Beyond Connectivity: Sharing News without the Web

SHARINGNEWSWITHOUTTHEWEB
@newmaya
@elizatalks
Kara Andrade
Eliza Anyangwe
Trevor Knoblich
Sean McDonald
@mobiletrevor
@FrontlineSMS
#new
s4all
Wednesday, March 12, 14

Beyond Connectivity #news4all
Trevor Knoblich
Online News Association
trevor@journalists.org
@mobiletrevor

Lack of connectivity
@mobiletrevor
Image: courtesy Blair Glencorse, Accountability Lab

BaltimoreBroadband data for major US urban areas
Baltimore
@mobiletrevor
Image: courtesy Investigative Reporting Workshop

MiamiBroadband data for major US urban areas
Detroit/Wayne County
@mobiletrevor

New OrleansBroadband data for major US urban areas
Miami
@mobiletrevor

New OrleansBroadband data for major US urban areas
New Orleans
@mobiletrevor

Why is this important?
@mobiletrevor
Image: via Wikimedia Commons, Federal Highway Administration
- MUTCD, Public Domain

@mobiletrevor
Image: Dan McKay, Flickr, "Dano" under CC License.
www.ﬂickr.com/photos/mukluk/241256203

“We need a malaria epidemic in the blogging community!”
– Bill Gates, Wired, April 2013
@mobiletrevor

“Either that or we need people who have seen the malaria epidemic to start
blogging. Seriously, we have two communities that don’t intersect with each other.”
– Bill Gates, Wired, April 2013
@mobiletrevor

Image: courtesy Social Flow. www.socialﬂow.com
@mobiletrevor

Kara Andrade
HablaCentro Infomatics NFP
kara@hablacentro.com
@newmaya

HablaCentro.com
@newmaya

We focused on
• Training and Strategy
• Tools for enhancing civic participation
• Help people access information and economic opportunities
@newmaya

Need for information
@newmaya
Photo: Eric Heather Haddox

Need for information
@newmaya

People find ways to get the information they need
@newmaya

Other times they use radio
The National Movement of Radio Stations in
Guatemala - with 168 radio stations and 1600
volunteers - uses cellphones to air local
broadcasts in their own indigenous languages.
@newmaya

And you never know who is listening
@newmaya

So you always meet people where they’re at
@newmaya

The digital divide
The concept of the digital divide has its origins in the idea of information “haves”
and information “have-nots.” This is the belief that as we move into an information
society, information becomes more signiﬁcant in people’s lives and a lack of access
can disadvantage citizens as much as any other resource.
@newmaya

What can cause this digital divide?
• New technologies are often limited in their
availability and local communities may develop
their own solutions to gain access to them
• The “digital divide” metaphor focuses on treating
people as passive recipients rather than active
users engaging with technology
@newmaya

What is access?
Digital access was originally deﬁned as the
possession of physical access to the equipment
required for an internet connection: a cable
connection of some description (usually a telephone
line) and the appropriate terminal devices (usually a
modem and computer).
@newmaya

What is access?
• The cost of purchasing a computer and subscribing to an internet connection has
meant universal access has not been achieved as quickly
• Achieving physical access does not equate to crossing all the boundaries of the
digital divide
@newmaya

Beyond Connectivity #news4all @newmaya

Beyond Connectivity #news4all @newmaya
A more finely expressed model of
connectivity must be considered

Lessons Learned
@newmaya

Build community
• Bringing citizens online as part of a community, rather than individuals, is a more
effective and sustainable method of enabling individuals to cross the digital divide
and stay across the divide
• An individual is more likely to cross the divide and stay across as part of a
community
• The community can offer support, and brings with it social needs and purposes
@newmaya

Develop a bottom-up approach
Developing a bottom-up networked community project based within an existing
community of locality, where there is already a signiﬁcant level of social interaction,
is more likely to succeed than implementing a top-down networked community
project into an arbitrarily selected community.
@newmaya

Enhance participation
Appropriate social software can enhance participation within, and the sustainability
and evolution of, a networked community.
@newmaya

Websites run locally
@newmaya

And now how do they work?
• Regional citizen information websites in Latin America
• Run by volunteers who share information and tools, and
own the websites within each country
• Contributors share and discuss information in various
languages, including local indigenous languages
• Contributions can be anonymous
• Anyone can contribute via website, email and cellphone
@newmaya

HablaCentro gateway
We’ve created apps that help people organize and inform
themselves.
@newmaya

Nebaj election
We used it this year for an election in Nebaj,
Guatemala.
@newmaya

And it all started with one woman
Introducing Matilde Terraza.
@newmaya

Strategy is important
• Audience to reach or connect to?
• With what goal or objective?
• How do you reach that audience to achieve your objective?
• What technology or tools will you use?
• What to consider a success? Short-term/long-term
@newmaya

How it works
We used it this year for an election in Nebaj,
Guatemala.
@newmaya

Reports from Nebaj
@newmaya

Community-Requested Tools
@newmaya

Localized citizen journalism websites
• Contributions are anonymous by default
• Localized language support
• Built-in messaging between contributors
• Editorial ﬂow
• Customized modules
• Multi-website ﬂow
• Integration with HC Messaging CMSwww.hablaguate.com
@newmaya

Simple Blog
• Efﬁcient, lightweight blogging platform that natively
comes with extensive language support
• Designed for developing & low bandwidth countries
• Tightly integrated with Facebook and Twitter
• Full support for collaborative translations of all
content
www.simpleblog.sundelof.com
@newmaya

Simple Election
• Available in Kaqchikel, Spanish and English
• Integrates with YouTube to allow submission of
videos in your native language
• Native support for text message submissions
www.github.com/eriksundelof
@newmaya

Simple Conference
• Support for Kaqchikel, Spanish and English
• Native support for text messages
• Calendar of Participants and speakers
• Presentations and tracks
• Complete donation ﬂow and registration
payments via Paypalwww.github.com/eriksundelof
@newmaya

Tell them technology is made of people
@newmaya

Sean McDonald
Social Impact Lab
sean@frontlinesms.com
@FrontlineSMS

SMS as a platform
This year, the GSMA predicts there will be 6.9
billion mobile phone connections in the world.
SMS works on all of them.
Recent estimates suggest that the world sends
more than 300,000 text messages per second, or
more than 9.4 trillion messages a year.
Image: Chris Jordan ©2008
@FrontlineSMS

Device ownership
Image: Pew Research Center
@FrontlineSMS

Unique mobile subscribers
@FrontlineSMS

Dumb assumptions about smartphones
Image: Pew Research Center
@FrontlineSMS

Tools with the face of a clown
@FrontlineSMS

Bigger jobs deserve better tools
@FrontlineSMS

Journalism in(ter)action
@FrontlineSMS

Beyond Connectivity #news4all @FrontlineSMS

We’re big in Archipelagos
@FrontlineSMS

Citizen Journalism(?)
@FrontlineSMS

West Kalimantan
• 160 citizen journalists trained
• 600 subscribers
• 150 high-rank local government ofﬁcers and
police ofﬁcers
@FrontlineSMS

West Kalimantan
After three days of ﬂooding, a main road became
unusable.
@FrontlineSMS

West Kalimantan
After a few text message reports, the
Government ﬁxed it.
@FrontlineSMS

West Kalimantan
• 136 Students
• 3 Classes
@FrontlineSMS

West Kalimantan
• 1 New School
@FrontlineSMS

West Kalimantan
“Before we were using Mandau to protest the oil
palm company, now we are using cell phones.”
@FrontlineSMS

Interaction by design
@FrontlineSMS

Eliza Anyangwe
Guardian Global Development Professionals Network
eliza.anyangwe@theguardian.com
@elizatalks

Open means offline
Going beyond connectivity at the Guardian
@elizatalks

Our unique community
@elizatalks

2011: The Guardian goes “digital first”
@elizatalks

Open journalism: “the mind, body and soul” of
Guardian journalism
@elizatalks

2014: digital first becomes mobile first
In January mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) accounted for 47% of the
Guardian's monthly browsers vs. 39% a year ago. However, on Saturdays and
Sundays mobile devices now account for the majority of unique browsers on the
Guardian sites: 55%.
And even more staggering: mobile devices are an absolute majority every day of the
week when it comes to trafﬁc referred to the Guardian.
@elizatalks

But this all still depends on connectivity...
@elizatalks

Events
• The Guardian Open Weekend
• Masterclasses where we teach digital journalism
skills
• Activate London, NY, India... and now Jo’burg
• Roundtable discussions
@elizatalks

Guardian Weekly
The compact weekly digest of Guardian and
Observer highlights plus articles and features from
the Washington Post and Le Monde.
@elizatalks

Food for thought
• The not so distant future: 2016
• Mobile devices outnumber PC devices 4:1
• Time spent on mobile vs. PC 3:1
@elizatalks

Thank you
@newmaya
@elizatalks
@mobiletrevor
@FrontlineSMS
Kara Andrade
Eliza Anyangwe
Trevor Knoblich
Sean McDonald
#news4all

Beyond Connectivity: Sharing News without the Web

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