AudiencScapes

by Hannah Bowen, Africa Project Manager InterMedia

LUSAKA, Zambia -- Traveling in East Africa this month, I’m hearing nonstop coverage of upcoming elections -- in Rwanda in August, Tanzania in October, Uganda next year, plus a referendum on the Kenyan constitution (not to mention a referendum on Southern Sudanese independence and the polls recently concluded in Burundi and Ethiopia). One of the recurring themes in all of this coverage concerns whether and how mobile phones will make the processes more transparent. There are countless initiatives underway to use people’s access to mobile phones, even in rural areas, to accomplish the following goals: raise awareness about the elections, conduct exit polling, monitor polling stations, publicize any attempts at intimidation or fraud, and identify hotspots for potential political violence. Unfortunately, access to mobile phones is not enough to guarantee these initiatives will have their intended effects.

The coverage that I’m seeing and hearing is not coming to me through the Zain SIM card I put in my phone when I arrived in Tanzania. It’s all over the newspapers, on the radio, on local TV, in offices, at bars, and around tables in restaurants and homes. Amid all the excitement about new technologies, it seems too early to write off the traditional means of getting and sharing information about important events like these elections. It’s not that I think mobile phones aren’t helping improve transparency -- they are, and further innovations should certainly be encouraged. But at the same time, they enable a very different type of communication than mass media, and traditional media need support and encouragement to play their critical role as well.

For example, in Kenya, civic education about the contents of the proposed constitution seems mainly to be taking the form of distributing printed copies of the document and holding public gatherings throughout the country organized by everyone from the Committee of Experts (http://www.coekenya.go.ke/) to individual politicians, NGOs and religious groups. There is an active debate in the traditional media about how well all those groups are doing, whether they have conflicts of interest, which parts of the country are not being engaged, and which parts of the draft constitution are most contentious (and deserve the most attention from citizens). The ability to gather input from across the country via mobile phones is certainly improving the quality of that debate -- but mobile phones themselves are not the main platform on which the debate is taking place.

There’s also the issue of who is using mobile phones, and in what ways -- both very different questions from who simply has access. I visited a household last week while observing interviews for an AudienceScapes survey in Tanzania that provides a good example of mobile phone use. We were in a small rural community close to Mount Kilimanjaro, in a house with no running water but a connection to the national electric grid. The matriarch of the house, a woman well over 60, owned a mobile phone, and her 16-year-old granddaughter said they both use it almost daily. But what are they using it for? Mostly, they are receiving calls from family members who live in other places, or sending and receiving SMS text messages about practical logistics (what to pick up at the market, when to come home for an event, etc.) to friends and family. They are not calling in to radio shows to voice their opinions. They are not sending SMS text messages to their elected representatives about local issues. They are not getting reminders about when and how and where to register to vote.

Just because a diverse group of people now have access to mobile phones does not mean they will all use them in the same ways. Using advanced mobile applications to get information to or from “the grassroots” or to improve transparency may not actually expand the range of input as far as many believe -- at least for the time being. So while developing new applications is important, so are efforts to make them appealing and accessible to more diverse phone users. The barriers that prevent some groups from accessing or sharing information by other means -- literacy, social norms, income and countless others -- do not automatically disappear when those groups get mobile phones. These barriers still need to be addressed. In the meantime, traditional mass media are still well-positioned to help marginalized groups overcome some of those barriers.

Hannah Bowen is a Africa Project Manager for InterMedia
Hannah's other blog posts:
The Role of Gender in Media Consumption and Access to Health Services
Media's Role in Civic Education
“Open Government”: Open to Whom?
Information for Development Policy: Famine or Flood?
Photo Courtesy of Flickr and whiteafrican.