Future:Media:Change

To commemorate 2009 World AIDS Day a 4U1AIDS will be broadcasting from the UNAIDS Secretariat in Geneva from 1-7 December.  The broadcast will be simultaneously broadcast to millions more via the amateur radio network.  The initiative hopes to embolden amateur radio enthusiasts to participate in World AIDS Day.

I worked with the UN Radio network briefly while developing marketing concepts for Stand Up, a global anti-poverty campaign.  While we don’t often think of radio as being a powerful medium in the States, the medium is often one of the central ways people get their information in developing countries.

One of the central issues I saw when working with radio groups wasn’t always access to the equipment, but getting reliable content on a constant basis.  If you’re an amateur radio network with limited resources it’s almost impossible to generate quality content on a daily basis.  Maybe a solution exists that I haven’t seen but what I see as a central problem is being able to package and send content from developed to developing as well as between developing countries.

OLPC (one laptop per child), developers of the child friendly XO had a unique concept of linking developing villages by turning the laptops into mini wireless repeaters, creating a network of linked devices that you could transfer content between.  Of course this requires a central hub (usually a school) that has a decent internet connection.

Mobile devices are another possibility.  Avaaj Otalo is a service in South Asia that merges the cell phone with a local radio network:

When farmers call in, they can either listen to archives of DSC’s weekly radio boradcast, listen to announcements from DSC staff put up specifically for Avaaj Otalo, or participate in the question-answer forum. The archive and announcements are offered for browsing. If farmers choose to go to the forum, they can either record their own question or listen to recently posted questions and answers - Mobile Active

The Freedom Fone is another solution that combines the mobile phone with citizen radio.

Audio files are stored by Freedom Fone in a content management system which is updated through a simple-to-use browser interface. These audio clips populate an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menu which callers can navigate through for information. Individuals can contribute questions, content and feedback by leaving voice messages via the IVR interface. Freedom Fone can be operated as a collective, with different groups managing different channels of information from the same installation. -Mobile Active

What other solutions exist to empower citizens to use the power of radio?