"This guide aims to provide practitioners with a broad framework for carrying out project level Participatory Impact Assessments (PIA) of livelihoods interventions in the humanitarian sector. Other than in some health, nutrition, and water interventions in which indicators of project performance sho
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uld relate to international standards, for many interventions there are no ‘gold standards’ for measuring project impact. For example, the Sphere handbook has no clear standards for food security or livelihoods interventions. This guide aims to bridge this gap by outlining a tried and tested approach to measuring the impact of livelihoods projects. The guide does not attempt to provide a set of standards or indicators or blueprint for impact assessment, but a broad and flexible framework which can be adapted to different contexts and project interventions. Consistent with this, the proposed framework does not aim to provide a rigid or detailed step by step formula, or set of tools to carry out project impact assessments, but describes an eight stage approach, and presents examples of tools which may be adapted to different contexts. One of the objectives of the guide is to demonstrate how PIA can be used to overcome some of the inherent weaknesses in conventional humanitarian monitoring evaluation and impact assessment approaches, such as; the emphasis on measuring process as opposed to real impact, the emphasis on external as opposed to community based indicators of impact, and how to overcome the issue of weak or non-existent baselines. The guide also aims to demonstrate and provide examples of how participatory methods can be used to overcome the challenge of attributing impact or change to actual project activities. The guide will also demonstrate how data collected from the systematic use of participatory tools can be presented numerically, and can give representative results and provide evidence based data on project impact." (Introduction, page 6)
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"This volume addresses the issue of credibility—the objective and subjective components that make information believable—in the contemporary media environment. The contributors look particularly at youth audiences and experiences, considering the implications of wide access and the questionable
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credibility of information for youth and learning. They discuss such topics as the credibility of health information online, how to teach credibility assessment, and public policy solutions. Much research has been done on credibility and new media, but little of it focuses on users younger than college students. Digital Media, Youth, and Credibility fills this gap in the literature." (Publisher description)
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"This book brings together some of the most outstanding and novel papers on media and development presented at the AMIC Annual Conferences in Bangkok, Thailand in July 2004. It features over a dozen contributions from around the region, providing a wealth of fresh case studies as well as breaking ne
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w ground in highlighting emerging frontiers of media development discourse in Asia, comparing regional development along multiple dimensions and frameworks and pointing the direction towards further media initiatives at a national level. The papers selected are grouped into three key themes: media and development; new narratives and political discourse; and media impacts and capacity building. Part I addresses macro-level impacts and policies pertaining to media and development in Asia. Part II deals with more direct media issues such as new narratives and emerging forms of political discourse and groupings in Asia. Part III shifts the focus to traditional media impacts on youth and tribal audiences, as well as new media impacts on the education and business sectors. The contributors to this book have highlighted not just an interesting range of media and development issues in Asia, but have also introduced a good variety of media research methods. These include quantitative assessments of media impacts in society, comparative and longitudinal frameworks for evaluating regional ICT competitiveness, structural analyses of political and activist communication systems, in-depth case studies of individual organisations, and broad-based surveys of stakeholders in ICT4D." (Publisher description)
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"This evaluation of Andrew Lees Trust’s Projet Radio (ALT/PR) in Southern Madagascar examines the impact of radio broadcasts on audience knowledge and attitudes relating to certain MDGs. It finds that the project is achieving some notable success
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in changing and enhancing knowledge and attitudes on topics including HIV/AIDS, family planning, mother and child health, environmental issues, social and administrative issues and gender inequality. Radio is also having a positive impact on uptake of health services, enrolment in literacy classes, construction of environmentally-friendly woodstoves, tree-planting, agricultural yields, and awareness of strategies for poverty reduction through incomegeneration and community associations. This evaluation looks at ALT/PR’s methods and organisation and finds many advantages to its particular three-way process of working. This involves radio stations, communities and local service-providers in a mutually advantageous partnership for the production, distribution and broadcasting of radio programmes. The provision of radio-sets to listening groups appears to be a very successful strategy, and our surveys show a high level of commitment and enthusiasm on the part of listeners, especially women. The ability of radio to scale-up and extend the on-the-ground work of local service-providers emerges quite clearly. Our study also looks at challenges that ALT/PR has tackled and, in some cases, is still facing. These are challenges involving management and networking in what is a particularly poor and disadvantaged area. The project still faces issues relating to ensuring its radio programmes are consistently and truly participative. Demand for its services is high and there is a risk of staff becoming over-stretched, particularly for senior management. ALT/PR is demonstrably cost effective and has a good local reputation, but fundraising continues to be a time-consuming preoccupation. ALT/PR is already tackling the major long-term challenge of sustaining the networking mechanism it has set up, and we highlight some encouraging signs of sustainability." (Abstract)
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"Commerce in Culture is an innovative study of how states have responded to the globalization of the film sector. Concerned with more than film content or substance, the book exposes the ongoing political and economic struggles that shape cultural production and trade in the world. The historical fo
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cus is on Hollywood's engagement with rivals and partners in two leading developing countries, Egypt and Mexico, beginning with the birth of their national film industries in the late 1920s. State and market institutions evolved differently in each context, acting like national prisms to mediate international competition and produce distinctive results. As filmmaking has become a dynamic focal point in the new economy, Commerce in Culture reveals a vital but neglected part of the global terrain." (Publisher description)
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"This paper presents preliminary findings from a multi-sited qualitative study of poverty and information and communication technologies (ICTs) in India, Indonesia Sri Lanka and Nepal. It draws upon data gathered by 12 ethnographic action researchers working across 15 community ICT initiatives. Thes
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e local, 'embedded researchers' are part of a larger international project called Finding a Voice: Making Technological Change Socially Effective and Culturally Empowering, which includes UNESCO (South Asia) and UNDP (Indonesia), in partnership with Queensland University of Technology, the University of Adelaide and Australian Research Council, along with numerous local and regional organisations." (Introduction)
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Provides a mappping of 26 initiatives to develop indicators of media development and their respective methodologies, and analyses these initiatives in terms of their value and relevance to the priorities of the IPDC. The paper also proposes sample indicators and data sources for five principal media
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development outcomes which are broken down into separate categories.
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"The symposium Measuring Change. Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation in Media Development focused on the utilisation aspect of evaluation1: The adding of “Planning” to “Monitoring and Evaluation” in the subtitle indicates that emphasis was laid on learning from monitoring and evaluation experie
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nces, to facilitate the improvement of existing projects and programmes at all levels, from planning to implementation and follow-up." (Executive Summary)
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"This book, a first in its kind, offers a survey of the present state of affairs in media accessibility research and practice. It focuses on professional practices which are relative newcomers within the field of audiovisual translation and media studies, namely, audio description for the blind and
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visually impaired, sign language, and subtitling for the deaf and the hard-of-hearing for television, DVD, cinema, internet and live performances. Thanks to the work of lobbying groups and the introduction of legislation in some countries, media accessibility is an area that has recently gained marked visibility in our society. It has begun to appear in university curricula across Europe, and is the topic of numerous specialised conferences." (Piublisher)
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"In this timely volume, fourteen international contributors explore the relationship between media and trust, beginning with an examination of the decline of trust in key institutions. The book concludes by considering the future implications for media communication and exploring potential direction
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s for further research in this Age of Suspicion." (Publisher description)
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"'Alternative Media' is the term used to describe non-mainstream media forms that are independently run and community focussed, such as zines, pirate radio, online discussion boards, community run and owned broadcasting companies, and activist publications such as Red Pepper and Corporate Watch. The
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book outlines the different types of 'alternative" (Publisher description)
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"Highlights the relevance of radio in poor communities, its broad applicability to a range of sectoral activities such as health, rights, education, livelihoods, and conflict prevention, and identifies the need to deepen the capacity of radio broadcasters at all levels to conduct effective monitorin
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g and evaluation, so as to begin the process of developing a rigorous information and communication for development evidence base which highlights radio's - and other communications mediums - strategic contribution to the realisation of the Millennium Development Goals." (Executive summary)
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"This Guide complements the Practical Guidance Note on Right to Information, which provided guidance on approaches for designing and implementing programmes in this area. It builds on this knowledge, and focuses on the monitoring and evaluation of those programmes, paying particular attention to the
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use of appropriate indicators, including gender and pro-poor indicators. It outlines the basic principles of programme evaluation, but concentrates on assessing outcomes. It outlines four broad areas of right to information that must be considered in any context for a thorough evaluation. These are: (1) the legal regime for the right to information; (2) the implementation of right to information legislation by government; (3) the use of right to information by the general public and civil society; and (4) the use of right to information by marginalised group. It then suggests questions for each area, and derives from these typical baseline assessment features, outputs and outcomes." (Abstract)
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"The first section in this paper examines the barriers to access to learning materials faced in the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), analyzing the responsibility of intellectual property legislation within the complex structure of systems that are consequential to consumers and learners. In th
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e second section the authors remind us that the informal economy in knowledge goods is an access mechanism, prompting a conceptual consideration of the phenomenon of piracy, and then, through a case study in Uganda, they suggest possible policy lessons. The third section frames the environment described in the first two sections in a survey of intellectual property law in SACU member countries, and audits the limitations or exceptions available within the law, in the light of those that may be made use of, as a consequence of access to learning materials. The authors conclude that currently “neither does copyright legislation in SACU countries make significantly positive provisions for access to learning materials, nor does it take full advantage of the flexibilities provided by TRIPs. Ironically, it is precisely in this disabling legal environment that the SACU countries are being asked – by domestic and international publishing industry lobbies – to strengthen the enforcement of criminal sanctions for certain copyright violations, even as they constitute an access mechanism in a context that offers few alternatives." (Hans M. Zell, Publishing, Books & Reading in Sub-Saharan Africa, 3d ed. 2008, nr. 1802)
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