"Between June 30th and July 10th, 2012, a team of four trained interviewers conducted interviews with 400 randomly selected adults, representative of the adult population of the town of Zemio and its surroundings, over 1,000 km east of the capital Bangui in the prefecture of Haut Mbomou, near the bo ... rder with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The rapid assessment was conducted to serve as a comparison case to the previously published assessment conducted in Obo, the capital of Haut Mbomou, in July 2012. The Haut-Mbomou, one of the 14 prefectures of the Central African Republic (CAR) is under the threat of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a notoriously violent armed group from northern Uganda. These results suggest that information must first be local. Respondents in Zemio lacked a local source of news that would contribute to a better perceived access and quality of information. However, having a local quality information source may not necessarily have an impact on understanding and reported perception of humanitarian action." (Internews website) more

"Between May 19th-27th, 2012, a team of four trained interviewers conducted interviews with 400 randomly selected adults representative of the adult population in Obo, the capital of Haut-Mbomou, one of the 14 prefectures of the Central African Republic (CAR), and its surroundings [...] Radio is the ... most important source of information, especially the local community radio, Radio Zereda. However, women tended to also rely on friends, family and local authorities as main sources of information. None of the respondents mentioned printed media, television or Internet as a main source of information. Mobile phones are relatively common, one-fifth of the respondents (21%) indicated owning one, but just 9% indicated using text messages and less than 1% accessed Internet with their phone." (Executive summary) more

"Internews' project to integrate local media and ICTs into humanitarian response in CAR takes place in a context of distrust between journalists and humanitarians. According to this report, humanitarians view the media as lacking credibility, depth, independence and fairness, and as monetizing news ... coverage. Journalists say that humanitarians are unwilling to engage in an exchange of information other than a one-way “infomercial.” As one journalist puts it, “they are only interested in their own publicity, but fear critical coverage.” However, both journalists and humanitarians agree on one key factor that undermines the quality of the information: the lack of resources. The use of ICT has the potential to fundamentally alter the relation by constantly bringing new and reliable data to humanitarians, demonstrating the effectiveness and usefulness of journalists. However, Internews' program must also include simple efforts at rebuilding trust between the actors." (Executive summary) more

Internews' project Integrating Local Media and Information and Communications Technology (ICTs) into Humanitarian Response in the Central African Republic (CAR) was an project aimed at improving emergency response, community participation and community resilience. This report presents the final refl ... ections of the monitoring and evaluation process that accompanied the implementation of the project. more