Online communications for development

Nick Scott26 November 2008

Agenda

1. Introduction2. The opportunities of online

communications– Free content and information– New ways to engage

3. The challenges of online communications– Too many voices– Not accessible to all

4. Examples of online tools5. The future

– Mobile telephones– Location, location, location

Introduction

• What is online communications?– All communications taking place

through the internet.• Corporate websites• Emails• Elsewhere on the web

– Video sharing– Photo sharing– Meetings in ‘virtual worlds’– Networking sites

The opportunities of online communications – free

content and information

• FREE content– Creative commons

license• CC is a “some rights

reserved” copyright• It helps you choose

what rights you’d like to reserve

Video from: http://revver.com/watch/108636/flv/creative-commons-wanna-work-together-remix/

The opportunities of online communications – free

content and information

Creative commons• Attribution. You let others copy, distribute, display, and

perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.

• Noncommercial. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and derivative works based upon it — but for noncommercial purposes only.

• No Derivative Works. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

• Share Alike. You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

– Map from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:LocationMexico.png

The opportunities of online communications – free

content and information

• Maps– http://commons.wikime

dia.org/wiki/Category:Maps

• Images– http://www.flickr.com

• Rember to check the license T&Cs for any resources you use. Protesters marching against high corn prices, Mexico,

2007Source: flickr/PHOTOLARTE

– Slide on potential effects of biofuels discusses the corn protests in Mexico.

The opportunities of online communications – free

content and information

Gapminder – visualisation of statistics

• http://www.gapminder.org • Powered by UN Division

of Statistics numbers• Powerful online

visualisation tool for statistics in a time series

• Currently can only be used with available UN stats

The opportunities of online communications – new

ways to engage

• Sharing documents– Example tool is SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net, others are Google Docs.

• Blogs– Create a channel for discussion and rapid dissemination of information,

especially for issues of topical interest. – There has been policy impact from a few blogs.

• Wikis– Collaborate together to make content– Most famous Wiki site – Wikipedia – is the first point of reference on many

subjects

• Social media– Using information from the crowds – ‘crowdsourcing’ to get information on what

matters in your “community”

• Meeting online– Second Life, Skype

The challenges of online communications – too

many voices?

• Crowded marketplace– Lots of messages– Lots of locations– Lots of people

• What audience are you targeting?

• How do you stand out from the crowd?

The challenges of online communications -

accessibility

• Can your audiences access information.

• Can they understand it?

Map of internet traffic around the world

http://betterplaceorg.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/

internet-traffic-map.gif

The challenges of online communications -

capabilities

• There are many different levels at which you cancommunicate –you need to take care ofthe basicsfirst.

http://www.idealware.org/blog/2008/11/pyramid-of-online-communication-methods.html

The future

• More people on the internet• More user generated content• More people using mobiles• More emphasis on communities• More important to add value

through high-quality content