Community Media Networks L E AR N I N G S O V E R 7 + Y E AR S O - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Design Principles to Create Sustainable Community Media Networks L E AR N I N G S O V E R 7 + Y E AR S O F C O N S TAN T E X P L O R AT I O N N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 5 AP P R O P R I AT E C O M P U T I N G T E C H N O L O G I E S V O I C E O F T H E V I L L AG E F O R D E V E L O P M E N T ( AC T 4 D ) , I I T D E L H I T E C H N O L O G Y. M E D I A. D E V E L O P M E N T g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n e

Joint work with…  The Gram Vaani team: Mayank, Parminder, Bala, Zahir, Kapil, Dinesh, Sayonee, Aparna, Rohit Singh, Rohit Jain, Ritesh, Paro, Sultan, Lokesh, Aravindh, Biswajit, Sangeeta, Smita, Veer, Saraswati, Suvasis, Ashok, Preety, Deepak Jha, Deepak Kumar, Deepak Jaiswal, Shweta, Aarti, Vinod, Ruby, Amrita, Ritu, Vasanti, Ashish Tandon, Dasami Moodley, Vidya, Shambhu  IIT Delhi students: Arvind, Dipanjan, Prateek, Abhishek Katyal, Rohit Bhatia, Deepak Martin, Amitsingh, Gaurav Luthra, Gaurav Agarwal, Quamar Niyaz, Sameer, Rahul, Asheesh, Piyush Agarwal  Collaborators: CEDPA, Sesame Workshop, PFI, Development Alternatives, Gurgaon ki Avaaz, JEEViKA, PHRN, Gram Swaraj Abhiyan, Digital Green, CREA, Jean Dreze, Reetika Khera, and many others g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n e Mobile Vaani: Technology. Media. Development

Community media in rural areas in India Contextual & complete  Variety of mechanisms Change info agent Community Representation media  Community radio Entertainment, community building Empowerment  Community video  Wall newspapers  … 3 g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n e Mobile Vaani: Technology. Media. Development

Project 1: ICTs for community radio stations in rural areas  CR 2.0: Radio + mobile phones  Poor telephony integration  Media players used for scheduling  Content stored in folders across different machines  Many moving parts: Headphones, mics, mixer adjustments g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n e Mobile Vaani: Technology. Media. Development

GRINS (Gramin Radio Inter Networking System)  Single console for playout, scheduling, preview, archiving, telephony, SMS, faceted content management  Don’t have to switch headphones  Telephony and radio integration for community engagement g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n e Mobile Vaani: Technology. Media. Development

An appropriately designed technology  Community engagement  Live Panchayat group discussions  Music on hold advertising  Antakshari competitions across schools  NREGA helpline, agriculture helpline…  Suggestion of new works  Project announcements and vacancies  Stratified database of community members  Group updates  Personalization  Assessment of campaign effectiveness through micro-surveys g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n e Mobile Vaani: Technology. Media. Development

Project 2 - Mobile Vaani: A voice based community media platform using phones 1. Speak 2. Moderate + Share 3. Connect to stakeholders Content moderated locally Users speak and listen to Inputs connected to and centrally, then contributions over our government (local + published on IVR, web intelligent IVR platform other) , NGO partners, social enterprise partners g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n e Mobile Vaani: Technology. Media. Development

Traction on Mobile Vaani  90% community sourced content  Local news  Interviews and informational services  Opinion on topical issues  Guided discussions and campaigns  Grievances and feedback on government schemes  Cultural artifacts including folk songs and poems  Current reach  10,000+ calls per day  8min average call duration  1,000,000+ unique callers  2,500,000+ households reach g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n e Mobile Vaani: Technology. Media. Development

Our learning: The ICTD onion Broader ecosystem Technology design Community Content & Adoption & character- services awareness istics People processes g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n e Mobile Vaani: Technology. Media. Development

Our learning: The ICTD onion Broader ecosystem Software engineering and design processes Technology architecture Technology design Ease of use, task completion, data collection accuracy, cost Community Content & Adoption & character- Machine learning, recommendations services awareness istics Technology support and scaleup People processes g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n e Mobile Vaani: Technology. Media. Development

Software engineering and design process Hard to find a common set of Understood in 1 st call requirements Understood by 3 rd call • Observe the users to understand gaps to be addressed through ICTs. But also identify good pilot partners/power users who can give actionable feedback. • Software engg. currently is a hit and miss affair Marsden, 2013 g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n e Mobile Vaani: Technology. Media. Development

Relevance of user training Understood Did not Dec in 1 st call understand Nov by 3 rd call Oct Sept (L) Phonepeti Understood Aug by 3 rd call July Leave a message… Jun (R) Mobile Vaani May Offline in-person training is Apr imperative, be it internal or Mar external Feb Jan' 14 Dec Nov 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 1st Recording 2nd Recording 3rd Recording 4th Recording 5th Recording > 5 Recordings g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n e Mobile Vaani: Technology. Media. Development

Ease of use and design efficacy Data collection 180 • 84% of responses QoC data collection: Getting 160 140 participation is not hard if incentives are match those given to a Frequency 120 aligned and well understood 100 live operator 80 60 • 79% of users 40 understood more than 20 0 80% of the questions 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 More Bin Crowd-sourced voting • Linear list of thumbs-up thumbs-down Vs best-of-two Vs best-of-four • No significant difference in task completion, nearly 100% for all • Cultural preferences though: Did not want to call a song bad! g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n e Mobile Vaani: Technology. Media. Development

Technology support and scaleup Most faults occur when people tinker with cables and other moving parts. Impossible to avoid! Moved to a cloud deployment with Mobile Vaani Mode of communication Faults Faults Most debugging needs to be done identified resolved over the phone but hard to resolve Phone calls 57 16 (28%) over the phone alone with a local Remote desktop 9 9 (100%) unskilled tech resource Remote desktop & phone 9 6 (67%) Reverse SSH 6 5 (83%) Reverse SSH & phone 2 2 (100%) g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n e Mobile Vaani: Technology. Media. Development Physical visit 6 6 (100%)

But it is not all about non-technology! Evaluating interrupt misses Latency Some setups are more experiments debuggable than others: Evaluate debuggability using Prolog Direct Delayed g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n e Mobile Vaani: Technology. Media. Development

Technology is also important to monitor our own system 700 0.6 600 0.5 500 0.4 400 0.3 300 0.2 200 0.1 100 0 0 Nov-12 Jul-13 Nov-13 Nov-14 Jan-13 Mar-13 May-13 Sep-13 Jan-14 Mar-14 May-14 Jul-14 Sep-14 Jan-15 Mar-15 Users who call just once ranges from 25% to over 50% some times. Correlated with quotas. Old users are more tolerant of QoS Activity of users Activity of long lived users g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n e Mobile Vaani: Technology. Media. Development

Unpeeling the onion: Adoption and awareness Broader ecosystem Technology design Community Content & Adoption & character- services awareness istics People processes g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n e Mobile Vaani: Technology. Media. Development

Offline methodology for acquisition of users 1 MV field Our field team enters new team geographies through NGO/ CBO partners Volunteer clubs Volunteers SHG and community networks 2 We begin with identifying volunteers from the community g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n e Mobile Vaani: Technology. Media. Development

Need for institutional structures and community ownership 4 1 Clubs are MV field Our field team mentored enters new team closely by the geographies field team through NGO/ CBO partners 3 Volunteer clubs 7000 Over time, BMV – 6000 callers per 6000 5000 volunteers day in 10 months 4000 are then 3000 Volunteers 2000 organized 1000 0 into clubs SHG and community networks 2 We begin with 7000 Jamui club – 6000 callers 6000 identifying 5000 per day in 5 months 4000 volunteers from 3000 the community 2000 1000 0 g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n e Mobile Vaani: Technology. Media. Development