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Al Jazeera

Weekly Wire: the Global Forum

Kalliope Kokolis's picture

These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.

Al Jazeera
Africa's digital election trackers

“Harry Kargbo barely slept the night before Sierra Leone's recent election for president. "I was so excited," he said. “I was up until 1 AM the night before. I was thinking, 'What will happen tomorrow? What will tomorrow look like?'"

Four hours later, Kargbo was up and out the door. Armed with nothing more than a mobile phone, he spent the next 10 hours navigating his way through a vehicle ban and police checkpoints, observing voting at polling stations around this West African country's capital, Freetown, and reporting on what he saw using the basic text messaging function on his phone."  READ MORE

Weekly Wire: the Global Forum

Kalliope Kokolis's picture

These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.

Frontline SMS
New Resource: Using SMS as an Effective Behavior Change Campaigning Tool

“Behavior change campaigning is inherently interactive. In order to encourage positive behavior change it is important to not only push campaign messages out to people, but to listen to the responses. To run a campaign which has a real impact, you need to listen to ensure you’re being heard. This is one of the main reasons why SMS – as a widely accessible and inherently interactive communications channel  – is an ideal tool for campaigning.

This is the topic explored in a new resource which FrontlineSMS is releasing with Text to Change today; best practices when using SMS as a behavior change campaigning tool. This resource has been put together collaboratively to provide an introductory guide, suggesting some key points which can usefully be considered if you are planning to use SMS as a campaign tool. The resource is by no means exhaustive, but it outlines some key considerations which can hopefully serve to help guide discussions around best practices in SMS campaigning.” READ MORE

#3: It's About Dignity and Poverty, Not About Facebook

Anne-Katrin Arnold's picture

Our Top Ten Blog Posts by Readership in 2011

Originally published on February 8, 2011

Frank Rich, op-ed columnist at the New York Times, made a very important point this week: Revolutions are not about Facebook and Twitter. Revolutions are about human dignity and hunger. It seems that a few journalists are trying to push the (mainstream) media's fascination with the role of (social) media in Egypt, Tunisia, and Iran toward a more realistic point of view. After a prime-time CNN talking head stated that social media are the most fascinating thing about the events in Egypt (!), some senior journalists seem to have had it with the ICT hype. Rich tries to pull attention to why people rise up against their government: "starting with the issues of human dignity and crushing poverty."

Weekly Wire: the Global Forum

Kalliope Kokolis's picture

These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.

Full Disclosure: The Aid Transparency Blog
The Dream Job of the Decade

“Data are becoming cheaper, more plentiful, and easier to access and use. What does that mean for transparency? What does it mean for development? And what does it mean for you?

According to Hal Varian, chief economist of Google, it means that you’re going to be in high demand if you have the complementary skill of making sense of large amounts of data. That’s one of the skills of data story-tellers, like Hans Rosling, and statisticians – the dream job of the decade!

A major source of the “data avalanche” has been the move to open government data. The World Bank launched its Open Data initiative on April 20 last year: Development data are now free, searchable and accessible, and the full range of data sets is listed in a catalog for bulk download and direct access.”

Media with a Pan-Arab Point-of-View

Antonio Lambino's picture

It is obvious that the news media are a formidable force for change in the Arab World.  More specifically, it seems like media whose coverage is inspired by a pan-Arab point-of-view are the most potent agents of change -- as protagonists or antagonists, depending on one’s own perspective.