"In this article, we employed communication infrastructure theory (CIT) to analyze Gram Vaani’s (“Voice of the Village”) Covid-19 Response Network in India. We reviewed key CIT components (i.e., storytelling network and communication action context) and their applications in civic engagement,
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health disparities, and crisis mitigation. Our results showed that Gram Vaani’s Covid-19 Response Network merged all three types of CIT application into an integrated whole and extended it to marginalized rural and migrant/resident worker communities in India. In 15 months, 870,000 individuals used the organization’s Mobile Vaani platforms, made 2.5 million calls, recorded 24,880 voice reports, and shared 2,327 impact stories. Taken together, they amplified the voices of the most vulnerable, provided direct assistance, and held government agencies accountable in three major areas: health promotion and healthcare access, livelihood support and working conditions, and safety nets and essential services. We identified (1) storytelling network actors at all levels (micro, meso, interstitial, and macro), (2) enabling and constraining communication action contexts of pandemic community mobilization, and (3) specific impact pathways for different storytelling network actors to overcome barriers and leverage Mobile Vaani as an enabling and empowering communication action context." (Abstract)
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"Media Culture in Nomadic Communities examines the ways that new technologies and ICT infrastructures have changed the communicative norms and patterns that regulate mobile and nomadic communities' engagement in local and international deliberative decision making. Each chapter examines a unique com
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municative event, such has how the Maasai of Tanzania have used online petitions to demand government action. How Mongolians in northern China have used micro blogs to record and debate land tenure. And how herding communities from around the world have supported the Lakota Sioux protests at Standing Rock. Through these case studies, Hahn argues that mobile and nomadic communities are creating and utilizing new communicative networks that are radically changing local, national, and international deliberations." (Publisher description)
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"There is no accessible media in the Rohingya language, leaving the Rohingya population of well over a million, now spread between Myanmar and Bangladesh, reliant on information only available in languages other than their own [...] This assessment, conducted in the Cox’s Bazar region of Banglades
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h in late October 2017, examines the information ecosystem facing the area’s crisis affected population (introduction). According to the executive summary (page 10), "mobile phones were one of the main sources to send and receive information prior to arrival in the camps, which indicates a high household’s ownership of mobile phone sets (64%). Within newly arrived families, smart phones are mainly used by adult men between age 15 to 24; many of them have taken an active role to mingle with others, access to Facebook and YouTube, and bring information back to the households. Some of the young boys with smart phones have said to spend major amount of credit on data rather than voice connectivity. Also, young men find places to gather, such as shops, where they can charge phones and share information with others of the same age. The lack of access to information and communication channels should perhaps not be surprising, given the enormous challenges presented by the information landscape. 71% of the affected population has had no formal education of any kind, and 77% of the refugee population is illiterate in any language. The Rohingya dialect, the main language spoken by 96% of the refugee population, has no agreed written script. It is technically illegal for refugees to purchase SIM cards. Access to radio sets is limited, and the signal is weak in many areas. What mass media that is available, is in Bangla or Chittigonian. 81% of refugees do not currently listen to the radio."
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"Anhand einer repräsentativen Umfrage mit 404 Flüchtlingen, die vorwiegend aus Syrien, Irak, Afghanistan, Pakistan und Iran kamen, liefert die vorliegende Studie erstens Erkenntnisse dazu, wie sich Flüchtlinge in ihren Herkunftsländern, auf ihrem Fluchtweg und in Deutschland Informationen versch
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affen und welchen Quellen sie vertrauen. Zweitens interessiert die aktive Nutzung von mobilen Medien zur Verbreitung von Informationen sowie zur Kommunikation mit anderen über die eigene Flucht. Drittens soll die Aufdeckung von Zusammenhängen der Mediennutzung mit Erwartungen, Bewertungen und Entscheidungen der Geflüchteten in Bezug zum Zielland Deutschland dazu dienen, konkretes Verhalten vor und während der Flucht besser verstehbar (und ggf. prognostizierbar) zu machen." (Executive summary)
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"The book aims to situate the cultural, social and, in some cases, transnational context of ICT appropriation and virtual connectivity so as to reposition Africans from various countries and contexts as active agents of social change. The intricacies of local ICT use and the dynamics of mobility in
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the African context enables us to better understand material cultures, relationships between people, new media and social networking. Equally explored in relation to ICTs are the social and spatial dynamics of communication, association and belonging across spaces – particularly physical borders, social boundaries and confines and possibilities informed by the habitus of bodies and practices." (Publisher description)
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