design principles to create sustainable community …cs.ashoka.edu.in/cs102/slides/l20-ictd.pdf80%...

g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n e

Design Principles to Create Sustainable Community Media Networks

L E AR N I N G S O V E R 7 + Y E AR S O F C O N S TAN T E X P L O R AT I O N

N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 5

AP P R O P R I AT E C O M P U T I N G T E C H N O L O G I E S

F O R D E V E L O P M E N T ( AC T 4 D ) , I I T D E L H I

V O I C E O F T H E V I L L AG E

T E C H N O L O G Y. M E D I A. D E V E L O P M E N T

g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n eMobile Vaani: Technology. Media. Development

The Gram Vaani team: Mayank, Parminder, Bala, Zahir, Kapil, Dinesh, Sayonee, Aparna, Rohit Singh, Rohit Jain, Ritesh, Paro, Sultan, Lokesh, Aravindh, Biswajit, Sangeeta, Smita, Veer, Saraswati, Suvasis, Ashok, Preety, Deepak Jha, Deepak Kumar, Deepak Jaiswal, Shweta, Aarti, Vinod, Ruby, Amrita, Ritu, Vasanti, Ashish Tandon, Dasami Moodley, Vidya, Shambhu

IIT Delhi students: Arvind, Dipanjan, Prateek, Abhishek Katyal, Rohit Bhatia, Deepak Martin, Amitsingh, Gaurav Luthra, Gaurav Agarwal, Quamar Niyaz, Sameer, Rahul, Asheesh, Piyush Agarwal

Collaborators: CEDPA, Sesame Workshop, PFI, Development Alternatives, Gurgaon kiAvaaz, JEEViKA, PHRN, Gram Swaraj Abhiyan, Digital Green, CREA, Jean Dreze, Reetika Khera, and many others

Joint work with…


Variety of mechanisms

Community radio

Community video

Wall newspapers

…

3

Community media in rural areas in India

Community

mediaRepresentation

Contextual & complete

info

Empowerment

Entertainment,

community

building

Change

agent


CR 2.0: Radio + mobile phones

Poor telephony integration

Media players used for scheduling

Content stored in folders across different machines

Many moving parts: Headphones, mics, mixer adjustments

Project 1: ICTs for community radio stations in rural areas


Single console for playout, scheduling, preview, archiving, telephony, SMS, faceted

content management

Don’t have to switch headphones

Telephony and radio integration for community engagement

GRINS (Gramin Radio Inter Networking System)


Community engagement

Live Panchayat group discussions

Music on hold advertising

Antakshari competitions across schools

NREGA helpline, agriculture helpline…

Suggestion of new works

Project announcements and vacancies

Stratified database of community members

Group updates

Personalization

Assessment of campaign effectiveness through micro-surveys

An appropriately designed technology


Project 2 - Mobile Vaani: A voice based community media platform using phones

Inputs connected to

government (local +

other) , NGO partners,

social enterprise partners

Content moderated locally

and centrally, then

published on IVR, web

1. Speak 2. Moderate + Share 3. Connect to stakeholders

Users speak and listen to

contributions over our

intelligent IVR platform


Traction on Mobile Vaani

90% community sourced content

Local news

Interviews and informational services

Opinion on topical issues

Guided discussions and campaigns

Grievances and feedback on government schemes

Cultural artifacts including folk songs and poems

Current reach

10,000+ calls per day

8min average call duration

1,000,000+ unique callers

2,500,000+ households reach


Our learning: The ICTD onion

Broader ecosystem

Technology design

People processes

Community

character-

istics

Content &

services

Adoption &

awareness


Our learning: The ICTD onion

Broader ecosystem

Technology design

People processes

Community

character-

istics

Content &

services

Adoption &

awareness

Software engineering and design

processes

Technology architecture

Ease of use, task completion, data

collection accuracy, cost

Machine learning, recommendations

Technology support and scaleup


Software engineering and design process

Understood

in 1st call

Understood

by 3rd call

Marsden,

2013

• Observe the users to understand gaps to be

addressed through ICTs. But also identify good pilot

partners/power users who can give actionable

feedback.

• Software engg. currently is a hit and miss affair

Hard to find a common set of

requirements


Understood

in 1st call

Did not

understand

by 3rd call

Understood

by 3rd call

Leave a message…

Offline in-person training is

imperative, be it internal or

external

Relevance of user training

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Nov

Dec

Jan' 14

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

July

Aug

Sept

Oct

Nov

Dec

1st Recording 2nd Recording 3rd Recording

4th Recording 5th Recording > 5 Recordings

(L) Phonepeti

(R) Mobile Vaani


Ease of use and design efficacy

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 More

Fre

qu

en

cy

Bin

Data collection

• 84% of responses

match those given to a

live operator

• 79% of users

understood more than

80% of the questions

Crowd-sourced voting

• Linear list of thumbs-up thumbs-down Vs best-of-two Vs best-of-four

• No significant difference in task completion, nearly 100% for all

• Cultural preferences though: Did not want to call a song bad!

QoC data collection: Getting

participation is not hard if incentives are

aligned and well understood


Technology support and scaleup

Most faults occur when people tinker

with cables and other moving parts.

Impossible to avoid!

Most debugging needs to be done

over the phone but hard to resolve

over the phone alone with a local

unskilled tech resource

Moved to a cloud deployment

with Mobile Vaani

Mode of communication Faults

identified

Faults

resolved

Phone calls 57 16 (28%)

Remote desktop 9 9 (100%)

Remote desktop & phone 9 6 (67%)

Reverse SSH 6 5 (83%)

Reverse SSH & phone 2 2 (100%)

Physical visit 6 6 (100%)


But it is not all about non-technology!

DirectDelayed

Evaluating interrupt misses

Latency

experiments Some setups are more

debuggable than others:

Evaluate debuggability using

Prolog


Technology is also important to monitor our own system

Users who call just once ranges from 25% to over 50% some times. Correlated with quotas. Old users are more tolerant of QoS

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

No

v-1

2

Jan

-13

Mar

-13

May

-13

Jul-

13

Sep

-13

No

v-1

3

Jan

-14

Mar

-14

May

-14

Jul-

14

Sep

-14

No

v-1

4

Jan

-15

Mar

-15

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

Activity of users Activity of long lived users


Unpeeling the onion: Adoption and awareness

Broader ecosystem

Technology design

People processes

Community

character-

istics

Content &

services

Adoption &

awareness


Offline methodology for acquisition of users

MV field

team

Volunteer clubs

Volunteers

SHG and community networks

Our field team

enters new

geographies

through NGO/

CBO partners

We begin with

identifying

volunteers from

the community

1

2


Need for institutional structures and community ownership

Over time,

volunteers

are then

organized

into clubs

3

Clubs are

mentored

closely by the

field team

4MV field

team

Volunteer clubs

Volunteers

SHG and community networks

Our field team

enters new

geographies

through NGO/

CBO partners

We begin with

identifying

volunteers from

the community

1

2

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

BMV – 6000 callers per

day in 10 months

Jamui club – 6000 callers

per day in 5 months


Qualitative data collection using MSC technique

“…I have only one passion and that’s listening to

news… Since I can’t read newspaper and don’t have

access to television, MV is my only source of local

news and information… when the clubs weren’t

formed, we got to listen to stories, messages and

local news from different districts of Jharkhand that

were occasionally from our region…we had no

control over region specific content… after

formation of clubs we are not only able to listen to

the local events and happenings in our region but are

also able to listen to statewide content… it is a win-

win situation for us…” – Visually impaired caller,

Jharkhand

“… MV has helped women like me, come out of our

conservative households, build our identity as community

reporters and stand for ourselves for finding solutions to our

problems… Before listening to MV, my husband never

allowed me to go out of the house to attend meetings, but ever

since he started listening to MV he has encouraged me go for

club meetings… he is positive that I’ll learn something

constructive out of it…” –Woman volunteer, Jharkhand

For volunteers

• References to get better jobs

• Public speaking and reporting skills helps in job

interviews

• Financial incentives especially useful for non-

working women


Decision to grab low hanging fruit, or go after harder social impact?

2

1

3

4 4

2

1

0 0 0

3

5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 MoreN

um

ber

of

clu

bs

Cost per user acquisition

High degree of

heterogeneity in club

effectiveness

Formula driven growth

can be achieved, but what

is our mission?

Investment Vs grants?

Good content,

volunteers are

reporters

Women clubs


Varying importance of financial incentives

Caste and class hierarchies impact functioning

Clean communication and relationship building is important

Mentoring Vs transacting, to maintain an asset-light offline model

Understanding the reasons for heterogeneity

“… The policy was discontinued after a while, but

it left a lot of volunteers and communities

disappointed and dissatisfied, so much so that

some of them snapped all ties with MV…” –

Community Manager, Jharkhand

“I don’t volunteer with MV for money, I don’t pay much

attention to the payments, and they are such small amounts

anyway. I work with MV for social work and personal

development…” – Volunteer, Bihar

“… It would be better if MV hires someone separately to

handle the work of grievance follow ups at block level…

there’s a lot of running around to do… how much can a

club coordinator and a handful volunteers run around? We

also have to keep up with the community mobilization

activities…” – Volunteer, Jharkhand

Vs.


What services do users actually want

Broader ecosystem

Technology design

People processes

Community

character-

istics

Content &

services

Adoption &

awareness


Field visits & volunteer feedback to understand information needs

What is MV for you?

What do you want to hear on MV?

Challenge: How to change the character of the system? Only 20-30% of users exhibit preferences even though 85% navigate comfortably

Social issues40%

Entertainment

24%

Local news16%

Livelihood20%


We are a media company!

Grievances

Entertainment

Krishi Samadhan

Hyperlocal news

Bolein Dil ki Baat Contributions on travel

experiences, childhood memories

Kitaabon ki Paanon Se Solicit ideas on legends and

folk tales

Famous writers like Premchand and Bhishm Saini

Haat Bazaar Interviews of vegetable sellers

and local merchants

Employment channel, Children’s slot, Talent competition…


WomenNews

We are a media company!

Agriculture solutions

Hyperlocal news

Straight from the heart Contributions on travel

experiences, childhood memories

Story telling Solicit ideas on legends and

folk tales

Famous writers like Premchand and Bhishm Saini

My life and times Interviews of vegetable sellers

and local merchants

Employment channel, Children’s slot, Talent competition…


“… The shift in content from grievances reported on

various issues to weekly entertainment and informative

programs is very refreshing to me, as a listener… By

doing this, MV has gone a step further in informing,

entertaining and inspiring its users. I say this because the

localized entertainment and information offered by the

weekly programs aired is unparalleled to the generic

content offered by the mass media… Similarly, the

discussions initiated by campaigns on various social

issues help me learn about a wide variety of things such

as existing laws on that issue, our rights and entitlements

along with people’s lived experiences, making me want to

listen to MV again and again…” – Caller, Jharkhand

“… Mobile Vaani is like an ideal community media

platform where people represent themselves the way they

want to. They don’t need an external news agency or a

journalist to cover their issues on their behalf… it is the

people who own and run the entire MV platform right

from choosing the issue they want to base their

discussion on, to composing a report, a message, a song

or poetry… and recording it on the forum with a view to

encourage further discussion within the community or

make a dent in government administration or giving

mainstream media like our newspaper, material to base

news reports on…” – Caller, Jharkhand

A media for the people?

[Bailur, 2007]

“My wife had some ideas for programs. She went to the station. But they told her she had to belong

to a self-help-group.”

“… and it is not every group, but only good groups – meaning, you behave well, keep good books…”


Strike update Problems

caused

Valid cause Invalid cause Request to

government

Request to

para teachers

Para-teachers 24% 7% 31% 37%

Activists 10% 24% 20% 31% 3%

Students 43% 4% 34%

Parents 4% 38% 9% 38%

Govt 90%

Media 53% 17% 23% 5%

Jharkhand, state wide: Month long para-teachers strike paralyzes all schools

across the state. Demand for permanent positions and increased salaries. Parents

rebut with accusations of negligence of duty. Teachers send their petition to the

government. District administrators respond with their point of view. A great example

of multi-stakeholder discussions on the platform

Completeness: To help people see other viewpoints


Context: Localizing global concepts


Duration: 4 weeks

Outreach: 100,000 households in Jharkhand

Topics

Laws against early marriage

Reasons for early marriage

Implications of early marriage on the health of girls

Implications of early marriage on boys

Drama, chutki ki kahani, who was married at 14

Offline activity. 100+ volunteers recruited from across the state

Get pledges from Panchayats

Ask pandits and moulavis to visit weddings and condone early marriage

Get testimonials from school teachers

Form a committee comprising the Panchayat, teachers, religious leaders, and police

Getting a discussion going in the community: Early marriage


Help people understand through examples

“… I feel better informed about the issue of child

marriage after listening to the campaign but I would like

to point out that in practice, not much change has

happened in our village since the campaign. Yet,

campaigns on issues such as these must go on because

without the campaign, no discussion would be initiated

on these issues. At least, due to the campaign, people are

discussing such issues amongst themselves. A lot of

people are getting educated and are better informed due

to such discussions. They are able to understand the

difference between good and bad practices, the things

they should do and the ones that they shouldn’t do…” –

Woman listener, Jharkhand

“… After listening to people’s experiences discussed

during the campaign, I got to know about preventable

health problems and financial issues caused due to

child marriage. Hence, I've decided that neither will I

get married before age nor would I marry a girl who is

younger than 18 years… I will also discourage people

in my family, community and society from doing it. In

my case, I’ll only get married when I am properly

settled and ready to take on the responsibilities that

marriage brings with it…” – 19 year old male youth,

Jharkhand


Systematizing information contextualization: Campaign methodology

Selection of appropriate

campaign method

Develop content plan and

message matrix together with

partner

Weekly episodes on different topics

through guided sourcing of

messages from community

Analysis and impact

assessment

0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Content quality: 1-5

Game

Non-contextual

comments

Discussion

Serial episodes

Early

marriage

Parenting

SesameSesame

MKBKSHEarly

marriage

Child

sex

abuse

Medicine

price hike

Bulk of our

campaigns

“Mass” content

does not work

Need to explore

more. Impact?


Scaling impact

Broader ecosystem

Technology design

People processes

Community

character-

istics

Content &

services

Adoption &

awareness


Impact at the individual level

“I get information about a lot of government schemes from

MV. It’s been two years since I got to know about Krishi

Antrikaran Protsahan Yojana from MV. Within that scheme,

drip irrigation equipment and pump sets are available at 50

percent subsidized rates. I (applied for that scheme)

received pump set and drip irrigation system. It has helped

me change the direction of my work (made my work

easier).” – Smallhold farmer, Jharkhand

“In the past one year I have heard campaigns on the

issue of violence against women and I feel these are

commendable efforts by team MV. These campaigns have

given me the confidence to take up social work and I hope

to help create a society that doesn’t encourage violence

against women”. – Woman caller, Jharkhand

“I comment on the health channel and spread

awareness among people on health services like free

medicines and Mamta Vahan. Through my

contributions this helped me gain respect in the

community and helped my work as an ASHA” –

Community health worker, Jharkhand

Awareness

Empowerment

Behavior

change


Impact at the community level

“A few weeks back I recorded a message on JMV

about a school headmaster harassing the students by

charging Rs 10 per student for issuing the admit card.

When a few students refused to pay the amount, the

headmaster threatened to fail them in the practical

exams. After my message was published on JMV, it

spread like wildfire. Everybody got to know about the

tactics of the headmaster. So the headmaster called a

meeting of the parents and owned up to his mistake. He

promised not to repeat such a mistake in the future and

also appealed to the students to write their exams without

worrying about all this.” – Volunteer, Jharkhand

“… It is ironical that popular culture of hindi movies

has penetrated our otherwise remote region and the

youth here have been more interested in movie songs

than our folk songs… Most cultural heritage

remained limited to the villages of the region due to

lack of a medium to promote the aural culture of the

village…. Now owing to MV, we are able to listen to

self-composed folk songs and poetry in local dialects

such as Khortha, that are recorded by other users.

This has led to more MV users, especially youth

embracing our cultural heritage…” – Old caller,

Jharkhand

Social pressure Community building through a shared

identity


“…During the monsoons, the rivulets near our village

used to get flooded and excessive water used to flow down

the Damodar river… we were unable to make any use of

it… for the past 4-5 years we have started building check

dams on these rivulets and created bunds of water out of

them… this has not only resolved our water shortage

issues but has also helped in recharging the water table…

we now get drinking water all year round…” – Farmer,

Jharkhand

Knowledge sharing

Impact at the community level

“In the Koderma district of Jharkhand, alcoholism

among men is a big issue. People began to voice

their concerns on MV and a desire to see an

improvement, at first with a few stories, and very

soon many people started recording their messages.

This finally prompted us the volunteers to pick up the

stories and write a letter to the district administration

demanding closure of illegal alcohol selling in the

main town of Koderma.” – Volunteer, Jharkhand

Collective action


Institutional level impact: Help communities build local accountability loops

People reported on a few officials who were demanding bribes for UID enrollment. The site was visited by the block development officer and the officials were fined

A village ignored by health agencies was reported to have had 3 malaria deaths in the last one week. A mobile ambulance was immediately dispatched, with fumigation equipment and first aid

Jan Shakti Abhiyaan and Janta

Darbar – two entirely volunteer

driven initiatives

Can this be formalized for

scaleup? Needs volunteer training

and mentoring


Institutional level impact: Formally built accountability loops are feasible too

Adoption largely depends on

conscientiousness of officer

However, inefficient in

implementation since it is top-down

Pioneering a civil society assisted

grievance redressal system for micro

health insurance, as an mid-way

strategy. Grievance tracking and

updating done by gram sevaks


State helplines get single-digit

grievances each day

Poor awareness

Low redressal rate, no tracking

CM helplines have been more

successful in some states

Hand-holding by intermediaries is

needed to help register and track

grievances. Mentoring and

motivation of intermediaries is

therefore important

Institutional level impact: Accountability loops require good intermediaries though

“…We raised the issue of the death of a migrant labour on MV

during a campaign, who died while migration (on worksite) due

to poor working conditions… MV interfaced the issue with the

labour department of Jharkhand in Ranchi from where the

labour commissioner personally looked into the issue…

commissioner further used MV to inform all of us to register

ourselves in our village councils before migrating out… When

we informed them that our village council members haven’t

received training on documenting people migrating, the Labour

department conducted migrant registration awareness and

trainings camps in many blocks and districts including

ours…since then they have actively been following up on our

migration related grievances/issues that we report…” –

Volunteer, Jharkhand

Replication of practices will happen in more

areas with committed intermediaries in the loop


Our server makes and receives

calls/SMS from contract staff on

their deliverables

Community

members query

the status and

dispute it if they

want

Status and disputes

were made available on

a web dashboard and

reviewed by the MCD

commissioner; City

Representatives post

responses on Facebook

Municipal Corporation of Delhi

approached Gram Vaani for phone

based citizen monitoring of waste

disposal in the city

1 2 3

4Self-reported status

by MCD staffCitizens can query

and dispute

Or, build accountability through the administration and link it with performance?


Community

members call into

a toll-free number

to leave

complaints

NGO listens to

complaints and

categories/transcribes

them on the Internet

Youth wing of NGO files

complaint officially, and sends a

report to the local councilor

Redressal statistics also displayed on

website (and wall newspapers)

Internal pressure dynamics thus created were

used to improve grievance rates on ration,

pension, and sanitation. New toilets and public

works were sanctioned

A governance focused NGO, Action

India, approached Gram Vaani to

build a ‘better grievance redressal

system’

1

23

4

5

Institutional level: Or, bring accountability with a hybrid through the political system?


Institutional level: Or, leverage other vocal stakeholders to amplify the voice further?

Hard evidence gathered on public health facilities 80% do not have clean drinking water

40% have vacant posts for doctors

Deliveries happening in the bathroom

Stories carried by several regional media publications

Testimonials about 5 health facilities that have improved since campaigning started on Jharkhand Mobile Vaani

Estimated 100,000 people thus indirectly impacted


Usable and appropriate technology design

Build a sense of community and ownership.

Institutional structures should be nurtured

Create content formats that encourage

contextualization by the community itself

Work in partnership with other stakeholders to give the platform a larger voice.

But understand the political economy of the ecosystem

Unsolved problem: Financial sustainability!

Design principles to create sustainable community media networks

g o o n j : s o c i a l m e d i a f o r e v e r y o n e

G r a m Va a n i C o m m u n i t y M e d i a

W e b s i t e : h t t p : / / w w w. g r a m v a a n i . o r g

E m a i l : c o n t a c t @ g r a m v a a n i . o r g

Thanks


Replicate learning to mobile apps Build peer-to-peer or intermediary driven training and adoption processes for our apps

Leverage the stronger Internet ecosystem that already consists of platforms such as online social networks

Can the learning be applied to adoption of mobile Internet itself? Potential to be a key revenue driver!

Consolidate offline processes including volunteer recruitment, training, club composition, and club mentoring

Possibility of USSD integration to ease IVR navigation

Shortcode based VAS access to build a marketplace for information services

Future work


Joint work with Stanford Liberation

Technologies and IIT Delhi

People enrolled with job card +

mobile phone information

MIS status for job cards picked up

from the website, and converted

into voice messages

People could file a grievance if

they noticed a discrepancy

Initial work: 52 people pinged, 30

detected a problem, 23 filed a

grievance

Another example: Citizen verification of official data

design principles to create sustainable community …cs.ashoka.edu.in/cs102/slides/l20-ictd.pdf80%...

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