"This review presents evidence about the impact of mass media and digital media on young people’s family planning (FP) attitudes and behaviors. It primarily focuses on the Ouagadougou Partnershi
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p countries, but also describes lessons learned from other initiatives implemented more widely in Africa and elsewhere." (Executive summary)
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"Artificial intelligence (AI) is now receiving unprecedented global attention as it finds widespread practical application in multiple spheres of activity. But what are the human rights, social justice and
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development implications of AI when used in areas such as health, education and social services, or in building “smart cities”? How does algorithmic decision making impact on marginalised people and the poor? This edition of Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) provides a perspective from the global South on the application of AI to our everyday lives. It includes 40 country reports from countries as diverse as Benin, Argentina, India, Russia and Ukraine, as well as three regional reports. These are framed by eight thematic reports dealing with topics such as data governance, food sovereignty, AI in the workplace, and so-called “killer robots”. While pointing to the positive use of AI to enable rights in ways that were not easily possible before, this edition of GISWatch highlights the real threats that we need to pay attention to if we are going to build an AI-embedded future that enables human dignity." (Back cover)
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"Drawing on case studies from all over the world – including: ‘hate radio’ in Rwanda; theatre for development in India; telenovelas in Latin America; mobile banking and money in
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Africa, and; GIS and humanitarianism in Haiti – thsi book will be of interest to all undergraduate and postgraduate students of media and development; international development professionals, and; simply to anyone with an interest in how media does, can, or should, change the world." (Back cover)
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"Exploring Journalism Practice and Perception in Developing Countries is a crucial reference source for the latest scholarly material on the impacts of development journalism on contemporary natio
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ns and the media’s responsibility to inform citizens of government and non-government activities. Highlighting a range of pertinent topics such as media regulation, freedom of expression, and new media technology, this book is ideally designed for researchers, academics, professionals, policy makers, and students interested in the role of journalist endeavors in developing nations." (Publisher description)
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"The entertainment–education (E-E) strategy in development communication has been widely described as the panacea to development challenges in Africa
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. However, despite its growing application on the continent, E-E is still argued to be inhibited from contributing meaningfully toward development efforts. E-E interventions are argued to be hamstrung by their failure to embrace theoretical advances in development communication and E-E scholarship and for remaining rooted in the modernization paradigm. Using the social change paradigm as its framework, this article assesses the notions of development, change, communication, audiences, and education that underpin the conceptualization and design of Tsha Tsha, an E-E television drama that uses a novel cultural approach to address issues surrounding HIV and AIDS in South Africa. The data informing the study were gathered through a Focused Synthesis Approach and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The study’s findings show that significant efforts have been made by Tsha Tsha’s producers to bridge E-E practice and contemporary development communication and E-E scholarship. The data analyzed in the study show that Tsha Tsha’s notions of development, change, education, communication, and audience have been significantly remoored in line with the core tenets of the E-E for Social Change paradigm. The implications of the study are that more engagement and synergies need to be cultivated between E-E practitioners and development communication and E-E scholars if E-E’s full potential, in contributing to development challenges on the continent, is to be realized." (Abstract)
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"ICTs undoubtedly have the potential to reduce poverty, for example by enhancing education, health delivery, rural develop and entrepreneurship across
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Africa, Asia and Latin America. However, all too often, projects designed to do so fail to go to scale, and are unsustainable when donor funding ceases. Indeed, ICTs have actually dramatically increased inequality across the world. The central purpose of this book is to account for why this is so, and it does so primarily by laying bare the interests that have underlain the dramatic expansion of ICTs in recent years. Unless these are fully understood, it will not be possible to reclaim the use of these technologies to empower the world's poorest and most marginalised." (Publisher description)
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"Applied Theatre: Performing Health and Wellbeing is the first volume in the field to address the role that theatre, drama and performance have
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in relation to promoting, developing and sustaining health and wellbeing in diverse communities. Challenging concepts and understanding of health, wellbeing and illness, it offers insight into different approaches to major health issues through applied performance. With a strong emphasis on the artistry involved in performance-based health responses, situated within a history of the field of practice, the volume is divided into two sections: Part One examines some of the key questions around research and practice in applied performance in health and wellbeing, specifically addressing the different regional challenges that dominate the provision of health care and influence wellbeing: how the aging population of the global north creates pressure on lifetime healthcare provision, while the global south is dominated by a higher birth rate and a larger population under 15 years old. Part Two comprises case studies and interviews from international practitioners that reflect the diversity of practices across the world and in particular differences between work in the northern and southern hemispheres. These case studies include a sanitation project in a Hmong refugee camp in Thailand in the 1980s, and the sanitation and rural development projects initiated by the traveling theatre troupes of a number of University theatre departments in Africa – Makerere in Kampala, Uganda; Botswana; Lesotho and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania – which began in the 1960s. It considers the emergence of Theatre for Development's use as a health approach, considering the work of Laedza Batanani and the influences of Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed." (Publisher description)
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"Makutano Junction is an ‘edutainment’ soap opera made for local TV stations in Kenya and other East African countries. The show is about a fictional peri-urban village and the people who live
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in it. The program is made in Kenya, but was devised and is produced by Mediae, a UK based company that works with the support and collaboration of some major Kenyan and international NGOs. Mediae was founded by the producers David Campbell and Kate Lloyd Morgan. Since it began broadcasting in 2007 Makutano Junction has become one of the most popular shows on Kenyan TV; currently around 8 million viewers watch it every week, which is about 20% of the country’s entire population. Mediae have created a small stable of TV and radio shows mostly for Kenya, but also for Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda. They all give rural Africans access to the latest information and discussions about issues that concern them. The themes and plotlines for these shows are informed by extensive and careful research in the field, conducted by themselves or partner organisations.
Some of Mediae’s work is highly innovative. An example of this is the show Shamba Shape Up, which is also a major hit in Kenya and neighbouring countries. Shamba means ‘farm’ in Swahili, and as the title suggests it’s a kind of small farm makeover show. So presenters and experts visit smallholding farmers, and on camera, discuss problems that they might be having, with animal health, crop yield, market strategies etc, and consider solutions and strategies. Then they put a plan into action, and have a follow up show to see the results. Some 10 million viewers across East Africa view this show every week, even more than Makutano Junction. A very important aspect of this show is its associated app; I-Shamba, with which farmers are able to use mobile phones to access a database of up to the minute information and advice. Once remote smallholding farmers are increasingly connecting, interacting and educating themselves through this special show and app." (Page 99-100)
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"Forte FM is a community radio station located at University of Fort Hare Alice campus and was established to facilitate development in communities within the Amathole district municipality. Alice
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, a small rural town under Raymond Mhlaba Municipality, is one of the communities under the coverage of Forte FM. This study assessed the role that Forte FM plays in facilitating the development of Alice community. The study adopted a mixed method design in which questionnaires and interviews were used to collect primary data. The study findings show that although Forte FM is faced with serious financial challenges, it contributes to the development of Alice in various ways which includes providing the community with agricultural information, health information, promoting local culture, equipping the community with skills, promote local artists and sports personnel and educational programmes. The findings also revealed that the community is involved in the management of some aspects of the station’s operations through a board which is elected annually by the community itself. The results indicate that the radio station involve some community members in programming as experts on some topics or as people who have experienced an ordeal so they could share their experiences and advice other people how to manage similar situations. However, there is need to involve the community in the whole production process. The respondents’ attributed poor levels of community participation in programming to insufficient funds. The study recommends that Forte FM should lobby members of the community to fund the production of programmes since the station belongs to the community. This will enhance the sense of community ownership towards the radio station." (Abstract)
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"Social media is becoming an increasingly important part of our lives yet the impact on people with disabilities has gone largely unscrutinised. Similarly, while social media and disability are often both observed through a focus on the Western, de
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veloped and English-speaking world, different global perspectives are often overlooked. This collection explores the opportunities and challenges social media represents for the social inclusion of people with disabilities from a variety of different global perspectives that include Africa, Arabia and Asia along with European, American and Australasian perspectives and experiences." (Publisher description)
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"We use a “natural experiment” in media markets in Benin to examine the impact of community radio on government responsiveness to citizens. Contrary to prior research on the impact of mass media, in this experiment government agents do not provide greater benefits to citizens whose exposure to c
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ommunity radio increased their demand for those benefits. Households with greater access to community radio were more likely to pay for government-provided bed nets to combat malaria than to receive them for free. Mass media changed the private behavior of citizens—they invested more of their own resources in the public health good of bed nets—but not citizens’ ability to extract greater benefits from government. While the welfare consequences of these results are ambiguous, the pattern of radio's effects that we uncover has implications for policy strategies to use mass media for development objectives." (Abstract)
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"Burundi: even in very difficult situations, SDC partners managed to identify entry points and continue their work. Networking with international media as a source of information is very crucial in such situations. Policy dialogue is also important
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to work on issues that divide the government and media.
Rwanda: The coaching in situ has so far led to tangible results. However, building capacity and working on the mindset are still needed. The culture of the leader/chief is very strong and weighs strongly on the quality of media work. The economic progress of the country has not had impact on the financial health of media houses. When funding media, it is very important to aim at transformation (transformative funding).
DRC: diversity of media does not necessarily mean diversified information. Professionalization of media is very much needed. Social ownership of community radios would be very useful in increasing access to information, citizen’s engagement and propensity to hold the leaders accountable
Tanzania: on one hand, involving media actors in policy dialogue on legal/policy issues and not dealing them directly with the government has proved very effective (SDC ‘s support to local stakeholders ’actions in policy dialogue on specific issues has been very successful). On the other, at operational level, static framework can hinder effectiveness. The context is constantly changing. This requires flexibility from SDC and calls for embedding learning processes in the programme, having joint reviews annually and adjusting based on lessons learned." (Lessons learned, page 13)
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"This chapter examines the history and development of Popular Cultural Action (Acción Cultural Popular, or ACPO), the multipronged project of Christian revitalization, local empowerment,
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and communitybased development whose radio education network, Radio Sutatenza, founded by a Colombian parish priest in 1947 to address rural adult illiteracy, became Latin America’s first Catholic radio network and the model for media-based rural education and community development programs in twenty-four countries throughout Latin America, Asia, and Africa. In nearly a half century of existence, ACPO published and distributed more than six million cartillas (illustrated instructional manuals) for its five-point “Fundamental Integral Education” (EFI) program, which included Alphabet, Numbers, Health, Economy and Work, and Practical Spirituality; distributed seventy-six million copies of the newspaper El Campesino; received and answered 1.2 million letters from rural listeners and readers; graduated twenty-three thousand Colombian and foreign radio auxiliaries and community leaders from its training institutes; logged 1.4 million hours of educational broadcasting; and pressed 690,000 records. By 1990, when ACPO was forced to shutter its press and record-cutting studios and sell off its 245 radio network and buildings, it had a presence in hundreds of rural parishes stretched across the length and breadth of Colombia, and its broadcasts and educational materials were frequently acknowledged as inspiration for many a professional of rural origin. ACPO was but one among many other Colombian projects inspired by Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum (1891) and spearheaded by both laypeople and clergy that emerged in the period before Vatican II to redress longstanding social, economic, and cultural inequalities made more acute in the first half of the twentieth century by the specter of totalitarianism, economic crisis, rural migration, urbanization, and incipient industrialization. This chapter traces the history of ACPO between 1947 and 1962. It grew from modest origins, conducting adult rural literacy work and basic community-centered development in three small, Central Andean settlements supported by local in-kind contributions and a small diocesan subsidy. Gradually, it would expand into a multimedia-based educational juggernaut with transnational influence, partners, and funding lauded by Pope Pius XII in a 1953 Vatican Radio broadcast heard throughout Latin America. By the late 1950s, ACPO was held as the model for Catholic-directed, radio-based rural education and community development. ACPO’s success and eventual influence beyond Colombia’s borders was partly the result of Catholic transnational activism occurring in the decades before Vatican II. Efforts to redress the excesses of unrestrained capitalism and to build a community based in papal encyclicals such as Rerum novarum or Quadragesimo anno, even when they stopped short of advocating the kind of structural, grassroots Christian base community approach embraced by Liberation theology, I suggest, laid the foundations for participatory and transformative forms of social action that emerged after Vatican II." (Pages 245-246)
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"This report provides a broad overview and assessment of how Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems are being implemented in international development work with an emphasis on the particular rol
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e IVR can play in peacebuilding work in post-conflict contexts. In order to narrow the scope of research, this study focuses primarily on the usage of IVR in conjunction with radio for development projects in different crisis and post-crisis zones in Africa and India, as operationalized within the larger international development contexts. This report offers a review of the existing literature about IVR applications in non-Western contexts, supplemented by primary research based on interviews with practitioners who are using or designing IVR systems in the field. Many of the individuals interviewed work at organizations that have conducted their own impact evaluations of the new technologies they are using. This study aggregates these assessments." (Executive summary, page 2)
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"The 45 country reports gathered here illustrate the link between the internet and economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs). Some of the topics will be familiar to information
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and communications technology for development (ICT4D) activists: the right to health, education and culture; the socioeconomic empowerment of women using the internet; the inclusion of rural and indigenous communities in the information society; and the use of ICT to combat the marginalisation of local languages. Others deal with relatively new areas of exploration, such as using 3D printing technology to preserve cultural heritage, creating participatory community networks to capture an “inventory of things” that enables socioeconomic rights, crowdfunding rights, or the negative impact of algorithms on calculating social benefits. Workers’ rights receive some attention, as does the use of the internet during natural disasters. Ten thematic reports frame the country reports. These deal both with overarching concerns when it comes to ESCRs and the internet – such as institutional frameworks and policy considerations – as well as more specific issues that impact on our rights: the legal justification for online education resources, the plight of migrant domestic workers, the use of digital databases to protect traditional knowledge from biopiracy, digital archiving, and the impact of multilateral trade deals on the international human rights framework. The reports highlight the institutional and country-level possibilities and challenges that civil society faces in using the internet to enable ESCRs. They also suggest that in a number of instances, individuals, groups and communities are using the internet to enact their socioeconomic and cultural rights in the face of disinterest, inaction or censure by the state." (Back cover)
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"This collection offers fresh perspectives on the aesthetics, politics and histories of applied theatre. With contributions from leading scholars in the field, the book illuminates theatre in a diverse range of global contexts
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and regions. Divided into three sections - histories and cultural memories; place, community and environment; and poetics and participation - the chapters interweave cutting-edge theoretical insights with examples of innovative creative practice that traverse different places, spaces and times." (Publisher description)
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"At once both guide book and provocation, this is an indispensable companion for students and practitioners of applied theatre. It addresses all key aspects: principles, origins, politics
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and aesthetics in a concise and accessible style designed to appeal both to those who have recently discovered this sub-discipline and to experienced practitioners and academics. Part 1 is divided into two chapters. The first introduces the sub-discipline of Theatre for Development, covering its origins, principles and history, and providing an overview of theatre for development in Western contexts as well as in Africa, Asia, the Indian Subcontinent and Latin America. The second focuses upon theoretical and philosophical issues confronting the discipline and its relationship to contemporary politics, as well as considering its future role. Part 2 consists of seven chapters contributed by leading figures and current practitioners from around the world and covering a diverse range of themes, methodologies and aesthetic approaches. One chapter offers a series of case studies concerned with sexual health education and HIV prevention, drawn from practitioners working in Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, Southern Africa, and China. Other chapters include studies of intercultural theatre in the Peruvian Amazon; a programme of applied theatre conducted in schools in Canterbury, New Zealand, following the 2010 earthquake; an attempt to reinvigorate a community theatre group in South Brazil; and an exchange between a Guatemalan arts collective and a Dutch youth theatre company, besides others." (Publisher description)
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"Entertainment-education for Health Behaviour Change: Issues and Perspectives in Africa is a collection of essays from some of the leading schol
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ars in entertainment-education, including writers from South Africa, Nigeria, and the United States. Chapters cover a wide range of application and strategies for entertainment-education, from mass media campaigns to participatory communication for behaviour change in health interventions including polio eradication and HIV/AIDS. Through reviews of past programmes and discussions of areas of potential research, these scholars highlight an emerging approach that is set to change health education and behaviour change strategies around the world." (Publisher description)
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"This paper explores the impact that emerging partnerships - particularly between freelancers and nonprofits - are having on the practices of contemporary foreign news reporting. Through an exploration of a widely published project on a
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health crisis in East Africa-funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and reported by the study's author-this study ultimately argues that issues of framing, representation, and ideology are not dominating foreign news production; they are being hotly contested within it. The importance of having a journalist on the ground and the urgency of "liveness", however, is argued to be losing significance within the current model, which often destines foreign news imagery to be decontextualized for universal appeal." (Abstract)
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