Title: Mobile Tech in Community Radio - Still Ad Hoc and One-Off: A State-of-Mobile Report
Author: Melissa Ulbricht
Publisher:MobilActive.org
Date (published):07/06/2010
Date (accessed):23/11/2010
Type of information:report
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
„In 2008, Bruce Girard concluded in a MobileActive.org guest post that the addition of text messaging technology into the community radio toolkit was still in its infancy. SMS use at radio stations was informal, he wrote, and the few cases of more complex use of SMS messages accompanied political crisis or natural disaster and were largely donor financed.

Two years later, we delve once again into the state of SMS and mobile technology at community radio stations, by way of an informal survey. While advances have been made and creative projects have emerged, integration remains an ad-hoc and individual enterprise.

This report summarizes existing projects and success stories, highlighting the most popular uses of mobile technology. It concludes with a discussion of the challenges that community radio stations face in adopting SMS and mobile technology.”
via http://www.comminit.com/ and https://twitter.com/#!/ictdev

Title: Cutting Through the Hype: Why Citizen Reporting Isn't Election Monitoring
Authors: Katrin Verclas, Anne-Ryan Heatwole
Source: MobileActive.org
Date (published): 31/05/2010
Date (accessed): 01/06/2010
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
Recently, we’ve been seeing a lot of hype about citizen reporting with mobile phones during elections. It is often conflated with the term “election monitoring,” but this does a disservice to both citizen reporting and election monitoring, a discipline and field that has been around for some 20 years. These two approaches have markedly different goals, target audiences, and processes. We think it is time for readers to definititively understand what election monitoring is in contrast to citizen reporting, and what the role of mobile phone and mapping platforms are in regard to these two very different forms of engagement during elections. We aim to clearly differentiate between them once and for all.

We also urge the adoption of differing terms - citizen reporting during an election versus systematic election monitoring. Mobile phones, SMS, and mapping platforms play a role in both citizen reporting and election monitoring, of course.

We believe that more clearly distinguishing between citizen reporting during an election and the discipline of systematic election monitoring will better serve organizations that are considering using mobile technology for either of these engagement processes.

via http://twitter.com/AudienceScapes and http://twitter.com/mobileactive

Title: Technology for Transparency: The role of technology and citizen media in promoting transparency, accountability, and civic participation
Editor: David Sasaki
Pages: 75 pp.
Source: Transparency and Technology Network
Publisher: Global Voices
Date (published): 27/05/2010
Date (accessed): 28/05/2010
Type of information: research report
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
This report is the culmination of four months of research examining the objectives, challenges, successes, and effects of online technology projects that aim to promote transparency, political accountability, and civic engagement in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, South Asia, China, and Central & Eastern Europe. A team of eight regional researchers documented a total of 37 case studies of relevant technology projects. Though this report contains only executive summaries of each case study, full interviews including audio podcasts and related documents, are available on our website. In addition to the in-depth case studies, we have also documented over 30 project listings, which provide basic descriptive information and context about related projects.

This report is structured in three sections. The introduction examines the differing aspects between traditional watchdog journalism and online media that rely on raw data sources, often directly from government websites. The introduction also aims to contextualize the benefits of transparency, accountability, and civic engagement from a grassroots, networked perspective. The second section of the report consists of regional overviews authored by each of our eight researchers. These overviews document the history of the good governance movement in each region, the role of technology in promoting transparency and accountability, and summaries of the case studies they documented. The concluding section groups case studies thematically in order draw out trends, conclusions, and recommendations that apply across a number of projects.