Global Participatory Journalism with FrontlineSMS
Example: Walk us through a specific example(s) of how this solution makes a difference; include its primary activities.
Marketplace: Who else is addressing the problem outlined here? How does the proposed project differ from these approaches?
Ryan
Jones
frontlinesms
FrontlineSMS / The kiwanja Foundation
, CAM
1‐5 years
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Start-Up (a pilot that has just begun operating)
Operating for less than a year
FrontlineSMS began life back in 2004 when Ken Banks was working in South Africa, thinking about how the park authorities could use mobile technology to communicate with local communities living around Kruger National Park, many of whom were slowly beginning to acquire mobile phones. Frustrated by the domination of web-based communications tools—it was impossible to connect to the Internet in these communities—Ken built a communications solution that would offer its users the maximum amount of accessibility. To reflect the reality in the field, this meant no Internet and no technology more advanced than a low-cost laptop and basic mobile phones already in the hands of community members. In 2005, armed with a laptop, programming guide and an assortment of cables, phones and GSM modems, Ken went to work on developing a prototype of his communications platform, one which was eventually to become FrontlineSMS. Since then, the popularity of the platform and engagement of the user community has grown ceaselessly. As a few journalists began to use the basic tools to engage their communities, it became clear that there was more work to be done, and this initiative was born.
Nearly 20,000 organizations and individuals have downloaded FrontlineSMS, and our community of active users has reached millions of people with projects from agricultural support to public health to election monitoring campaigns. As we begin to develop and grow our participatory media initiative, we are working hard on developing and collecting metrics directly related to that work. This will mean more than counting radio stations or other journalists that are using FrontlineSMS (though there are already 26 stations around the world who are doing so); we need to go into detail in pilot projects designed to measure the impact of SMS-based interaction on information retention and listener engagement, develop surveys to measure uptake and satisfaction with new communications tools, and analyze the workflows of community journalists to understand how our tools and mobile in general are transforming their newsgathering process.
We are ready to hit the ground running. With committed interest from organizations like al Jazeera, Internews, the BBC World Service Trust, the World Bank, and more, we are ready to lead in this movement and deliver rapid and sustainable global impact.
Thanks to our existing network of users and supporters, we are confident that our tools will be used widely within the next year. Within the next 5 years, we anticipate being leaders in the field of mobile integration in journalism and media. Because our tools are free and open-source, and our community is open and dynamic, it will be simple for our tools to be used and our expertise to be tapped for projects and programs around the world. Given the rapid growth of mobile technology, and the growing embrace of innovation around the channel, we believe that, in five years, mobile integration in newsgathering and participatory journalism will be nearly universal, and it is our hope that early, aggressive initiatives like this one will keep us at the forefront of this critical movement.
100 stations or programs around the world actively using FrontlineSMS for citizen media
Complete software development and consultation with pilot partners
Roll-out software and launch engagement and outreach strategy
Support early-adopting stations to work out software bugs and ensure smooth integration
Continued growth and clear leadership in the mobile-for-participatory-media movement worldwide
Conduct rigorous impact evaluations of the benefit of mobile tech in media and journalism
Gain widespread satisfaction with our team, tools, and community through hands-on support
Develop a sound, sustainable, active business model of consultation and training for a diverse client portfolio
1,001 - 10,000
More than 10,000
Hybrid model
We foresee three potential risks to the success of FrontlineSMS:Media: lack of adoption, a failure to keep the software simultaneously easy to use and feature-rich, and resource constraints. The whole point of dedicating time and resources to addressing the needs of rural journalists and media outlets is to improve the way they work. Like any free, open-source software, FrontlineSMS:Media will only be as successful as the people that use it. If no one uses our tools, or if no one considers our community and expertise an asset to their work, the project objectives will not be met. We believe our development process mitigates this risk, by involving current and potential users at every stage of the process, ensuring that what we build responds directly to their stated needs.
In a world of rapidly shifting technology and an uncertain media landscape, versatility is a key piece of our strategy. While it is certain that mobile data connectivity will come to many parts of the developing world, and cheap Android handsets will make mobile Internet accessible, the persistence of SMS in the U.S. shows that there will always be communities where texting is the cheapest, easiest, or only tool. The same goes for broadcast media like radio, which remains vital even as the Internet has otherwise transformed the news landscape.
Luckily, our work in citizen media is one of several sector-specific initiatives we are undertaking. Therefore, even if FrontlineSMS:Media fails to gain traction, the software we build, the expertise we develop, and the ideas we generate can easily be internally directed towards one of our other initiatives. With a community users reaching millions of people around the world with our tools, we are confident that any investment in our work and our team will yield dividends.
As described elsewhere in this application, our sector-specific initiatives in media fit neatly in our long-term palns to attain financial sustainability as a unique hybrid social enterprise. We have found that larger organizations want access to the expertise we’ve gained during five years in M4D. Program design consultancy is therefore our primary type of contract, with training coming in a close second. Ongoing consulting work with larger partners will therefore provide the bulk of funding necessary to support this work. We don’t anticipate future grants being necessary, but targeted grants for new initiatives can and do take budgetary pressure off existing work and allow us to pursue other projects that have the potential to become self-sustaining in the short-to-medium term.
We have received support from these organizations to help us develop the core FrontlineSMS platform, and to build the team that supports the software and its user community. Other major donors are the Omidyar Network and the Knight Foundation, which recognized our new media initiatives in this year's News Challenge.
Our team consists of a project manager for our media initiative, a software development team, and a core team that takes on a variety of management roles. As we move towards becoming a hybrid social enterprise, the responsibilities of software development and community engagement will fall with the US-based nonprofit, while the training and consulting activities that will keep us sustainable will fall to the UK-based Community Interest Company
Investment, Collaboration or networking, Pro-bono help (legal, financial, etc.).
Innovation or ideas, Mentorship.
Integrating SMS with newsgathering and participatory journalism, our team is working to transform global citizen media.