MobileActive

Editor's Note:  We have, in the past, written about crowdmapping using mobile tech for submission of stories and reports. Crowdglobe recently analyzed data from Ushahidi and Ushahidi Crowdmap instances to better understand the quantity and quality of data submitted to 12,795 Crowdmaps in over 100 countries. 

This guest post by Tiago Peixoto, an expert in the use of mobile tech in participatory budgeting and citizen participation, reviews the Crowdglobe report. It is reposted here by permission. Tiago blogs at Democracy Spot and tweets as @participatory.

For a while, the (quite impressive) number of Ushahidi deployments has been repeated in development circles as proof of its scalability, although very little was known about these various deployments. A new report by Internews sheds light on a number of issues on that front, such as number of participants, areas of intervention and geographical coverage.

Below are a few excerpts from this rather sobering report, based on surveys and an analysis of 12,757 Crowdmaps (highlights are my own):

• 93% of Crowdmaps had fewer than 10 reports.
• 61% of Crowdmaps had absolutely no customization at all, i.e., they still had the four default categories and the default report.
• 89% of Crowdmaps had four categories, including those with the four default categories.
• 13% of Crowdmaps had 5-10 categories.
• 94% of Crowdmaps had only one user.

(…) while about 61% percent exhibited virtually no activity beyond installation, 93% of Crowdmap instances reported fewer than 10 reports. In short, the power law distribution was far steeper than the Pareto Principle would anticipate.

Our initial processing shows a vast majority of deployments with little to no actionable data with a slight slope toward the minority with a likelihood of effective and active engagement. 

The more reports a Crowdmap project has, the more reports it seems to attract, leading it to a positive feedback loop.In physics, power law relationships often reflect phase transitions. It is possible that there is an analogous process by which a map project reaches critical mass. If confirmed, this may indicate the importance of strategies to get nascent map projects “over the hump.” This is a promising area for future research.

(…) more attention was given to analyzing the 585 Crowdmaps that had between 21 and 10,000 reports.

The results revealed that the vast majority of these(30%) focused on North America while 18% focused on Western Europe and 16% on Africa. On average, these Crowdmaps had 814 reports.The median number of reports for this set of deployments was substantially lower, at 94, which is not surprising considering that the distribution of this set of cases is highly right-skewed 

An even more important question refers to the number of outputs (Crowdmaps created) and outcomes (impact). The report does not go that far.

But still, it is a milestone in the efforts to better understand ICT mediated reporting (or engagement), a field in which policy is rarely backed by good evidence. Even if these results might come across as disappointing to some, kudos should go to the Ushahidi team for sharing their data for an external evaluation. Having said this, and in the spirit of openness, provided security measures were in place, it would be great if this data could be made available to other researchers to conduct their own analysis.  

Photo courtesy Crowdglobe

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Things are changing at MobileActive. When we started in 2005 at a legendary event that we hosted in Toronto, Canada, there were few practitioners and few projects but many ideas on how to use mobile tech in development.  We had identified about 100 people worldwide who were actively using mobiles in their social change and social development work and brought 40 together. Since then, the field has exploded and there are now thousands of projects and tens of thousands of people who are actively integrating and using mobile phones in some way or another in their projects.  

The field has matured and there is considerably more expertise, more sophisticated tech, buy-in from telcos, and big donor money.  There are also many more interest groups and communities of practice.  There is the mHealth Alliance, the Mobiles for Education Alliance, the m-agriculture people, the mobile operators organized in the GSMA with its Development Fund and the Mobile Intelligence project, and many more. 

There are blogs and twitter tags and failfaires, research groups, and too many conferences.  In other words, when I co-started MobileActive with my colleague Marty Kearns, we were pioneers.  Now we are but a tiny part of a healthy, vibrant, maturing, and increasingly smarter field that has different needs than when we started.  We were and are thrilled to be part of this #m4dev field and declare unilateral success in helping create it and tell its stories. 

But it's time to move on. I, as the driving force behind MobileActive, have decided to, for the first time in a very long time, join an established organization. I will be working at the National Democratic Institute at a senior level on pushing tech innovation in the field I grew up in and have always cared the most about: Building vibrant representative democracies with good governance. NDI works in some 63 countries and is focused on areas such as meaningful citizen participation, open parliaments, strong political parties, and fair and equitable elections.  The organization pioneered the use of SMS in election monitoring, a field I have written (and ranted) much about. In fact, my now-boss was in Toronto in 2005 and with the leadership of my dear friend Ian Schuler, then also at NDI, invented SMS election data collection. I am delighted to be part of this pioneering group, the NDITech team, to take tech innovation in democracy to the next level.  

What does this mean for MobileActive?  Inevitably (and for those of you who are keen observers this is already obvious) there will be much less activity here.  In fact, eventually, this site will go away, having served its purpose and raison d'être. For now, it'll stay up for its resources, even as those will and are dating fast. Certainly, if there is another group that would like to take on the site, please be in touch. Some of the projects we hosted will find new homes or will be repurposed. There will be appropriate announcements about that in the near future.  The discussion group where people exchange ides, answer each others questions, and post jobs will stay where it is - it seems useful and still needed. 

In the meantime, you will see more of me over at Demworks, NDITech's blog, and under the hashtag #tech4dem on Twitter. It's been an exhilarating, sometimes crazy, often risky, and never boring ride in the last seven years here. Thank you for the amazing community that you are.

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Last year, the Praekelt Foundation, a South-African based philanthropy that works on mobile project, released a short video overview of the mobile technology landscape in Africa. It's one of those great "Did you know' videos - with a high production value. The video for 2012 is equally as entertaining, focusing on the 'mobile maniacs' of Africa. Take a look and enjoy!

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The US Broadcasting Board of Governors and the US organization Freedom House recently collaborated on a new study on mobile safety in 12 countries. The study, Safety on the Line: Exposing the myth of mobile security (PDF), sets out to investigate two distinct areas: 1. Testing of specific mobile applications (with a strong focus on circumvention tech) vis a vis their security and usability; and 2. a very small survey of users in 12 countries about their use and security challenges of mobile telephony.

The BBG, as the parent of news outlets such as the Voice of America and Voice of Asia, is, of course, keenly interested in delivering content to various countries without a free media, so the report emphasizes circumvention tools and barriers to online content, and focuses on countries of particular interest to the BBG. 

The study is peculiar.  It seems rather an internal assessment than one aimed at a particular audience (other than the US Congress that funds the coffers of the BBG) and there are a number of significant flaws with it.  The findings such as this one:

"A study of the technical aspects of GSM and later  mobile networks used for both voice, text, and internet access teaches us that there are significant flaws in the security of mobile networks that could be exploited for the purpose of blocking and monitoring"  

are hardly revolutionary to anyone who works in repressive environments.  

The study is poorly written with sentences such as this one, describing the selection of mobile apps chosen for 'testing':  "A specific risk of selecting applications is the need for them to function across many smartphone platforms.  Applications that only work for one platform may require users to employ more ubiquitous, but insecure services such as email, voice, or text chat."  We honestly have no idea what that means. 

Equally opaque is the scoring system used to arrive at the conclusion that, for instance, skype on iOS is classified as 'good' in regard to its security features while it is 'adequate' on the Symbian operating system while garnering the exact same number of 'stars' all the while Skype has come under considerable attack for its inadequate security.  Freedom House has previously been criticised for its evaluations of circumvention software and while the methodology in this report is marginally more sound, there are significant questions about the assessments. 

Likewise, there are flaws with the methodology of assessing user behaviour and perceptions vis a vis mobile security risks. As Katy Pearce, an experienced researcher on tech use in some of the hardest-to-survey countries notes, the study is unclear how respondents (total n for all 12 countries is a paltry 1,644) were recruited. Asked via email, she writes, "If it was a snowball sampling (asking people to identify who else they know), that can be a threat to validity." She also noted that "web based surveys are problematic for many reasons. One, you're self-selecting only those with some tech skills already, thus skewing your answers. Also when people answer web surveys they tend to just click through answers."  Pearce notes that typically such surveys are conducted face-to-face, especially in countries that are extremely hard to survey. 

The extremly small sample size makes one wonder, in Pearce's words, "What we can infer from this? Why does this matter at all?"

The report is useful in one respect: The analysis of the mobile market in the 12 specific countries, and more specifically, the cost analysis of mobile communications.  Price and handset market analysis for all countries is something that the ITU (as the chronicler of this information) ought to make available at no cost.  Currently, the information is only available at a cost, is old almost 12 months, and does not include handset information for each country. 

In the end, though, there is hardly anything new in this report that is not already rather well known: Mobiles are ubiquitous, increasingly used by citizens for activism, content generation, and accessing online content; strictly controlled and highly insecure mini-computers that are subject to significant surveillance as mobile operators exist within a highly regulated and government-controlled environment. Unfortunately, other than stating the obvious, the BBG/Freedom House study does little to substantively add any additional usable information about the degree of surveillance, technical capabilities, or actual incidences of mobile data use against activists or human rights defenders.  It is a missed opportunity to push for greater transparency, accountability, or changes in this mobile environment we all work in. 

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One of the issues we all struggle with as we are working in mobile tech for social change and development is the lack of reliable data on mobile use, penetration, and costs. The GSMA sells a service, Wireless Intelligence, that provides detailed data on mobile subscriptions worldwide as well as country- and carrier-based information. Unfortunately, it is priced out of reach for most NGOs and places limitations on the use of that data. The ITU that should, under its mandate, provide accurate and timely mobile data, but does not. Data from the ITU is late and often available only at a cost that is too steep for many NGOs.

Now, the GSMA Development Fund is trying to address this gap with the launch of a new date site, the Mobile and Development Intelligence (MDI) project. The MDI contains about 70 metrics and the ability to tabulate, graph, map and export the datasets with country-level dashboards for 140 developing world countries. The database aims aggregates publicly available data from sources such as the ITU, the World Bank, and that of development organizations that can supply data about their projects and organizations themselves, as well as some data from the proprietary GSMA Wireless Intelligence service.  

What is there?

MDI has a number of metrics in a variety of sectors that include the mobile industry, health, mobile money, societal metrics such as population and metrics focused on the economy. For the mobile industry,metrics include contract and prepaid connection numbers, GSM coverage by area and population, market penetration, mobile broadband upload and download speeds, and number of mobile operators. Nokia is also supplying data on the 'total cost of ownership' - an aggregate number on what a user has to spend on a phone and airtime on average to operate a phone. This is, unfortunately, an imprecise metric for organizations as they are trying to assess the cost of running mobile programs in a country.    

MDI also provides data on organizations, companies, and and their products and services that include both NGOs and development organizations as well as commercial providers. 

This, undoubtedly, could prove to be the most important aspect of the MDI that allows anyone to assess who is doing what where. 

What is missing? 

The MDI so far covers only 140 countries out of 196 (by the most generous count) countries globally. Countries represented are "developing countries" according to the site, but how that is defined is not specified. (And, under that definition we are not sure how Poland or Chile, decidedly middle-income countries are included).

There is also important data missing from its mobile metrics, most notable the costs of SMS/voice and availability and costs of mobile data services. One of the metrics for which there is very little data anywhere is the prevalence of specific operating systems and handsets, data that is available at a premium price through private vendors and that is critically important market data for any development project. Unfortunately, there is no data on devices at all in the MDI. 

Lastly, we are not thrilled with the privacy policies and terms of use stipulations of the site. Data submitted by a user can be provided to third parties for marketing, according to the privacy policy. Opt-out requires an email. All user-generated information submitted to the MDI is apparently copyrighted by the GSMA (which makes us not want to submit information). We encourage the GSMA Development Fund to adopt a stronger privacy policy and a Creative Commons license. 

What do we think? 

All in all, we think this is a great start and laudable effort; and something that we tried to do on a shoestring for a long time until we found that we could not support accurate data over time or display it well without considerable resources. We like the look and feel of the site, and while we understand that the GSMA Development Fund does not want to cannibalize its own profitable Wireless Intelligence operation, we had hoped that more data from WI would be available freely. Perfection should not be the enemy of the good but device and cost data will be critical to add for any development effort to make intelligent strategic deployment decisions.  We say, onward, MDI - keep on adding relevant data. 

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The Sunlight Foundation, always pushing the envelop on tech and open government in the United States and increasingly worldwide, launched a new service today:  Call to Congress.  The number 1-888-907-6886 (tol-free in the US) allows anyone to learn about how a lawmaker is voting on bills and raising their money for re-election. As the announcement states:  "Being connected with your lawmakers' Capitol Hill offices and getting details on legilsation is now as easy as ordering pizza..." 

The service is essentially an interactive-voice responce system that allows a user to navigate a menu tree to search a member of Congress by postal code.  Lawmakers can add their biography, their top campaign donors, recent votes and allows a caller to be transferred directly to the Reprentative's office.  The service also provides bills currently under consideration in both the House and the Senate, including upcoming votes. The service is available in English and Spanish with the goal of bridging the online/mobile divide increasingly common in the US where especially ethnic and lingual minorities access the web via their mobile devices.  Call to Congres is at its core powered by Twilio, a cloud communications API. Technically, the Sunlight team reports, is Twilio, a cloud communications API. More technical details about the service are on this blog post but in essence, here is how it works (paraphrasing the post mentioned)

• Twilio can generate dynamic responses that are spoken back to the user using Twilio's text-to-speech feature. We can have recordings of a spoken script play for static content or even play music, if we had the need. We can even forward phone calls so that users can be connected directly to the office of their representative without having to write down the phone number and dial the call. (Incidentally, Twilio also has SMS features that, while not used on this project, are used on our other new service, Scout.)
• To create multi-lingual content, each bit of text used in the application is run through a series of steps to determine the proper response. All of the text is written in English in the code, but is internationalized by creating an MD5 hash of the text, determining the response language, checking for a cached translated copy of the text if it is not in English, generating a translated copy of the text using the Google Translate API, generating an audio file name based on the MD5 hash and a slugged chunk of the text, doing a HEAD request to S3 to see if an audio file exists for the chunk of text, responding either with a Twilio Say command using the translated chunk of text or a Play command with the S3 URL of the audio file, if one exists.
• Aall of the features on Call to Congress are powered by existing Sunlight APIs: Member lookup by ZIP code and contact information is powered by the Congress API, bill information comes from the Real Time Congress API, and campaign contributions and member biographies are provided by the Influence Explorer API.
• Finally, Sunlight usesTurboVote for the API that allows the to provide information about local election offices.

Very smartly, Sunlight leverages the "logic that combines the Twilio, Google Translate, and Sunlight APIs into a single application."  Congrats on the launch, and if you are a United States voter, go check it out by calling 1-888-907-6886 in the US.

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This is the final post of this three-part blog series co-authored by Lisa Kienzle, Ali Ndiwalana, Olga Morawczynski and Ignacio Mas on saving with mobile money using deferred payments or “Me2Me” transactions. The first post explored user reactions to deferred payments and to goal-based accounts, gathered through focus groups. The second post looked at rewards that help individuals set aside money to meet financial goals. Today, the authors discuss ways to encourage individuals to keep money in their savings vehicle(s).

During the focus groups in Fort Portal, in western Uganda, people quickly grasped the notion of deferred payments as a means of saving. However, one of the most common questions that people asked was, “What if I need to access my money earlier?"

Liquidity is always top of mind especially for people near the bottom of the economic pyramid, of course. We tested several features, ranging from full illiquidity (can’t touch the money until a specified future date) to full liquidity (take out any amount, anytime). But we also presented a few other options to the individuals in our test group: 

• Applying social pressure (for example, what if a friend had to approve early withdrawals?)
• Preventing impulse purchases (what if early withdrawals were possible, but not in small amounts – everything had to be withdrawn at once, on the assumption that it was only for large emergencies?)
• Deferred access (what if early withdrawals required a 24-hour waiting period, to avoid impulsive spending?)

There was no clear winner and, in fact, each option generated lively discussions.  We found that people like the extreme options for the standard reasons: prohibiting them from accessing funds would help them save, while having access anytime assures them that they can manage any financial eventualities.

Though many individuals liked the idea of a friend as gatekeeper, others perceived goals as private and argued that changing their plan should be their individual choice.  Several appreciated that a 24-hour delay period provided time to reconsider, while others said emergencies required money immediately. 

And though the all-or-nothing approach seemed like a good compromise in providing immediate access while minimizing impulse spending, one woman said that being forced to take all her money out even when she needed a fraction, felt like failure – like the system was punishing her. The challenge is how to strike a balance between helping people meet their savings goal on one hand, while giving them the flexibility to access their savings to address unexpected risks on the other.

As highlighted in our first post, financial goals can be transitory. The key is to build up discipline for saving. Having the right incentives or rewards can help users set money aside to meet different savings goals. Poor people need and want disciplined savings vehicles but they also need and want choice – the choice to leave funds untouched and out of sight, or the choice to tap into the pot if an emergency requires it. 

Some want more restrictions on access, while others want fewer.  The trick will be providing vehicles that achieve the purpose of saving toward a target but are flexible enough to cater to unforeseen shocks. 

In these three posts we've discussed ways that deferred savings vehicles could improve upon current savings methods. Mobile network operators and financial service providers want to keep several considerations in mind when developing this type of product:

• How could organizations create goal-based products for users who have looser notions of the concept of goals?
• What rewards can an organization offer that would be compelling to a down-market customer?
• How could organizations design liquidity options that support savings behaviors but provide enough flexibility to address emergencies? 

Poor people can’t afford to be illiquid, but they also can’t afford to be unprepared. Savings goals are diverse in their nature and timeframe, so it is likely that people will want a variety of options. In a world where putting away money yields little reward and currency comes in the form of livestock and land, what’s the best way to offer simple yet varied product features when it’s no longer cash, but liquidity, that is king?

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Author:  Interactive Research and Development Publication Type:  Report/White paper Publication Date:  May 2012 Publication language:  English Abstract: 

'mHealth to Improve TB Care' is a new report demonstrating the enormous potential for mobile health (mHealth) to revolutionize the fight against tuberculosis (TB). Mobile phones provide TB care with much needed impetus, and initiatives intending to reap the benefits of this nascent field are launching all across the globe.

In sharing the experiences of 31 TB-focused mHealth initiatives, this report seeks to lay the foundation for what will become an extensive knowledge-sharing and partnerships network benefitting all stakeholders in the field of TB, both old and new.

View the report here

E-mail the authors at TB_mHealth@irdresearch.org

Research Paper - Link to or Upload Paper URL:  http://www.stoptb.org/assets/d... Featured?:  Yes Featured on homepage?:  Yes

Author:  Aakar Gupta, William Thies, Edward Cutrell, Ravin Balakrishnan Publication Date:  May 2012 Publisher/Journal:  ACM SIGCHI Publication language:  English Abstract: 

Global crowdsourcing platforms could offer new employment opportunities to low-income workers in developing countries. However, the impact to date has been limited because poor communities usually lack access to computers and the Internet.

This paper presents mClerk, a new platform for mobile crowdsourcing in developing regions. mClerk sends and receives tasks via SMS, making it accessible to anyone with a low-end mobile phone. However, mClerk is not limited to text: it leverages a little-known protocol to send small images via ordinary SMS, enabling novel distribution of graphical tasks. Via a 5-week deployment in semi-urban India, we demonstrate that mClerk is effective for digitizing local-language documents. Usage of mClerk spread virally from 10 users to 239 users, who digitized over 25,000 words during the study. We discuss the social ecosystem surrounding this usage, and evaluate the potential of mobile crowdsourcing to both deliver and derive value from users in developing regions.

Location Countries:  India Research Paper - Link to or Upload Paper URL:  http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~aak... Featured?:  No Featured on homepage?:  No

MobileActive's SaferMobile project is running two trainings at the Internet at Liberty conference on mobile security with colleagues from IWPR, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and UC Berkeley. We’ll be demoing common mobile threats and provide hands-on tips on how to better protect yourself.  

We put together a set of resources in a ‘mobile security survival kit’ for activists and journalists with practical tips and advice.  They are all online at SaferMobile.org but we are also compiling here in a Primer Toolkit on Mobile Security.  You'll find: 

• Tips for SaferTwitter, SaferYoutube, SaferFacebook, SaferEmail, and SaferPhotos on your mobile phone
• Mobile Risks Assessment Guide
• Mobile Tactics for Participants in Peaceful Assemblies
• Mobile Journalist Survival Guide
• Primer on Geolocation
• Important Security Considerations for Satellite Phones
• And lots of useful worksheets that guide you in assessing your operational environment: Rating Your Mobile Info Sensitivity,  and your operational environment 1, 2, 3, 4
• We are also including the slides we are using for this workshop on MobileSecSurvival Slides 1 and MobileSec Survival Slides 2.

All materials are available in html on SaferMobile.org.   An important note: You should know that is nearly impossible to stay entire safe on your mobile device.  Mobile networks are designed to be monitored so that mobile operators can charge you for using their services.  We want to be clear that the tips and tactical advice we provide is meant to keep you safer as you work on making the world a better place – they can not keep you completely secure.  A good start is to clearly understanding your mobile communication risks and learn more about some ways to better protect yourself.  If you have questions or comments, leave us a note!    

 

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Author:  Lee Martin, Brandie, Eric Abbott Publication Type:  Journal article Publication Date:  Nov 2011 Publisher/Journal:  Information Technologies and International Development Publication language:  English Abstract: 

To successfully use mobile phones to aid development efforts, understanding the impact of the social structure on mobile phone adoption, uses, perceived impacts, and reinvention of uses is invaluable. Interviews were conducted with 90 mobile phone-owning holders of small-to-medium-sized farms, 50 women and 40 men, actively involved in agricultural development-based farm groups in Kamuli District, Uganda. Respondents indicated use of the mobile phone for coordinating access to agricultural inputs, market information, to monitor finanancial transactions, and to consult with agricultural experts. Over time, the number and variety of agricultural uses increased among all users, indicating that adoption occurs for a few key purposes, but that uses will be added or reinvented to meet changing needs. This study identified a number of unique uses, including storing local market trends in the calendar, using the speakerphone function for group consultation with agricultural experts, and taking photos of agricultural demonstrations

Location Countries:  Uganda Research Paper - Link to or Upload Paper URL:  http://itidjournal.org/itid/ar... Upload Paper:  789-2211-1-PB.pdf Citation:  Lee Martin, Brandie, Eric Abbott. "Mobile Phones and Rural Livelihoods: Diffusion, Uses, and Perceived Impacts Among Farmers in Rural Uganda." (2011) Information Technologies and International Development Volume 7, Number 4, Winter 2011, 17 – 34. Featured?:  No Featured on homepage?:  No

Author:  Stuart, Guy, Monique Cohen Publication Type:  Report/White paper Publication Date:  Sep 2011 Publisher/Journal:  The IRIS Center at the University of Maryland, College Park and Microfinance Opportunities Publication language:  English Abstract: 

This study examines how low-income Kenyans use M-PESA, that country's pioneering mMoney service. The study focuses on (1) the value of M-PESA to low-income individuals; (2) the most likely areas for M-PESA's future growth; and (3) whether M-PESA can serve as a platform for financial services beyond remittances.

Taken from the transactions of 92 individuals over eight months, the study found that "cash is king." mMoney's share of transactions was less than 6 percent, compared to more that 94 percent for cash. M-PESA is still primarily used to send money home, usually from urban to rural, and cash out almost always happens quickly, often the same day the remittance is received. Respondents did not appear to use M-PESA as a de facto savings account, but the services was an important part of their coping strategies for unusual large expenses, particularly hospital bills.

The study looks at ways M-PESA usage mimic cash usage patterns. It also examines the "e-money loop" - the number of times an e-money unit is transferred between being cashed out.

Location Countries:  Kenya Research Paper - Link to or Upload Paper URL:  http://www.microfinanceopportu... Upload Paper:  cash_in_cash_out_kenya.pdf Citation:  Stuart, Guy, Monique Cohen. "Cash In, Cash Out Kenya: The Role of M-PESA In The Lives Of Low-Income People" (2011) The IRIS Center at the University of Maryland, College Park and Microfinance Opportunities. Featured?:  No Featured on homepage?:  No

Author:  Max Leonard Schaub Publication Type:  Journal article Publication Date:  Jan 2011 Publisher/Journal:  Information Technology for Development Publication language:  English Abstract: 

In West and Northern Africa, mobile phone coverage has been expanding parallel to increased attempts by Africans to migrate overland to Europe. This paper explores possible links between the two phenomena, looking specifically into the role of mobile phones in trans-Saharan migration. It provides a first detailed description of the telecommunication processes underlying contemporary trans-Saharan migration. An analytical framework is presented that helps to explain how mobile phones facilitate migration by interacting with the social and spatial factors shaping migrants’ mobility. By drawing on this framework and fieldwork conducted among Congolese migrants in Morocco, it is shown that the expansion of the communication infrastructure is, on the one hand, only one of several factors that have turned the region into a more ‘transitable’ space. On the other hand, the use of mobile phones is demonstrated to be central to the migration process: migrants draw on the unprecedented accessibility of contacts equipped with mobile phones to tie together novel, geographically expansive networks. Phones are also shown to be used by migrants’ ‘helpers’ for the purpose of internal coordination.

Location Global Regions:  Middle East and North Africa Research Paper - Link to or Upload Paper URL:  http://ha3.www.mendeley.com/re... Citation:  Schaub, Max Leonard. "Lines Across The Desert: Mobile Phone Use and Mobility in the Context of Trans-Saharan Migration". Information Technology for Development (2011) Volume: 18, Issue: 2, Pages: 1-19 Featured?:  No Featured on homepage?:  No

Author:  Joshua Blumenstock Publication Type:  Report/White paper Publication Date:  Oct 2011 Publication language:  English Abstract: 

Understanding the causes and effects of internal migration is critical to the effective design and implementation of policies that promote human development. However, a major impediment to deepening this understanding is the lack of reliable data on the movement of individuals within a country.  

In this paper, we describe how mobile phones can provide a new source of data on internal migration. As these technologies quickly proliferate throughout the developing world, billions of individuals are now carrying devices from which it is possible to reconstruct detailed trajectories through time and space.

Using Rwanda as a case study, we demonstrate how such data can be used in practice. Our empirical results corroborate the findings of a recent government survey that notes relatively low levels of permanent migration in Rwanda. However, our analysis reveals more subtle patterns that were not detected in the government survey.

Location Countries:  Rwanda Research Paper - Link to or Upload Paper URL:  http://www.jblumenstock.com/fi... Upload Paper:  jblumenstock_itd2012_wp.pdf Citation:  Blumenstock, Joshua. "Inferring Patterns of Internal Migration From Mobile Phone Call Records: Evidence From Rwanda" (2011) Featured?:  No Featured on homepage?:  No

Author:  Ranganathan, Kavitha, Ankur Sarin Publication Type:  Report/White paper Publication Date:  May 2011 Publisher/Journal:  Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad Publication language:  English Abstract: 

We propose a new application for mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) – community radio. We argue how MANETS help overcome important limitations in how community radio is currently operationalized. We identify critical design elements for a MANET based community radio service and propose a broad architecture for the same. We then investigate a most critical issue – the choice of the network wide broadcast protocol for the audio content. We identify desired characteristics of a community radio broadcasting service. We choose and evaluate eight popular broadcasting protocols on these characteristics, to find the protocols most suited for our application.

Research Paper - Link to or Upload Paper URL:  http://www.iimahd.ernet.in:818... Upload Paper:  15380481872011-05-02.pdf Citation:  Ranganathan, Kavitha, Ankur Sarin. "A Voice For The Voiceless: Peer-to-Peer Mobile Phone Networks For A Community Radio Service" (2011) Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad Featured?:  No Featured on homepage?:  No