7m pregnant women and women with children under the age of two.

Using mobile phones allows us and the government to collect real-time data on which cards are being used by which health worker, when and where. This provides valuable feedback on whether beneficiaries are receiving the advise they need. We are not aware of any other tracking system in the world that does this at scale, especially with simple mobile handsets.

In the project's first seven months, we've already seen 75,000 unique users calling the service and more than 1.4 million minutes of Dr Anita have been played.

We’ve also heard that in some areas, there’s been a spike in women going to their local health facility. Pregnant women are also telling our colleagues in India that their health worker, along with Dr Anita, convinced them to register for free government health services.

BBC Media Action will be tracking the project's impact on health behaviours over the next four years. In the meantime, we're exploring with the government of India how to take this service to the rest of the country. 

In addition to Mobile Kunji, we are also offering training to health workers via their mobile phones and soon we will be launching a service for audio messages sent directly to families' mobiles.

Right here, right now

We should be excited by the potential for technical innovation to improve the lives of many, especially the lives of some of the very poorest in the world. New and better technology will transform health systems, by digitalising health records, by diagnosing conditions straight from the phone and remotely managing medical supplies.

But there is also beauty in simplicity and in the here and now. If we use what people have in their hands, we can start saving lives now.

Related links

From the BBC Media Action blog:

A mother's wisdom

A window of hope

From BBC Media Action:

Tackling maternal and child health in Bihar

BBC Media Action's work in India

BBC Media Action's work on health

Go back to BBC Media Action

Our colleagues in India have pioneered a way to use inexpensive, basic mobile handsets to train hundreds of thousands of community health workers in delivering life-saving maternal and child health information to millions of rural families in the northern state of Bihar.

BBC Media Action has always used radio and television to reach millions of marginalised people with the information they need to change their own lives. Innovation is being driven by dozens of organisations working in the development field and I'm looking forward to learning from them, but determined too that a fairly large and traditional organisation can remain at the forefront of innovation ourselves.

Join in at www.openup12.org using the hashtag #OpenUp12.

Elsewhere on BBC Media Action

Sema Kenya

Tackling maternal and child health in Bihar

Voices from Palestine - New Palestinian debate show launches

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