Soul Beat Africa
African development action with informed and engaged societies
Soul Beat Africa
After nearly 28 years, The Communication Initiative (The CI) Global is entering a new chapter. Following a period of transition, the global website has been transferred to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, where it will be administered by the Social and Behaviour Change Communication Division. Wits' commitment to social change and justice makes it a trusted steward for The CI's legacy and future.
 
Co-founder Victoria Martin is pleased to see this work continue under Wits' leadership. Victoria knows that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction.
 
We honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades. Meanwhile, La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA) continues independently at cila.comminitcila.com and is linked with The CI Global site.
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The Soul Beat 222 - Social Media for Social Change

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222
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In this issue of The Soul Beat:

This edition of The Soul Beat focuses on social media and its role in contributing to social change. Social media can be defined as "works of user-created video, audio, text or multimedia that are published and shared in a social environment, such as a blog, Facebook, Twitter or photo and video hosting site. More broadly, social media refers to any online technology that lets people publish, converse and share content online" (from "Social Media Guide for Climate Change Practitioners in Africa"). The newsletter contains a selection of reports and thinking, programme experiences, and resources and guides that highlight how social media can be used in the field of health, governance, climate change, and in the media.

 

 

If you would like your organisation's communication work or research and resource documents to be featured on the Soul Beat Africa website and in The Soul Beat newsletters, please contact soulbeat@comminit.com

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REPORTS AND THINKING ON SOCIAL MEDIA

1. Social Media in Development Cooperation [April, 2012]
Edited by Ricky Storm Braskov
In this book, published by the Ørecomm - Centre for Communication and Glocal Change, participants in the Ørecomm Festival 2011 share their experiences in using social media in development cooperation. As stated in the preface, "this specific publication brings together voices from key institutions and experts that are central in the established world of development cooperation...The revolutionary potential of the social media is downplayed, the many forms of use of social media uncovered, and the co-existence and interdependence between new and old media is foregrounded."

2. The Globalization of the Pavement: A Tanzanian Case Study [September, 2012]
By Anders Høg Hansen, Ylva Ekström, and Hugo Boothby
This article, published in the Glocal Times, discusses examples of citizen media production and communication (blogs and social media sites in Tanzania and its diasporas) in the immediate aftermath of the Gongo la Mboto explosions in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in February 2011. The authors argue that Tanzanian engagement in "new media" can be seen as an extension and amplification of traditional modes of information sharing and news production, with traditional oral and collaborative processes of news production adapting towards the digital.

3. How Scientists Can Reach out with Social Media [August, 2011]
By Jennifer Rohn
This resource offers tips on how researchers - even geographically isolated ones - can use social media to reach new audiences worldwide, hopefully keeping them informed, supportive, and engaged in climate change, emergent pandemics, dwindling natural resources, the struggle to maintain food security, and other scientific issues.

4. Mapping Digital Media: Social Media and News [November 2011]
By Paul Bradshaw
This paper from the Open Society Media Program surveys the ways that news occurs in social media and examines the implications for media-related values. The paper offers several conclusions which include the fact that research into social media's role in the Arab Spring suggests that traditional and new media worked in tandem, rather than one supplanting the other. Also, social media make well-established uses of news suddenly visible, while also facilitating those uses: discussing and challenging news reports; combining, contributing to, and building on them. Social media have stimulated particular social spaces for news publishing and distribution."

5. Using Social Media for Collective Efficacy-Case Study: Intersexions [2011]
Ruth Teer-Tomaselli
This PowerPoint presentation, shared at the Entertainment Education (EE) Conference in India in 2011, shares findings of a study to analyse the use of social media to advance HIV/AIDS awareness in South Africa. The study investigated how the television series Intersexions used its Facebook page to support HIV prevention, care, support, and treatment. According to the findings, the Intersexions Facebook page supported the television series by encouraging post-broadcast discussions and creating a space for dialogues and information sharing.

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PROJECTS USING SOCIAL MEDIA IN AFRICA

6. Tobacco Kills: Say No and Save Lives - Uganda
Launched in January 2013, Tobacco Kills: Say No and Save Lives is a nation-wide anti-tobacco public awareness and advocacy campaign to raise awareness about the dangers of tobacco and to work towards passing the strongest possible legislation to control the production and consumption of tobacco in Uganda. The goal is to establish a Tobacco Control Bill by June 2013 to regulate the manufacture, sale, promotion, advertising, sponsorship, distribution, and public use of tobacco products. Running for one year, the project is using social media, mobile phones, and radio. 

7. Chanjo Ya Rushwa Campaign - Tanzania
Initiated by the Swedish Programme for ICT in Developing Regions (Spider), the Chanjo Ya Rushwa campaign combines music, mobile phones, and social media to raise public awareness of the corruption affecting the country and to give ordinary people a voice. The campaign, which took place between September 2011 and August 2012, was carried out by Jua Arts Foundation for the Children with Vitali Maembe and the Spirits, a Tanzanian band known for its Afro-fusion music and challenging lyrics.

8. African Shared Values - Africa
African Shared Values, an initiative of the Political Affairs Department (DPA) of the African Union (AU), works to facilitate discussions and debate about what values are shared between AU member states and their citizens. The initiative uses public dialogues held face-to-face in African cities, via radio programmes, social media, and online forums. The programme was launched in 2012 as part of the AU's Year of Shared Values.

9. The People's Voices - Uganda
The People's Voices project, launched in September 2011, seeks to empower local people and communities to monitor district service delivery through a combination of different information and communication technologies (ICTS)-based tools and traditional media, as well as identify and describe a number of cross media services that can be used to promote citizens' participation in political decisions and civic activities. Led by the Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET), the project brings together researchers and students from Linnaeus (Sweden) and Makerere (Uganda) Universities and is supported by the Swedish Program for ICT in Developing Regions (SPIDER).

10. Humanitarian Crisis Map for the Central African Republic - Central African Republic (CAR)
Launched in June 2012, the Humanitarian Crisis Map for the Central African Republic is an online platform designed to enable more immediate, effective, and two-way information sharing between humanitarian organisations and local communities in CAR. Initiated by Internews and the Association of Journalists for Human Rights in CAR, with funding from the Humanitarian Innovation Fund, the map runs on the Ushahidi platform, using crowd-sourced information collected or verified by a network of local radio stations to alert humanitarian aid agencies to urgent needs and community priorities. Likewise, aid workers can add information to the map about their responses and actions.

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RESOURCES AND GUIDES ON SOCIAL MEDIA

11. Half the Sky Coalition Social Media Playbook: Using Social Media as Part of a Communication Strategy [2012]
This playbook was produced to educate, support, and mobilise organisations to utilise social media and mobile technology as an additional tool to drive up engagement around the Half the Sky movement, which is a multi platform campaign that seeks to put an end to the oppression of women and girls worldwide. It is meant to accompany three webinars on how to utilize twitter, how to incorporate social media into your communications strategy, and how to create a mobile phone and text message campaign.

12. Social Media Guide for Climate Change Practitioners in Africa - A Guide to Understanding Various Different Types of Social Media, and Their Potential Role in Accessing and Sharing Knowledge on Climate Change Adaptation in Africa [August, 2012]
This social media guide, produced by AfricaAdapt and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), is designed to increase understanding of different types of social media, and their potential role in accessing and sharing knowledge on climate change adaptation in Africa. It offers practical advice on sharing, accessing, and exchanging climate change knowledge from and about Africa using social media. This guide is suitable for researchers, civil society practitioners, or information intermediaries working on climate change in Africa, as well as anyone with a particular interest in social media.

13. The Health Communicator's Social Media Toolkit [July 2011]
This guide to using social media is designed to help organisations improve the reach of health messages, increase access to content, further participation with audiences, and advance transparency to improve health communication efforts. The toolkit was developed by the Electronic Media Branch, Division of News and Electronic Media at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It aims to share lessons learned in more than three years of integrating social media into CDC health communication campaigns, activities, and emergency response efforts.

14. Change the World with a Click - Four Sessions on How Social Media Can Make a Difference
David Isaksson
This is a series of four video sessions on social media. The sessions cover the following topics:
What is social media?; key factors for successful advocacy using ICT tools; campaign work - do's and don'ts; and making the best use of limited resources.

15. Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents [March, 2008]
This handbook, published by Reporters Without Borders, offers practical advice and techniques on how to create a blog, make entries, and get the blog to show up in search engine results. It gives clear explanations about blogging for all those whose online freedom of expression is subject to restrictions, and it shows how to sidestep the censorship measures imposed by certain governments, with a practical example that demonstrates the use of the censorship circumvention software Tor.

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THE SOUL BEAT ARCHIVES

For previous ICT related Soul Beat e-newsletters, see:

The Soul Beat 201 – ICTS for Development in Africa

The Soul Beat 180 - ICTs in Africa

To view all past editions of The Soul Beat e-newsletter, click here.

 

 

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