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The potential of reforming state broadcasters in divided societies: advancing an unfashionable argument

2015-10-30T14:40:34+00:00

�鶹Լ�� Media Action's Director of Policy and Learning argues for an urgent rethinking of what is often considered a relic of the past - the state broadcaster - to encourage discussion, dialogue and understanding across communities in fragile states.

Most commentaries on 21st-century media focus on the impact of new technologies, social media and, above all, the increasing global ubiquity of mobile telephony Such commentaries highlight how in many, if not most, societies, the majority of people are under the age of 30 and are reinventing how humanity communicates with itself. The focus is on innovation, on digital replacing analogue, on an old order of mass, vertical forms of communication being supplanted by horizontal, digitally enabled networks.

Speaking personally, I have advanced at one time or another all these tenets and continue (mostly) to do so. This blog, however, marks the publication of a set of �鶹Լ�� Media Action policy and research outputs I’ve commissioned which collectively advance some unfashionable arguments.

We focus particularly on the role of media in fragile and divided societies and especially on what can be done to support media that transcends, rather than exacerbates, divisions in society. We argue that, for all the innovation, dynamism and potential that exists, there are growing signs that publics are less and less trusting of the media that is available to them. Media environments appear more dynamic, interactive and complex, but much of media – both traditional and social – exists to advance particular agendas or interests in society rather than to serve a public. 21st-century fragmentation of media environments has often been accompanied by an associated fracturing of media often owned, controlled or heavily influenced by particular political, factional, ethnic or religious interests. Such fracturing often applies to both social and traditional media.

National debate

As one response, we revisit the potential in fragile and divided states of a set of institutions understandably considered relics of a monolithic, analogue, ageing past – the state broadcaster. We suggest that traditional state broadcasters – which we describe as often “too biased to trust but too big to ignore” – could provide a critical platform for national public debate in divided societies. For that to happen, they would need to transform themselves into genuinely independent 21st-century public service media organisations capable of being digitally agile, trusted and appealing to all in society (especially the young). Such a process we acknowledge presents formidable political, as well as technical difficulties. Despite the scale of the challenge, however, we argue that such a function is becoming increasingly important and increasingly urgent.

None of this is designed to justify reigning in or discouraging other forms of commercial, community, online or other media. Such media produce pluralistic, vibrant, often muscular debate providing the essential threads making up the fabric of healthy democratic societies. We believe that freedom of expression is as important now as it has ever been and we are actively opposed to attempts to control or censor.

But sometimes, especially in fragile and divided societies, our analysis suggests 21st-century media systems can foster greater division in society, making it more difficult for people from different faiths, ethnicities or politics to get on with each and get on with their lives. Greater attention needs to be paid to media that encourages discussion, dialogue and understanding across communities in divided societies, not just within them.

New analysis

We have already published several briefings that have examined these issues. Fragile States: the role of media and communication drew on more detailed analyses from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Kenya and Pakistan to track the often extraordinary economic and political contributions of media but also the growing fragmentation and co-option of both traditional and social media by factional interests. It flagged an increasingly urgent concern that some media was driving division, political polarisation and sometimes hate and that international support strategies appeared not to be reacting to these concerns. It also highlighted the many positive roles of media in the 21st century.

We published After the Revolution: Libya and Tunisia through the people’s eyes, a research report based on the kind of detailed, quantitative data that has only rarely recently been conducted in post -Arab uprising countries. It demonstrated a clear reduction in trust in a media that publics had become increasingly convinced existed to tell them what to do and think for the benefits of their owners or backers, rather than one that sought to inform and enable them to navigate the extraordinary turbulent sea of political transition.

We have just published two policy briefings examining the prospects of supporting media systems that are trusted, universal (reaching all parts of a society and reflecting the concerns of all sections of society), balanced and fundamentally focused on serving a public, rather than any other political, economic or factional interest.

The first is Relic or Renaissance? Public Service Media in the 21st Century, by the former Director of News at the �鶹Լ�� World Service, Phil Harding. Some of the many people interviewed for the report argued that the concept should be consigned to an analogue dustbin of history. Phil argues that, while the concept needs to be entirely modernised, the role of an independent, trusted, national, universally available media entity whose sole focus is to serve its audience and work in the public, rather than governmental or factional interest, could not be more relevant.

The second briefing is After the Arab Uprisings: The Prospects for Citizen Engagement through National Media. written by Alexandra Buccianti and Sarah El Richani. The briefing examines the relationship between media developments and the complex politics and social dynamics in four countries: Egypt, Lebanon, Libya and Tunisia. It concludes that the still mostly unreformed state broadcasters are working in the interests of their governments, rather than their people but if they can be reformed to become genuinely independent of government, they could provide a critical source of both social cohesion and political freedom.

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With the grain or against the grain: a media perspective on the governance question of our time

2015-05-20T15:00:56+00:00

I was prompted to write this post by Brian Levy, the rightly respected governance guru of the World Bank, now Senior Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University. Brian is the author of Working With the Grain: integrating governance and growth in development strategies, one of the most influential books on governance right now. We met at the OECD DAC Governance Network last week, which is where donors get together to share their insights into how to better support improved governance in their development strategies. I was asked to respond to a presentation Brian made on his book.

Against the Grain

My initial reaction when I first heard of Against the Grain was, I confess, a kind of resigned frustration. I thought, “Here we go again. Another academic apologia telling us how it didn’t really matter how horrible, authoritarian or power-hungry a government was. As long as they ‘got the job done’ (in terms of reducing poverty), it was fine by the donors who supported them.”

That reaction was partly prompted by the title of Brian’s book. By coincidence, I have on my shelves at home the memoir of a hero to many in the media world, Geoffrey Nyarota, the renowned editor of Zimbabwe’s Daily News, among other newspapers. The blurb for that memoir says this: “The newspapers [Nyarota] edited were often the lone voice of dissent against a government that had betrayed its people. They chronicled the decline of the country under the Mugabe regime, and how the freedom achieved in the war of liberation was replaced by wholesale government corruption and oppression”.

Nyarota entitled his book, Against the Grain: Memoirs of a Zimbabwean newsman.

Working with the grain

Given the choice of working with the grain, which I initially understood to be fitting in with whatever a country’s government wanted - or working against the grain - which I understood to be resisting abusive and unaccountable authoritarian power, give me the latter any time.

Then I actually read Brian’s book and heard him speak and, of course, that initial reaction shifted to what I can best describe as a kind of tortured admiration for what he has achieved here. As many other reviewers have noted, the book constitutes a formidable combination of theory, research and, most usefully, decades of experience from the World Bank to provide really useful guidance on what kinds of governance approaches are most likely to achieve development results.

It argues that too many governance programmes have failed because their “good governance” departure point has been to try to foist an often idealised form of western political systems onto developing country governments, rather than to root their approach in the actual political, economic and cultural realities of the countries being supported: “There was something truly extraordinary about coming up with comprehensive government reform program for low income countries by describing the characteristics of the world’s most affluent and most open societies and then reverse engineering them.”

Instead, Levy argues for an approach that finds and then supports/catalyses “islands of effectiveness” within developing country governance systems, acknowledges that change is incremental and (as in the West) takes a long time, and, above all, allows countries to find their own pathways forward to create virtuous cycles of positive change. There is of course a great deal more to it than that and I urge you, even if you’re not a governance geek, to read the book and visit his website to find out more.

Reservations

I have three reservations about the analysis, however.

The first is that there is just a little of a straw man in Brian’s critique of the “good governance” agenda and what he describes of the overly triumphalist approach of democracy promotion in the 1990s and early parts of the 21st century. Much of this “end of century” style thinking may have been true of the World Bank and of some donors, and is certainly a criticism that has been levelled at my own area of media assistance. But for a fair number of years now, donors, scholars and certainly many governance practitioners have acknowledged political complexity as a fundamental feature of the developing country landscape. There remains a long way to go, but I’d argue �鶹Լ�� Media Action has very different approaches to working in Burma, Afghanistan or Libya, for example, all of which are rooted in these countries’ very different political contexts.

The second is that countries should of course find their own pathways forward, but it is not only elites who should determine those pathways. One of the reasons I have worked in the field of media support for so long is that I consider the existence of an informed society to be a key determinant of a successful and inclusive society. That isn’t rooted in a naïve belief in some idealised, “bottom up” democratic system but that democracy is (to use an overquoted phrase from Churchill), the “worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”. It is born from a realisation that yes, there are, as Brian shows, different pathways to development, but some of those pathways lead not only in different directions but also to different destinations – and some of them lead to Zimbabwe. You need people to work against the grain to ensure that doesn’t happen.

Which leads to my final concern. Western donors continue to focus a great deal of attention on prioritising governance, and there is more universal acceptance of its vital role in securing a host of development outcomes (pace the likelihood of a governance Goal 16 in the post 2015 sustainable development framework). But the governance agenda is on the back foot, working to accommodate a backlash against the overly normative approaches that sometimes distorted it in the past, unclear about its way forward and uncertain in the face of the major advances of developmental states like Rwanda and Ethiopia. This area needs more energy, fresh ideas and new approaches, but one thing it does not need to do is to abandon principle for the sake of expediency.

The really great thing about Working with the Grain is that it understands and reflects that last challenge and prompts the governance community into rebooting itself. It’s a huge contribution to the field.

Related links:

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A step backwards: media in today's Iraq

2014-06-26T08:38:29+00:00

Iraqi men and children sit outside their tent in a camp for people fleeing fighting around the city of Mosul.

As news came in earlier this month that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) had taken Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, I turned on my TV and satellite box in London to see how Iraqi TV channels were covering the crisis. To my surprise, what I saw transported me back to my life in Iraq during Saddam Hussein's three wars. Once again, I saw a presenter on one of the pro-government channels wearing military uniform. Once again, I heard the popular chanting and poetry that the Ba'ath regime's propaganda machine had used to fill the airwaves.

Media in Iraq is split across a sectarian and political divide. In response to the advance by ISIS, channels affiliated with the current Shia government have fallen back into such old habits, none more so than the publicly-funded broadcaster, the Iraqi Media Network.

In an interview with the local Iraqi newspaper Alalem about his channel's coverage, Iraqi Media Network's head Abdul Jabar Al Shaboot said that "broadcasting patriotic songs, and national military anthems is something which any country will do in the circumstances. It's about winning hearts."

Following pressure from the Iraqi government, the Iraqi regulator, the Communications and Media Commission, has also overstepped its professional regulatory role and issued recommendations that the media should not publish photos, footage or statements from ISIS and that they should highlight the military achievements of the Iraqi army.

Some politicians have gone further by accusing anyone who is not pro-actively backing the government's battle for hearts and minds of supporting terrorism and "aligning" themselves with ISIS. The Iraqi government have come out in condemnation of pan-Arab channels such as the Saudi-backed Al Arabiya for using the expression "tribal rebels" rather than "ISIS terrorists" in their coverage.

Seizing an opportunity to show loyalty to the government, channels such as Afaq TV or Al Ahad, are also now displaying their religious or ethnic allegiances. They have slipped into sectarian speech either directly or indirectly through on-air contributors.

In contrast, ISIS is using the latest media methods: apps, social media and even a feature-length movie have been created to spread their message and recruit new followers.

While the Iraqi national media play their poetry and propaganda, it is images and statements by ISIS that are appearing in the main headlines of some local news agencies – and in the international media.

As part of a wide-scale project, we at �鶹Լ�� Media Action have been working to improve the media landscape in Iraq and the provisions for freedom of information and freedom of expression, as well as supporting public service broadcasting that fulfils the needs of nation building.

In April this year, we introduced a new broadcasting code of practice which was signed off by the board of governors of the Iraqi Communication and Media Commission. This new code talk specifically about how to cover acts of terrorism and how not to slip into broadcasting ethnic or religious hate speech.

With emotions running so high and the country in danger of fracturing deeply along a sectarian divide, it is perhaps more important than ever that regulators and public service broadcasters fulfil a professional role.

We hope to work closely with the regulator to bring it back to comply with these professional standards rather than fall back on the ways of the old regime in our digital age. A firm commitment to the new code of practice for broadcasters can’t come soon enough.

Consolidating Media Freedom is a strategic programme funded by the UK government’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the United States government's Department for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour and EuropeAid.

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�鶹Լ�� Media Action's work in Iraq

Read: The media of Iraq: ten years on

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UN Climate Talks: changing the conversation about climate change

2014-06-09T14:14:23+00:00

When I was invited to speak on a panel at a UN conference on climate change in Bonn, Germany, I wasn't sure what to expect. I envisioned a large, dimly lit amphitheatre filled with diplomats in dark suits, whispering to their colleagues between reading their official, pre-prepared statements out loud.

I was pleasantly surprised. I was there to speak at the 2^nd Dialogue of Article 6 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). While that may sound terribly formal and bureaucratic, it was anything but.

Article 6 is all about how best to promote public awareness, public participation and public access to information around climate change – in other words, how to communicate climate change effectively.

The Dialogue provides a regular forum for stakeholders – government and global civil society representatives alike – to exchange ideas and experiences regarding the implementation of Article 6.

And a dialogue it was. An informal, personal tone was immediately set by the Chair of our panel, Paul Watkinson, who is co-facilitator of the 2

^nd

Dialogue. He began by encouraging us to have a real conversation – rather than a series of positions – and to avoid jargon. He also asked country representatives to use their first names, not their countries, when speaking.

Above all, he reminded us that Article 6 is really about understanding the effect of communication on people’s lives. The discussion that ensued centred very much on sharing good practice on climate change communication – what’s worked for different governments and NGOs as well as what challenges they've faced and how we could learn from each other.

There were several young panellists who talked about how to mobilise young people to address the challenge of climate change, whether through peer-to-peer meetings of university students across the globe, social media, or through video competitions.

Representatives from the governments of Africa, Asia and Latin America showcased innovative techniques for promoting understanding of climate change such as education programmes aimed at young children that use music, or engaging the private sector to provide incentives for things like rain water harvesting.

I was there to speak about the role of media and communication in facilitating climate change adaptation – how people can lower the risks posed by the consequences of climatic changes - drawing on our new policy briefing From the ground up: Changing the conversation about climate change.

The policy briefing uses data from �鶹Լ�� Media Action’s Climate Asia project to underscore how climate change is perceived by those hardest hit by changes in temperature, rainfall and extreme weather and its impact on their daily lives: their income, their health and their livelihoods.

I emphasised how important it is to build an evidence base around these threats to food, water and energy security and suggested how media and communication can be usefully deployed to help communities build resilience to them.

I was really pleased to see how much the central thrust of our findings was echoed in some of the comments made around the room.

Saleemul Huq from the International Institute for Environment and Development pointed out that we don’t need to present the developing world as victims. He referenced some of the major successes the government, media and non-governmental organisations in his native Bangladesh have had in building climate change awareness and adaptation, and the need to disseminate and learn from these solutions.

A representative from Ghana, seated in the audience, talked about how much we can learn from the health sector in terms of marshalling media and communication to climate change adaptation strategies.

A panellist representing the St Lucia government, Crispin D’Auvergne, noted the importance of framing climate change initiatives in a way that address people’s everyday concerns – such as their health or jobs – rather than ‘climate change’ as an abstract, scientific issue.

Reacting to the different speakers around the room, the panel chair Paul Watkinson repeatedly emphasised the need to keep the focus on adaptation and vulnerable populations.

As he noted when wrapping up the session, “This is about people.” I could not agree more.

Related links

�鶹Լ�� Media Action policy briefing:From the ground up: Changing the conversation about climate change

Climate Asia data portal – explore the research project’s findings

�鶹Լ�� Media Action’s resilience work

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How can access to independent media in a post-2015 framework be measured?

2014-05-09T14:26:11+00:00

The World Press Freedom Day conference took place at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris earlier this week. Its theme – media freedom and the post 2015 development framework – added important heft to efforts to get these issues into the final declaration that will be agreed by the UN next September.

But one problem which the media support community can more immediately help with is measurement.

The UN High Level panel report published last year suggested that a goal on honest and accountable government and effective institutions be established. A component of it, the panel recommended, should be a target around ensuring “people enjoy freedom of speech, association, peaceful protest and access to independent media and information". Another is to "guarantee the public's right to information and access to government data".

The Paris conference spent a good deal of useful time affirming how important this goal was. What it didn’t solve is the many obstacles which stand in the way of its inclusion. Some of these– such as the intense suspicion of such a goal by many governments – will need to be solved by argument, advocacy and politics and those efforts are gathering pace. The measurement challenge, this conference aside, seems barely to have been recognised by those advocating for these issues.

We can’t honestly ask anyone to take this goal seriously until we come up with a clear system through which progress against the goal can be measured. This is fiendishly difficult. When we talked about this in Paris, much of the conversation was taken up with the problems of measurement. We need to move quickly to some solutions. This is a proposal. If there are better ones, let’s hear them.

First some criteria

Any goal or target needs to be simple, easily understood by those it is designed to benefit, and credible to development actors, media organisations and, above all, people. It needs to be capable of being applied in all countries and all contexts. The whole purpose of the post MDGs is to capture the world’s imagination. Any target or measurement indicator that fails to do this probably won’t cut it.

It needs to reinforce and if possible strengthen, rather than weaken, existing international norms and treaties, including Article 19 of the UN Declaration on Human Rights.

The process for measuring the goal also needs to command widespread credibility. That means it cannot easily be drawn from existing media freedom indices – like Freedom House - for the simple reason that even democratic developing countries like India or Brazil will not have a formal UN goal measured for them through a process in which they have no buy-in.

It needs – and here there are special challenges for anything concerning media and communication – to be change resilient and change relevant. The transformation of media and communication environments promise to be even more dramatic over the next 15 years than it has over the last 15. Facebook was founded in 2004, Twitter in 2006 and its Chinese counterpart, Weibo in 2007. None of them was even a twinkle in the eye of their inventors when the original Millennium Declaration was signed.

The indicator also needs to be comparable across countries, so performance of different countries can be held up to scrutiny.

I would also argue that measurement focuses on what people think. A central thrust of the post-2015 development framework is likely to, and should, focus on a people-centred approach. The measurement should focus on people, not just on the media.

There are other criteria (and similar criteria to these written in more technical language) which the UN has set out, but these suffice for now.

Most discussions to date on how to measure improvements in media or media freedom tend to involve a whole series of different indicators.

There are excellent examples, such as the UNESCO Media Development Indicators, but this lists many different types of indicator which are not amenable to being consolidated into something simple. They were also explicitly designed not to generate indicators that could create comparisons across countries. There are also datasets from people like the ITU[RS1] on access to different technologies, including access to radio and television, but they don’t address whether media is independent or free.

So we need something new.

I think the goal should be something like, by 2030, all people on the planet enjoy freedom of expression and have access to independent media.

I think a second target, which also caters to broader issues of access to information, should be “all people have access to independent information which they believe better enables them to take a full part in their society and to make informed decisions in their own interest”.

The media target would be measured simply by carrying out nationally representative surveys asking people three questions which would in turn amount to a composite score.

“Do you believe that the media in your country is free and independent?”
“Do you believe the media in your country works in the public interest?”
“Do you trust the media in your country?”

First reactions

I put this proposal to the Paris conference and several problems were highlighted.

It is a perception-based indicator and it is not clear that all people would have shared definitions or concepts of “free”, “independent”, “public interest”, or even “media”.

My research colleagues at �鶹Լ�� Media Action, who spend a lot of time working out how to accurately measure such things, point to similar concerns, but they and other researchers are very good at solving such problems. I’m not convinced these issues are insuperable.

As for the perception problem - I feel there is room in a set of indicators focused on advancing human progress for measures asking humans if they feel progress is being made. Perception measures are frowned on by much of the research community, but unlike other areas of development (such as reductions in maternal mortality), if someone doesn’t perceive themselves as having freedom of speech or even access to independent media, I would seriously doubt any other measure that suggests that they do.

I have my own concerns.

It may be that some closed regimes where media freedoms are constrained may score more highly than much freer, messier, noisier media environments which are, in fact, playing a much more important part in, for example, holding government to account.

Certainly some of our research suggests that the more people know (through a diverse rather than a monolithic media landscape), the more people question and the less people trust. We may need to build in some additional indicators, such as plurality or diversity of media, although this immediately makes the indicator more complex. And, of course, adding a question like, ‘Can you speak freely in your country?’ cannot be answered honestly in a country without such freedom of speech.

Other approaches

There are also alternatives to this proposal, where a framework approach is taken – Article 19 has done important work on this.

This would bring together a whole set of indicators (eg where freedom of the media is enshrined in law, where journalist safety is protected, where regulatory environments provide for freedom of the media etc) and on balance I would prefer such an approach.

I am just very unsure how such a framework will be agreed for the post-2015 process, how it would be crystallised into a very small number of easy to understand measures, and even less sure that it would meet the criteria I suggest need to be met.

Over to you

So this is a proposal to be shot down in flames by people – including my many �鶹Լ�� Media Action research colleagues – who are more expert in measurement than me and replaced with something better.

But we need to get cracking. We can’t make any progress on this unless we start thinking of solutions, not just the problems, of measurement. Answers on a comment below this blog please, not on a postcard.

And a condition for those shooting down these ideas – you do need to suggest something better!

All blogs from James Deane

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Media and the post 2015 development framework: the case builds

2014-05-02T14:36:44+00:00

This year's World Press Freedom Day celebrations will focus on whether issues of media freedom can realistically be integrated into the post-2015 framework that will replace the current Millennium Development Goals. Unesco hosts a conference on the issue on May 4th and 5th in Paris.

Some thoughts follow on the prospects for and obstacles to their inclusion, heavily informed by a panel �鶹Լ�� Media Action organised with the OECD Development Assistance Committee, the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID the Global Forum for Media Development and Deutsche Welle Akademie. The panel took place at a big interministerial shindig the Global Partnership for Effective Cooperation two weeks ago in Mexico.

First - a word on why anyone should pay attention to the role of media in the post 2015 development framework.

Much is already written on this, but the most succinct and compelling case was made by the UN High Level Panel Report on the post 2015 development framework. The report urged a set of 12 new universal goals, the first of which is to end extreme poverty by 2030. Of the 11 other goals one is designed to "ensure good governance and effective institutions" key to which, the report contends, is to "ensure people enjoy freedom of speech, association, peaceful protest and access to independent media and information". It also suggested a commitment to "guarantee the public's right to information and access to government data".

Obstacles remain

These recommendations have been seized upon by organisations like my own and there has already been advocacy by others. Huge obstacles remain, three in particular:

The first is the vanishingly small number of governments who actively want any mention of media in the framework. Countries like China, India and Brazil, see a “governance” goal as distracting attention from core development concerns and suspect the West of wanting to impose conditions on development assistance. The governmental champions for this issue appear as thin on the ground as a coat of paint.

The second obstacle is that of measurement. Any goal featured in the post-2015 framework needs to have indicators against which to measure progress. Creating a universally acceptable measure for “access to independent media” will be difficult. This is an issue that I, among others, will be speaking on at the Unesco meeting.

The third obstacle is that “media” has a bad reputation among development actors, a reputation that is not restricted to totalitarian regimes. This is partly a result of so few development agencies having departments who support the media and partly a product of the growing co-option of media by political, ethnic, factional as well as governmental forces and the sense among some development people that too much media does harm.

People like me argue that this kind of co-option is precisely why truly independent media working in the public interest, rather than governmental or factional interests, need support and should be better integrated into development priorities.

Governance and media

It was this issue, and the prospect of integrating media into the post MDG framework, which formed the focus of the Mexico panel.

Erik Solheim, chair of the OECD Development Assistance Committee argued that the importance of media to development was not in question. “Media is extremely important, that you need media to put leaders to account, to discover corruption and so on. This is obvious”. But, he went on, “if you look around the world today, while there is a huge number of decent good media, there is also a good amount of media that makes it more difficult for us to live together - more difficult for Christians to live with Muslims, more difficult for Muslims to live with Hindus, more difficult for Hindus to live with Sikhs [and we see this in many places]. We need to take this issue to heart.”

Nancy Lindborg, USAID’s Assistant Administrator for the Bureau for
Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA), made a strong connection between why USAID was supporting independent community media in Sudan to efforts to prevent ethnic conflict. “We have often very quickly invested in supporting the revitalization of community radio …as people I met a couple of weeks ago in South Sudan said, people don’t want to get engaged in ethnic war. They are hostage to the messages they are receiving right now.”

She argued that some of South Sudan’s leaders were preaching hate. ”We are trying very hard to put another narrative out there, but it is just very difficult when you have such a collapsed environment. So the urgency in any of these conflict environments, alongside the humanitarian immediate approaches is to as quickly [as possible] stand up the media capacities.” She insisted that “USAID takes an approach that sees democracy, rights and governance as central to the development agenda. And that included media, media is the bloodstream that moves information around and enables citizens to be active and informed participants. It’s both programmatically integrated as well as focused on [building media] capacity - it is absolutely central to our approach.”

Social contract

David Hallam, the lead for the UK Department for International Development for the post 2015 process stressed why the UK believed that freedom of the media was such an important part of any future development strategy. “The reason we think this is so important is that it goes back to a fundamental belief that the social contract between the citizen and the state is central to state stability, and state stability is central to development. The way to build the social contract between the citizen and the state has to involve a free and independent media that can enable that contract to be built up.”

Hallam also argued that, fundamentally, issues of governance were what people around the world were asking to be included in the post 2015 framework. “I’d suggest looking quite closely at the My World survey. This is an opportunity for people around the world to vote about what they think are the most important things to prioritise in the post-2015 development goals”, he said. “So far about 1.6 million people have voted – and the findings are really interesting. The top four issues are education, health, jobs and honest and accountable government. Honest and accountable government comes above food security, water, climate change, environmental issues, and I’m not saying any of those issues aren’t important, but consistently around the world, the fourth issue is honest and accountable government – and media has a central role in promoting that.”

Weak democracy – weak media

Nor is this an issue confined to the West. The vast majority of signatories to the Global Forum for Media Development’s (GFMD) petition on this issue came from organisations in developing countries. Jaime Abello Banfi, Director General of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez Foundation for Journalism in Colombia and a GFMD steering committee member, reinforced this arguing that media freedom, as well as the ethical conduct of the media were key concerns in Latin America. His organisation works to promote ethics in journalism and ethical debate “I think that media is like life, with good and bad sides,” he said, “media reflects the country, and if there is corruption in the country then there will be corruption in the media. If there is weak democracy, then media will be also weak”

Ultimately, there was a consensus in this panel that the role of media was of increasing importance if future development goals were to be met.

“There can be no doubt about the centrality of media in the development debate”, said Erik Solheim of the OECD DAC. “We would be very happy to provide a space for that debate, to invite as many stakeholders as possible, certainly donor agencies and our members but also media from nations where there are difficulties.” He also argued that development agencies should be more concerned when journalists are attacked, arguing that “we should support all those brave journalists, including your Al Jazeera colleagues Cairo. Peter Greste from Al Jazeera is a really great journalist; he and his two colleagues are in prison in Cairo just because they wanted to promote the best sort of journalism.”

The final word went to David Hallam of the UK’s Department for International Development (which provides support for �鶹Լ�� Media Action’s work), who argued that if media were to be reflected in the post-2015 development framework, it would need a stronger advocacy effort.

“There’s quite a strong movement for a goal in the post-2015 development framework on good governance and effective institutions, and within that for a target on free media”, he argued, reflecting that British Prime Minster, David Cameron had co-chaired the UN High Level panel report. “We all have a role to play: for those of you in governments, what are you doing to make sure that your representatives in NY are arguing strongly for this goal and target? And for those of you who aren’t in governments, what are you doing to ask your government whether they are supporting this goal in NY? So there is a real opportunity here if we can secure this as part of the next development agenda, then we can start to make sure that development agencies, governments, international organisations, are really focusing on support for a free media internationally.”

The Mexico panel suggested there is more support for this issue than is sometimes assumed and case from around the world for access to independent media to be integrated into the post 2015 framework is building. Next week’s Unesco conference promises to strengthen it further – but there is clearly a very long way to go.

Tajikistan's election: a milestone for social media debate

2013-11-05T15:41:42+00:00

Esfandiar Adena was the �鶹Լ�� Media Action Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) in Spring 2013, where he conducted a research project on social media and governance in Tajikistan.

On 6 November, Tajikistan will elect its president. The run-up to the election has proved a milestone for social media networks in the country – with fierce political debate taking place online and opposition leaders using social networks to call for a boycott of the election.

Although internet penetration is low in Tajikistan compared to its Central Asian neighbours, the level of political debate on social media platforms – on Facebook in particular – is higher than in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Traditional media in Tajikistan is either controlled by the state or not highly advanced, so the internet has emerged as the only place people can find alternative news and, even more importantly, add their voice to the debate.

Social networks' potential to reach the more than one million Tajik migrants working abroad – whose remittances amount to roughly 47% of Tajikistan's national GDP – is also changing political debate within the country.

Digital activism

One major complaint taken up by activists and ordinary Tajiks on Facebook was a decision by the Central Election Commission (CEC) about how Tajikistan's migrants could nominate presidential candidates.

The Commission ruled these migrants could only nominate candidates by providing a signature. And these signatures had to be approved and stamped by the heads of their home districts and towns in Tajikistan – a physical impossibility for a migrant working abroad.

In addition, the number of polling centres available to the estimated 1m – 1.5m Tajiks working abroad has come in for online criticism. According to Tajik law, there should be one polling centre for every 3,000 people.

The election commission has said most of what they call "seasonal migrants" would return to Tajikistan for the election but, in the face of widespread criticism on local media and social networks, they have said around 200,000 migrants will remain in Russia alone - where there will be 24 polling centres.

Opposition leader Rahmatillah Zayirov of the Social-Democratic Party used Facebook to respond to the CEC's actions and called for a boycott of the election.

Many Facebook users responded by replacing their profile pictures with an image from the boycott campaign.

Electoral transparency

Critics of the government have also used social networks to attack the authorities' decision not to create an electronic voters list.

Islamic Rebirth Party analyst Hekmatollah Sayfollahzadeh told me via Facebook that an electronic electoral roll would have made it easier to register voters and could prevent fraud and increase transparency during the election.

In the days before the election, this issue has gained even more attention online. Human rights activist Fayzinissa Vahidova wrote on Facebook: "For the first time after since the collapse of the Soviet Union, I received an invitation letter to election. However, they brought invitations even for my children, who study abroad and can go to a Tajik embassy to vote. They even brought invitations for a person who hasn't been a Tajik citizen for more than a decade."

Boycott call

In the run-up to this election, therefore, social networks have allowed opposition activists to reach out to voters within and outside Tajikistan.

Dadajan Atavollayev, dissident journalist and leader of the opposition Vatandar Movement, said, "If each labour migrant calls back to his family in Tajikistan and asks five other members not to participate in election or vote against Mr Rahman, it would be a real blow to Mr Rahman’s government."

Tajikistan's migrants are their families' real bread earners and economically, they could be major players in the country. But we shall have to wait and see how, through social networks, they could also start to flex their political muscles.

Esfandiar Adena’s blogs from Tajikistan

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Fragile States: It’s time to focus on society

2013-10-14T10:13:40+00:00

Last week �鶹Լ�� Media Action published a policy briefing, Fragile States: the role of media and communication, and helped to organise a conference on the same issue held by and at Wilton Park.

Increasing and very substantial resources are spent to support fragile states for good reason – half the world’s population classed as extremely poor will be living in these countries by 2015. Supporting development in fragile states, which are often conflict affected, is challenging and risky. It is to the credit of development agencies that they are determined to focus efforts where results are often most difficult to achieve, but where their contribution is most important.

However, both the conference and the policy briefing provided a challenge to existing thinking and action to support fragile states. Currently, that support is focused on the state – to make the state more stable, more effective and more capable of meeting the needs of its people.

No-one disagrees with this, but the proposition advanced at this meeting was that a focus on the state needed to be complemented by a stronger focus on society. It argued in particular that increased access to media and communication technologies were changing the character of fragility in complex ways that were poorly understood by those tasked with supporting fragile states.

Most donor organisations support media from departments focused on enhancing democracy and human rights. The policy briefing argues that issues of media, communication and access to information should be an issue of increased concern to departments focused on fragility, conflict and stability. It argued that this was not just an issue of where best to spend money – it was one of understanding fragility and what is making societies in the 21st century fragile. It argues that very little substantive attention is paid to this issue among development actors and it’s not clear where responsibility lies for it within the development system.

Afghanistan provided just one of many examples where these issues were shown to be playing out in practice. (Other countries highlighted at the conference included Mali, Egypt, Myanmar, Pakistan, Guyana and Colombia.)

Afghanistan faces a transition with its fate in the hands not only of its political leaders and factional groups, but in those of its people. How people across very divided communities access information and how they are able to debate and engage in dialogue with each other through the media will play an important role in defining the success of the transition.

We are already witnessing the growth of warlord media, some of it arguably funded from Iran. And it is not clear how platforms for public debate and dialogue capable of engaging very different interests and identities will emerge, especially at the national level. Such issues have barely registered in the plans for the transition and no agency is clearly responsible for informing such plans.

The dilemmas and options involved in support to media in fragile states are outlined in the policy briefing and were energetically discussed and argued over in the conference. In essence, however, there seemed widespread agreement that this issue is currently poorly understood and insufficiently prioritised in fragile states policy, research and support. This is a challenge for all involved – those in fragile states, the donors who support them, the media and other support organisations who work in these countries.

Building a functioning state should remain a central priority for those working to support fragile states. Supporting an inclusive society is also part of the state building project. The role of media and communication is central to doing so. That role is largely forgotten at present. The hope is that this conference might have played a small but important step in changing that.

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Health innovation: how to spread new ideas fast?

2013-08-23T11:30:41+00:00

In a fascinating recent article in The New Yorker, surgeon, health researcher and writer Atul Gawande examines why some health innovations – surgical anaesthesia for example – have spread fast, while others – such as the use of antiseptics or critical childbirth practices – take years, even generations, to become accepted and save lives.

He argues that technology isn’t the answer: in an era of the iPhone and Facebook, he says, "We yearn for frictionless, technological solutions… But people talking to people is still the way that norms and standards change."

This focus on "people talking to people" as the way to affect change, however, implies it is the only kind of communication that really matters, or that decisions resulting from such human interactions operate in isolation.

And while "people talking to people" in the developing world is critical to spreading life-saving innovations, using other means of engaging people with new ideas and products is also an important way to stimulate change.

It's not a matter of either/or but both.

Media's role

Take for example the impact of mass media on influencing our behaviour and the norms that shape what we feel comfortable doing – or not doing. This is well documented in behaviour change theories as well as proven by the sheer existence of the advertising industry.

Mass media can introduce and stimulate contemplation of something entirely new. It can legitimise or highlight a neglected subject and model behaviour that we want to emulate. And it can stimulate debate of something that has long been taboo, such as sexual health.

For example, a 17-year-old listener to �鶹Լ�� Media Action's Abugida radio show in Ethiopia, wrote to us to say, "Abugida has helped and encouraged me to make some very important decisions. The radio programme has inspired me to discuss sexual and reproductive health with my friends at school and even with my parents. I was overjoyed when my mother declared that she had decided not to have my sisters circumcised after all [after listening to the programme]."

A recent UNICEF report on female genital mutilation/cutting argues that if harmful practices are to change it is vital that people have a common understanding of what other communities are really doing as opposed to what they think other communities are doing. If the attitudes of individual families remain private, others may infer that they support female genital mutilation/cutting, when in fact they may not. This misunderstanding may mean families cut their daughters to avoid social disapproval. The UNICEF report highlights the important role media can play here to provide information and stimulate discussion.

Complementary forms of communication

Change is too complex and media – in all its forms – too ubiquitous to conclude that just one source of information or social interaction is the most effective in every context.

A more sophisticated analysis of communication in behaviour change includes understanding how various forms of communication, from mass media exposure to interpersonal discussion, interact and perhaps strengthen one another.

Improving our understanding of how this can work is at the heart of what �鶹Լ�� Media Action does.

Reinforcing messages

In the Indian state of Bihar, for example, we are using all forms of communication – technology, mass media and “people talking to people” to improve family health.

With over 82% of women in Bihar having access to a mobile phone, we’re using mobiles to train and equip 200,000 community health workers with the information they need to counsel families about maternal and child health during their face-to-face home visits.

The health messages the families hear through their mobiles and from the health workers are strengthened by radio programmes, listening groups, TV ads and street theatre. (Read more about the project’s "360-degree" approach.)

A community health worker on a visit to a family with the mobile phone service Mobile Kunji.

Well-designed health innovation initiatives tend to combine interpersonal and group discussion approaches with mass media and mobile phones to achieve impact at scale.

Interpersonal discussion may be a critical last step in influencing the uptake of some health innovations. But it should not be underestimated how media and communication solutions can spark, shape and support these discussions.

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Social media in Tajikistan: a battlefield

2013-06-18T14:30:09+00:00

Esfandiar Adena is the �鶹Լ�� Media Action Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) for spring 2013. He is currently working on a research project at RISJ in Oxford on social media and governance in Tajikistan.

The closer we get to the November presidential elections in Tajikistan, the more hostile the polemic is becoming between government and opposition. And it's the country's social media platforms that have become the battlefield for the most savage skirmishes.

Slander and name-calling between heavy-handed critics of President Emomali Rahmon and furious pro-government cyber activists is common on the Tajik pages of Facebook.

But the online clashes have intensified recently in reaction to a video leaked to K+ TV, a popular TV channel in Central Asia.

Wedding scandal

Filmed during the wedding party of President Rahmon's son in 2009, the video shows the president apparently drunk, singing and dancing.

The Rahmon wedding video on YouTube.

At one point in the video, after the head of the state-owned radio and TV committee whispers something in his ear, the president looks at his watch and motions for guests to leave only to suddenly stop them moments later, calling them back to their seats because they haven't yet been "served the main dish".

"He cannot manage his own son's wedding party [so] how can he manage a country such as Tajikistan?" was the mocking response of the President's long-standing critic, Dadajan Atavollayev. A journalist and leader of the Tajik opposition movement Vatandar, Atavollayev has lived in exile in Moscow for the 20 years Rahmon has been in power.

Atavollayev also used the video's broadcast as a chance to criticise Rahmon for widespread corruption, accusing him of turning Tajikistan into a family enterprise, not to mention violating a law - initiated and signed by the president himself in 2007 - which regulates spending on weddings and other ceremonies.

Opposition leader Dadajan Atavollayev criticising President Rahmon on K+ TV.

So widespread was the social media response to the video that, as one government official told me, people at "all levels of the government are discussing the video and its consequences".

The website of TV channel K+ TV and YouTube were blocked in Tajikistan for two weeks in May and although it cannot be independently verified, the government has reportedly detained a number of people for leaking the video, including state TV journalists.

"No more war!"

Pro-government voices meanwhile have taken up the fight online, attacking Atavollayev with slander and threats and publishing poems and caricatures mocking him as a "failed opponent of Rahmon who could never win the hearts of people" and "who is envious about the president's popularity and public appeal".

A caricature of Atavollayev on Facebook.

Atavollayev isn't the only opposition figure to attract such a response online. An anonymous Facebook user, for example, recently published videos of a bearded Tajik man having sex with a woman, identifying the man as opposition Islamic Rebirth Party leader Muhiddin Kabiri.

Although the man in the video bears no resemblance to Kabiri, some users condemned him in their online comments for such a "heinous act".

Such pro-government cyber activists deny any links with the government. They say they don't like the way the opposition fights against "Janaab-i aali" – "his excellency", as they call President Rahmon – and accuse critics of the government of being "foreign agents" bent on bringing about another bloody civil war in the country.

"We don't want any more war. We don't want any more blood," said one pro-government Facebook user, "For those who want rebellion in the country, we had enough loss in 1992-1997! So… shut up!"

But the opposition claims that such pro-government comments come from security agents whose task is to defame the opposition in any possible way to win the propaganda war ahead of the elections. And they say that such activity has only intensified after the online criticism of the wedding video.

"Rahmon's family are so upset about [the reaction to the video] that now they want to eliminate me at any cost and in any possible way," claims Atavollayev. "They spend huge money to defame and disfigure opposition politicians on Facebook."

"Smell of iPad"

On one hand, President Rahmon has publicly recognised the potential of new technology.

According to his own spokesperson, he marked National Youth Day in Tajikistan on 23 May by handing out iPads to a crowd of more than 2000 young people – and attracted criticism from the opposition who claimed he was out to buy young people's online favour. (His largesse also led to an ironic new online catchphrase – “You smell [of] iPad” – used by critics of the government when attacked by pro-government voices.)

But on the other hand, Rahmon has repeatedly spoken out against the widespread use of mobile phones.

In the same speech on National Youth Day, he repeated his opinion that mobiles damage health, citing "scholars in Ireland" whom, he says, "have proved that mobile use causes fatigue, disorientation, sleep disorders and low immunity" and increases the chance of brain tumours.

He also added that the number of mobile users in Tajikistan has reached 10 million (when the country's population is 8 million).

Access to the internet

The president's figures might not all add up but as I wrote in my previous blog, Rahmon's right about the boom in mobile phone usage in a poor and mountainous country where people have no other reliable means of communication.

Mobiles have not just made communication easier for people so isolated and disconnected from each other. They also fill the information gap by providing easy access to internet and social networks.

And as we've seen, easy access to such social media networks have opened up a whole new platform for debate.

The �鶹Լ�� Media Action fellowship at The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism is funded by the Global Grant from the UK government's Department for International Development.

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How do we get to a better evidence base on media and conflict?

2013-06-14T08:17:17+00:00

The authors of a just published review of the evidence around the role of media in conflict have done us all a real service. 70% of our work takes place in fragile or conflict-affected states, and increasingly we're working with media to reduce the risk of conflict. This kind of systematic review by two authors who have spent years studying and working in this field is really valuable.

�鶹Լ�� Media Action aspires to be an evidence-based organisation and we place a major priority on research which can both ensure our media support is as effective as it can be, and enable us to measure the impact of our work. The area of support to media in conflict is one of the toughest research and evidence challenges we face and we collectively pounced on this research review.

Even on the basis of looking at the three-page briefing note (rather than an entire systematic review), it has sparked real debate in our organisation. We agree with many of the findings but immediately started wondering about some of them. These are some of the reactions.

Limited research

The review finds that there is "little evidence to confirm or reject [the view] that media promotes or prevents conflict and that interventions using media and technology in fragile and conflict-affected situations should be viewed as innovative rather than tried and tested."

We mostly agree with this. The evidence is weak, not least, we think, because the amount of really good research taking place in this area and conflict affected countries has been quite limited.

Conditions for conflict

Our work doesn't assume that media in and of itself does promote or prevent conflict. Our theories of change tend - depending on circumstance and political context - to assume that media can act as a contributor and driver of conflict and less rarely as an active promoter of it.

There are famous examples – such as Rwanda and the Balkans – where media played a part in genocide, but these are unusual. More often, and we think increasingly often, media can be owned, controlled or co-opted by interests – ethnic, political or religious – who deliberately fuel suspicion of "the other", those with whom they disagree about who should wield power. Such media do not necessarily promote conflict, but they can help create the conditions for it.

Most of our efforts to counter this are designed to improve dialogue across very different communities so suspicion and distrust can be decreased. We think this can create an environment where conflict becomes less likely.

Political economy analysis

The review concludes that the "evidence suggests the need for caution when planning interventions using media and technology for political change". Caution and a deep understanding of political complexity and context are absolutely vital. Undertaking more political economy analysis for example is something that organisations such as ourselves have increasingly recognised in recent years.

We would not however describe our work as trying to achieve political change. Our approach is about the role of media and communications in supporting communities to convene, discuss and communicate across fracture points in society – through public debate programmes, dramas or through support to community and other media. We hope to create an environment where ordinary people can resolve arguments peacefully, rather than seek political change ourselves.

Rigorous evidence

It argues that "rigorous evaluation should be a key component of future findings and suggests among other measures larger, quantitative, comparative studies".We agree about the need for evaluation and almost all our interventions are subject to research to inform and evaluate.

But we confess we find evaluation in this area particularly difficult. Building research capacity in fragile or conflict-affected countries and delivering high quality research is also a fundamental challenge to rigorous evaluation.

There is limited consensus on what constitutes rigorous evidence in this area and media and communication interventions are complex ones that are only in very specific contexts amenable to the kind of randomisation and or quasi-experimental methods that we could deploy elsewhere. It’s an area where qualitative research has a particularly important role to play, which the authors highlight, but reaching consensus on what constitutes rigorous qualitative research, and getting it featured prominently in future systematic reviews, is also required.

This is a key future area in research to which the authors have already made a really important contribution in carrying out this review. We do not make assumptions about the role of media in a country or how best we can support it, unless we have properly researched it. This review has helped us significantly in doing just that.

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What would a post-2015 development goal on free media mean?

2013-06-05T07:54:42+00:00

"Eradicating poverty" is the headline recommendation of a report published last week outlining a new development agenda for the 21st Century. If the panel's recommendations are accepted, another issue will have found its way into the heart of the international development agenda for the first time: a commitment to support free and independent media and access to information.

The Report of the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons Report on the post-2015 development agenda titled A New Global Partnership proposes an "indicative" set of 12 new universal goals, the first of which is to end extreme poverty by 2030. One of the 11 other goals – alongside those focused on health, the empowerment of girls and women, improving food security and so on - is one designed to "ensure good governance and effective institutions".

Five elements are identified in the report as necessary for achieving this goal. One of these is to "ensure people enjoy freedom of speech, association, peaceful protest and access to independent media and information". Another is to "guarantee the public's right to information and access to government data".

Commissioned by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, this report offers an impressive reframing of what is required to move the development agenda on from the existing Millennium Development Goals due to expire in 2015. It manages to integrate just about all the key development challenges that humanity faces whilst avoiding – mostly – what many had feared would simply be a long wish list without clear priorities. The report blends a fresh set of targets with a clear commitment to rights and good governance and does so more explicitly than the existing development agenda it seeks to replace.

The original Millennium Declaration agreed in 2000 – which articulated the Millennium Development Goals due to expire in 2015 – also affirmed freedom as one of the fundamental values underpinning the MDGs and urged a commitment "to ensure the freedom of the media to perform their essential role and the right of the public to have access to information". That Declaration has tended to be forgotten, however. Instead, it is the eight Goals it laid that have galvanised international attention in the interim years.

The new High-Level Panel report goes a step further and recommends that media freedom and access to information should be included in the targets in themselves. This is no great surprise. David Cameron, the co-chair of the Panel, has repeatedly called for a set of "golden threads" to be woven into the development agenda. These include good governance, the rule of law, clear and stable property rights, strong civil institutions, free and fair trade and free media. All of these objectives are reflected in this report.

The fact that "access to independent media and information" has ended up as a recommended target is welcome on many levels. It is especially so as the focus is not just on the existence of a free and independent media (which tends to be captured in most media freedom indicators), but on access to media and information.

Having a free press – even if only 10% of the population have access to it – can mean that a country receives a high score in standard international media freedom indicators. If the post-2015 agenda can encourage principles of media freedom as well as access to independent media, then they will have played a key role in moving a critical issue forward.

The report outlines a new Global Partnership and says: "People must be central to a new global partnership. To do this they need the freedom to voice their views and participation in the decisions that affect their lives without fear. They need access to information and to independent media." Such a partnership should, the report argues, be a principal priority for future development action.

There will be major political challenges to be overcome if the recommendations of this report are to be included in the final UN agreement on the new development agenda, to be agreed in 2015. Placing issues of media freedom – or even good governance – so explicitly at the heart of the post-2015 agenda is unlikely to command universal support at the UN.

There are challenges too of implementation. As the report highlights, access to information through mobile telephony and the internet has been transformed since the original Millennium Declaration was published in 2000. The sheer pace and scale of change in communication technology, especially across the developing world, was not predicted then, and certainly not by the development sector. Huge information and communication gaps remain, especially in fragile states where more than half of people live in poverty. Adapting development policies to one of the fastest moving arenas of human innovation will be difficult. Only a very few development agencies have significant institutional expertise in supporting improved access to independent media and information. Major progress has, however, been made in the development sector in opening up and supporting improved access to data, another of the welcome and critical issues highlighted in the report.

This report is hugely welcome. It presents a fresh, ambitious agenda that provides a comprehensive framework for meeting a set of immense development challenges. It does so by putting issues of governance and rights – including freedom of the media – at its heart, not its periphery. That has not happened before.

The hope is that this agenda will be embraced by the international community and be reflected when a new set of goals are eventually agreed in 2015. Much needs to be done to transform that hope into a reality.

James Deane is Director of Policy and Learning at �鶹Լ�� Media Action, the �鶹Լ��'s international development charity. These views should not be taken to reflect those of the �鶹Լ�� itself.

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New media in a new Tajikistan

2013-04-09T15:21:51+00:00

Esfandiar Adena is the �鶹Լ�� Media Action Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) for spring 2013. In April, he will begin a research project at RISJ in Oxford on social media and governance in Tajikistan.

I was born in 1975 in a remote village in Tajikistan called Vashan. It lies high up in the northern Zarafshan valley which has historically been so isolated that even dialects differ from one village to another. But that isolation is beginning to change.

The village of Vashan, northern Tajikistan.

As a child, I remember one occasion when my father fell ill with high blood pressure. My brother had to go to the central office of our Soviet-style collective farm to even find a phone and it took at least two hours for the ambulance to arrive to take my father to the clinic 8km away. Patients, including pregnant women, sometimes died on the way to the clinic.

Now mobile phones have revolutionised the lives of those villagers. Telavmorad Ayev, the schoolteacher who taught me the Persian alphabet all those years ago, told me, "Thank God that such a device was invented. When someone becomes ill, we can now easily call doctors, who can give advice and guidance right away so it's not necessary sometimes to even visit patients. So much energy, time and effort is saved."

Schoolteacher Telavmorad Ayev in Vashan.

Phones, but no electricity

But it's not all good news. "During the Soviet period we had abundant electricity but no phones. Now we have mobiles but no electricity," says Mehroddin Nabiyev, who owns a small grocery shop in the village and uses his mobile to call partners in other villages. "It is such an interesting but painful contrast."

Mehroddin’s shop in Vashan.

The lack of electricity is a huge problem across Tajikistan but particularly in rural areas where villagers use traditional wood-burning stoves to warm their homes. When power does get turned on for an hour or two, everybody rushes to charge their mobiles so they can communicate with their relatives working abroad.

The Foreign Factor

It's this huge part of the Tajikistan population working abroad that has had a lasting impact on mobile communication in the country.

Faced with widespread corruption, poverty and unemployment in Tajikistan, more than one million Tajiks have left the country for work over the past two decades, mainly for the construction sites in Russia and Kazakhstan. Abuse and harassment of these foreign migrants is common, but the money they send home amounts to roughly 47% of Tajikistan’s national GDP.

Having a mobile in Tajikistan therefore isn't just about entertainment. It’s a vital way for migrant workers to regularly call their relatives and send money.

Vashan's mobile transmitter.

And it's one of the main factors explaining why mobile communication is far more advanced than any other economic sector, such as energy, agriculture or transport, in Tajikistan. LTE (Long-Term Evolution, the new 4G wireless broadband standard) technologies and VoIP (internet telephony) are widespread. What's more, 3.7 million people – almost half of the population – use the internet and according to statistics, the majority of these internet users are young people using mobiles phone to go online.

Online debate - and the political backlash

This rapid growth in mobile usage among young populations has provided a new space for young Tajik people to actively discuss social, religious, economic and political problems in a country where more than 40% of the population live below the poverty line.

"Young people are very interested in social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Russian-made Odnoklasniki (Classmates)," Asamidin Atayev, the head of the Association of Internet Providers of Tajikistan says. "They make new friends, chat, comment and debate in social forums. They upload their photos, videos and share views and news."

A Facebook posting mocking former Tajik Education Minister Abdujabbar Rahmanov.

Young people are actively challenging their leaders on such online platforms. In Facebook groups with names as Tajikistan Online, Platforma, Tajikistan-e Nouvin (New Tajikistan), people are posting and sharing caricatures of government officials. Most recently, a caricature of former Education Minister Abdujabbar Rahmanov appeared on Facebook after he ordered female students to wear shoes with heels not less than 10 cm.

This increased use of social media has not gone unnoticed. The authorities’ response has been furious: there have been several attempts to block access to Facebook, for example, although such attempts have only made social networks more popular.

Even Tajikistan's President, Emamali Rahman, has gone on record to criticise the Tajiks’ growing use of mobile phones. In a televised speech in January 2009, he said that money spent on mobile phones is money "spent ineffectively" and that "only two mobile phones are enough in a family. If people save their money, we would be able to build new power stations." The state television channel also took mobile companies' adverts off air and started to broadcast programmes about the health risks of mobile phones.

President Rahman has recently celebrated his 20th year in power but the signs are that his popularity is decreasing and that this year’s presidential election in November will prove a great challenge to his remaining in office. New media technologies – embodied by the mobile phone in people’s pockets – will surely play an interesting role in these elections.

The �鶹Լ�� Media Action fellowship at The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism is funded by the Global Grant from the UK Government's Department forInternational Development.

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Tapping into technology for development

2012-11-12T16:01:13+00:00

Fifteen years ago I co-wrote a report, Telecommunications, Development and the Market, followed shortly afterwards by another entitled The Internet and Poverty both of them published by the Panos Institute. Thirteen years before that, in 1984, a British civil servant, Sir Donald Maitland, chaired a landmark Commission for Worldwide Telecommunication Development.

How best to work with new technologies to advance development is no new discussion. All of the signs, though, are that this issue is moving at last from the periphery of development strategy towards the heart of it.

The UK's Department for International Development (DFID) and Omidyar Network will host the Open Up! conference on the use of technology and development in London's 'Tech City' on Tuesday 13 November 2012. I will talk at a linked meeting at DFID on Wednesday exploring digital development partly about how organisations like ourselves use new technologies and partly - based on sometimes painful experience - how development organisations succeed and fail in integrating communication technologies into their programming.

For �鶹Լ�� Media Action, an organisation traditionally associated with old media, new media is rapidly becoming a cornerstone of �鶹Լ�� Media Action’s work in the developing world.

Take Sema Kenya (Kenya Speaks) - a TV and radio debate show conducted in Kiswahili - which brings Kenyans face to face with their elected political leaders, very often for the first time. In the run up to the March 2013 general elections in Kenya, the show is travelling the country to areas often overlooked by the media. For viewers who can't participate on location, social media is now facilitating dialogue with those in power and holding them to account.

Last weekend, for example, Sema Kenya was broadcast live from Naivasha, a market town in the Rift Valley province north west of Nairobi. The show opened with moderator Joseph Warungu addressing the local MP for Naivasha, the Honourable John Mututho, as follows:

"We have a question that was asked via our Facebook page by George Otieno Opiyo. He says that Kenyans were affected by the 2007 post-election violence and that Naivasha was the centre of this violence, so what are the leaders and the residents doing so that this does not happen again?"

George is a security guard who couldn't attend the debate in person that day. While the MP responded to George's question with assurances about local efforts at reconciliation and security, he was challenged by members of the studio audience, who claimed that they had not seen him in the area since his election.

The conversation continued on Twitter and Facebook, with one comment claiming that in Naivasha "…displaced persons have been denied their rights and many others are still affected to date" and another saying of Mr Mututho and his constituents, "Thanks to �鶹Լ��'s Sema Kenya they've met one on one".

Sema Kenya's format is being replicated by �鶹Լ�� Media Action across the developing world. Aswat min Filasteen (Voices from Palestine), for example, is visiting cities and towns across the West Bank to debate the political, economic and social issues affecting Palestinians today. Not only are these debates driven by questions posted on the show’s social media sites, but online platforms have in turn thrown these issues open to Palestinians in Gaza, people across the Arab world and the Middle Eastern diaspora in Europe more broadly.

It's not only in the area of governance where new technology has been harnessed to address development challenges. A 2012 �鶹Լ�� Media Action policy briefing – Still Left in the Dark? PDF (3.56MB) – examined the role that social media and new technology play in disaster relief, and found that these tools are being widely used to devise smart, localised responses to crisis.

We are also discovering new ways to change lives using communications technology in the health field.

Our colleagues in India have pioneered a way to use inexpensive, basic mobile handsets to train hundreds of thousands of community health workers in delivering life-saving maternal and child health information to millions of rural families in the northern state of Bihar.

�鶹Լ�� Media Action has always used radio and television to reach millions of marginalised people with the information they need to change their own lives. Innovation is being driven by dozens of organisations working in the development field and I'm looking forward to learning from them, but determined too that a fairly large and traditional organisation can remain at the forefront of innovation ourselves.

Join in at www.openup12.org using the hashtag #OpenUp12.

Elsewhere on �鶹Լ�� Media Action

Sema Kenya

Tackling maternal and child health in Bihar

Voices from Palestine - New Palestinian debate show launches

Still left in the dark?

Go back to �鶹Լ�� Media Action

Is time running out to save Afghanistan's imperilled media?

2012-10-29T14:24:16+00:00

Kabul’s historic Asmayee mountain - now known as ‘TV mountain’ - bears witness to the proliferation of TV and radio stations in the last decade. But freedoms won over recent years are fragile and in danger of being lost.

Afghanistan's media is vibrant, relatively independent and crucial to the future of the country. Unless something changes soon, the media’s future will be shrunken at best and, at worst, co-opted into the service of political factionalism and division.

That future is avoidable, but it requires clear, focused strategic attention from the international community, a more concerted and united effort by the media of the country itself and a clear commitment from the Afghanistan government. None of these things exist at present.

Afghanistan is in transition, not only to self-government but to a new future. That future will be shaped by its leaders and much will depend on the political settlement that emerges in the wake of that transition.

But the country's future will also be determined by its people. It is the people of Afghanistan who will, through their vote, determine the next government of Afghanistan. It is the people of Afghanistan who will shape its future identity, society and economy. It is the people who, in large part, will decide individually and collectively whether factional tension is or is not resolved through violence.

If the media of Afghanistan continues to evolve as it has over the last decade, the people of Afghanistan will increasingly have access to independent, trusted information. They will have public platforms on which the issues that divide them can be aired, discussed and potentially negotiated.

A media that builds on the successes of recent years would be one where the distinct identities and cultures in society can be a source of celebration and pride, rather than one of conflict and division. Everyone, especially women, could have the opportunity to advance their position in society, culture and politics through the exercise of their voice.

It is very difficult to see how, without such a media, the Afghan people will be able to carve a new national identity, developed through debate rather than conflict, and driven by themselves rather than international forces.

The prospects for such a media are diminishing fast. In the �鶹Լ�� Media Action policy briefing, The media of Afghanistan: the challenges of transition (launched in May in Kabul this year), we documented both the extent to which the independent media in the country was dependent on international funding and the fact that this funding appeared to be in rapid decline.

Partisan media, also referred to as 'warlord media', which exists to advance the interests of particular factional forces in society, appeared to be growing, becoming more influential, and getting more financial support from countries such as Iran. We reported the fears of many within the media, particularly women, that the freedoms that had been won over recent years were fragile and in danger of being lost.

The briefing generated a great deal of international attention. Over the past six months, �鶹Լ�� Media Action provided briefings to government ministers, ambassadors, generals, donors, think tanks, media and civil society organisations and many others in Afghanistan and around the world. All those we have talked to have agreed that the future of the media is extremely important to the country’s future but also insufficiently prioritised. As one ambassador put it, “We have developed careful strategies for every aspect of the transition, but we have not considered this one anything like enough.”

Despite this, very little has changed to improve support to the media in the six months since the briefing was launched. There is no mechanism within Afghanistan or internationally to ensure that this issue is considered or debated, and no organisation has an obvious mandate or responsibility to pull together those who might have a common interest in shaping such a strategy.

As our policy briefing explained, the future of the media is tied up with an extraordinary complex and difficult political environment and there are no simple solutions.

Nevertheless, the Afghan government, the international diplomatic community, the security community and the media itself arguably have a shared interest in seeing a media that ensures that Afghanistan's citizens have access to trusted information in forms that resonate with them, and platforms for free, responsible public debate.

For that to happen, all the key stakeholders need to come together to discuss how the future of the Afghan media sector can be secured.

The media of Afghanistan as it has developed over the last decade is a precious, fragile if imperfect achievement, the legacy of substantial international investment. A successful transition in this country depends on that achievement serving as a foundation stone for the future.

Instead, it seems that the most likely legacy now will be a set of neglected and weed-riven ruins.

The fragile future of Afghanistan's media

�鶹Լ�� Media Action’s work in Afghanistan

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