CGNet Swara Using Cellphones to Bridge the Last Mile of Citizen Journalism Anoop Saha

What Will be the Web 2.0 for Rural India? Internet penetration in India stands at 6.9% in 2010 – For the state of Chhattisgarh, this number is 0.7% – More problems for Web in Hindi Unicode fonts still not universal Issues like power, education and finances limit reach of Web – 54% households in Chhattisgarh don’t have power In contrast, mobile penetration in India stands at 60% and growing rapidly Cheap instruments, cheap call rates, oral medium – Making of an ultimate democratic device Audio transcends the language-literacy barrier Sources: ITU, DOT India

IS IT POSSIBLE TO BRING THE POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA TO 800 MILLION RURAL INDIANS VIA MOBILE PHONE?

Journalism in Tribal Chhattisgarh No news medium for tribal languages in India Very few tribal journalists who know these languages Is it possible to create a platform where citizens create their own news? Can we use cell phones and voice to enable content sharing?

CGNet Swara: A Voice Portal for Citizen Journalism with CGNet, MIT and the International Center for Journalists Anyone can report news, issues, etc. in local language Submissions are reviewed by moderators over the Web Appropriate submissions are published: – For playback on audio channel – For browsing on web – Some submissions seed stories for posting on CGNet site + list

Deployment - Training Citizen Journalists Two-day training in rural Chhattisgarh (tribal area) – Basics of journalism – Role of Swara system – Extensive practice recording stories Participants (N=29, 66% male) – 9 farmers or self-employed – 9 social workers – Half had college degree; All but 4 had finished 10 th standard Non-expert technology users – 80% owned cell phone, but less than half had sent SMS – 33% without power at home – 40% without reliable cell coverage at home

Deployment – The first six months Languages used: - Hindi 70% - Chhattisgarhi - Gondi - Kurukh Who is reporting? - Mostly activists/social workers - Handful of trained journalists - Majority did not attend training session 30%

Application – Governance and Grievance Redress About 40% of all posts – Government employment scheme (NREGA) workers not getting paid – Forest land not distributed under FRA – Situations of rural schools and health centers – Reports on corruption in public schemes – Teachers not being paid The teachers were paid their back wages one week after publication of the interview on CGNet Swara

Application – News and Others Several real time breaking news directly from the source News in Local Languages – First and Only source of news in Gondi and Kudukh Reports on pollution and public health emergencies – Deaths due to Cholera, Diarrhoea and Malaria – Arsenic in water Alternative narrative of the same event – Report on a public hearing Live reports on tribal festivals Oral traditions recorded directly from the source – Tribal stories and songs

Research Challenges How to make it usable at scale? – IVR systems are frustrating even for expert users! – Leverage user profiles, reputation systems – Rank content by most listened-to – Automatic localization (by caller ID / PIN code)? – Web-based categorization, search New playground for speech researchers – Language-independent audio indexing and search – Automatic classification of posts by tags, language, dialect – Speech recognition and synthesis for Indic languages

Research Challenges (II) How to pay for distribution of content? – Might not have to, if people are willing to call – Support with advertising (tough) – Start with entertainment? – Use caller tunes? How to build a robust social ecosystem? – How to ensure credibility of reports – How to protect reporter identity – How to manage conflict in forums

Related Work Spoken Web (IBM Research India) Gram Vaani (IIT Delhi) Avaaj Otalo (IBM, Berkeley, Stanford)

Summary Citizen involvement is an important factor to achieve equitable development in the developing countries High mobile density in contrast to the very low Internet penetration envisages the use of cell phones in citizen journalism The vision is to utilize the power of mobile and internet to create social applications for the last Indian Try it out! – Call – Visit

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BACK-UP

Formed in 2004 by a bunch of Journalists + Techies belonging to Chhattisgarh Utilizes the individual power of publishing to create open source news – Aim is to create a platform, where citizen journalists of Chhattisgarh can report freely The reflector is used to both collect and distribute content In the past worked on multiple issues, brought some of them to the mainstream discourse In 2010, collaborated with ICFJ, MIT and other individuals to create a participatory mobile news platform - Swara CGNet

Future Directions Introduce an SMS Channel for distributing news Expand to other states – Especially those in the Central Indian tribal belt Localize content – Give localized content based on the call origin – Add region or issue based channels Dynamic audio tagging and search Collaborate with government for creating efficient delivery systems