DW-AKADEMIE recently introduced regional blogs covering DW-A projects worldwide. Future updates on our Laos projects will be published at DW-AKADEMIE Asia Blog, tagged “laos”.
DW-AKADEMIE and the state-owned TV corporation Television Nationale Lao (TNL) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding. DW-AKADEMIE will be supporting TNL in creating programming more relevant to the Laotian public.
The initial project started under the memorandum aims to improve Television Nationale Lao’s audience share and ultimately its financial stability. It was jointly developed by DW-AKADEMIE and TNL to support TNL and its provincial partner stations in launching a daily information programme. It will be shown nationwide and start airing in approximately twelve months. The programme will feature information and current affairs items stemming from all provinces as well as the capital.
“Creating programmes that connect people in Laos through the media is a positive step and we welcome the opportunity to cooperate with TNL on this,” says DW-AKADEMIE Director, Gerda Meuer. “Creating programmes connecting people with each other and with the government will help the country in its development efforts and benefit the population as a whole.”
For TNL to gain market share both memorandum signatories agree it needs to collect more information and reports directly from viewers. The German media consultants will support their Lao colleagues in developing the necessary skills and methods. “The key is to go out and listen to what people have to say. If you don’t listen to your audience, why should they listen to you?” says DW-AKADEMIE’s Daniel Hirschler, Country Coordinator for projects in Laos.
Television Nationale Lao, Lao PDR’s government broadcaster, is under the direction of the Ministry of Information and Culture. Its role is to disseminate government policies, laws, regulations, rules, procedures and information to people across the country and to broadcast educational and entertainment programmes to local and international audiences.
However, Laos’ media market is under strong influx from competing Thai TV and radio channels that broadcast popular news and entertainment formats to Laos from across the Mekong River. So far, TNL and other Lao media have not been able to provide a successful response to this challenge. Laotians are thus left without their own mass media to cater to their specific needs and interests. A recent policy by the ruling Lao People’s Revolutionary Party acknowledges the need for change and for Laotian mass media to become an effective means of two-way communication between the people and their government.
Laos is one of the focal points of DW-AKADEMIE’s long-term projects in Asia. It has held trainings and consultancies here since the mid-1990’s, and in 2009 conducted and evaluated an initial project with Lao National Radio, focussing on Savannakhet province. The project there continues. DW-AKADEMIE is also working with the National University of Laos, supporting the Department of Mass Communication in teaching journalism.
“Friends of the People”, the new daily one-hour morning show (585 kHz, Mo-Fri 8am-9am) has been broadcast by Savannakhet Provincial Radio for almost a year (since September 21st 2009). The project is still developing and currently undergoing some major changes:
In order to lower the production costs and to efficiently strengthen people’s needs and opinions on air, the production team in Savannakhet has asked us to help revise the program and to develop it into a call-in-show. The aim is to invite the audience to more actively participate in the program – to call in live and to get in touch with other listeners, civil society, politicians and civil servants.
The re-alignment of regional radio is based on the fundamental principle of serving the public: more transparency and accountability, greater participation by all citizens in public debates, improved information and the inclusion of all voices and opinions. Project details and outlines will be discussed during Teamlaos’ next trip to the region (September 2010).
DW-AKADEMIE and Television Nationale de Lao (TNL) cooperate on the development of a new TV-News format featuring local information from all provinces in Laos. The project has successfully been developed and agreed upon in 2009.
TNL Stakeholder Conference 06.-08.04.2010
From April 6th to 8th 2010, TNL held a conference to inform all stakeholders about the project idea, to inaugurate a “Steering Board” responsible for controlling the project cycle and to give room for discussion.
Representatives from both the departments of information and culture and the provincial TV-stations from 12 out of 16 provinces gathered around one table in Vientiane to discuss the visions, obstacles and needs of the committed partners. All partners have agreed on a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), outlining the project design and responsibilities.
In an early stage, the new format is envisioned to be a 10 to 15 minutes show with local information pre-produced and contributed by the committed provincial stations on a daily basis. A network between the stations (to be established) shall enable them to share all content i.e. for rebroadcasting. Thus, the tasks ahead are: 1. set up production teams in both TNL-HQ in Vientiane and two pilot provinces 2. support the production team regarding all aspects of daily news-production and distribution 3. support the production team in Vientiane with processing and distributing the contributions from the provinces 4. establish a functioning network for content management and -sharing
All different aspects of the project will be discussed and decided upon by the “Steering Board”, a coordination team with executives from DW-AKADEMIE, TNL as well as Champassak and Luang Prabang province, who will represent the interests of all committed stations and were elected by the conference members.
Working in Laos is inspiring. We have already learned a lot, but still know little about the road ahead. Yet we share a vision based on both our experience and on our partners’ needs and desires.
To introduce our view of the prospects ahead we have visualized some major information.
Subsequent to the successful partnership in the field of training, Lao National Radio (LNR) and DW-AKADEMIE have reached a ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ (MoU) underlining the importance of cooperation to support capacity building and public participation.
The two partners agreed to further foster the development of “new radio formats in the public interest for Lao National and Provincial Radios.” The common understanding is to achieve the mutual goal set by both the Lao and the German government: “increasing public participation as a means of working towards accomplishing the Millennium Development Goals.”
All efforts will be focused on the field of knowledge-sharing. LNR and DW-AKADEMIE have therefore agreed to exchange information and share experiences in order to i.e. improve the technical production and distribution capacities of both LNR and its provincial stations; foster digitalization; create and develop an economically sustainable and autonomous funding situation.
Gerda Meuer, Managing Director of DW-AKADEMIE, and Sipha Nonglath, Director General of LNR, signed the MoU on location in Vientiane on September 15th 2009.
UPDATE: We have decided against using a Wiki at the moment. Instead, we have now published our current data compilation as Google-Document. We invite our readers to give feedback via comment, twitter or eMail.
——————— When working on the media and on its development in particular, you want to know who and what you are dealing with in the first place. It is necessary to understand the details of national and international media markets, i.e. technical and infrastructural background, governance, official and private contribution, advertisement, licensing, etc. It is also important to understand the media’s role and importance in society. Thus, DW-AKADEMIE Team Asia is keen to understand the Asian media market, focussing on Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal and Vietnam.
A prosperous relationship between media and audience depends on dialogue. First of all, it is important to stress DW-AKADEMIE’s understanding of media development projects as open and participatory process. For example, DW-AKADEMIE, Lao National Radio and the affiliated province station currently co-operate on the introduction of new radio formats to Laos. We share a common understanding of the role of media – being the facilitator of dialogue and participation. It is our commitment to contribute to the further development of the media towards this ideal, but we do not want to reach it without the stakeholders’ ownership.
Dialogue needs appreciation. Thus, we analyse the status quo and pay attention to people’s interests. It should then be easier for us to develop projects and means of implementation in accordance with people’s needs. The situation and its interpretation may change along the way, targets might even turn out to be inconvertible. Yet, we do not consider this as failure. In contrary: not just any progress made, but the mere process of co-operation means success, as it leads to a settle understanding and a clearer view of the road ahead! Now the task is easily identified, yet it remains hard to tackle: Trying to understand the media market means trying to understand both the current situation and people’s needs.
Appreciation needs knowledge. Every act of comprehension depends on interpretation, which again is based on cognition and information. So the first task is to gather information. First queries lead to promising results, i.e annual reports from international organisations, country profiles provided by several institutions and loose pieces of information scattered around the internet. But the quantity of different sources quickly turns out to be problematic: The mere information is nothing without context; it remains dead facts rather than vital knowledge. Due to the lack of a contextually standardised and systematic approach, the available data does not provide understanding, no ‘big picture’.
Knowledge needs schemes. In order to provide easier access to information facilitating contextual knowledge about media markets and media development, the “International Programme for the Development of Communication“ (IPDC) at “United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation” (UNESCO) has released a framework in 2008 (IPDC Media Development Indicators Framework – IPDC MDF). Institutions and individuals can now theoretically ‘measure’ media development. What is interesting about IPDC’s approach is the provision of a bare framework. Media developers are invited to implement this framework and to check if it is applicable. If this system would become prominent and frequently used, its standard could lead to compare- and connectable insights.
Schemes need focus. An example: Category 3 (“Media as a platform for democratic discourse”) marks “Public Service Broadcasting” Models as important. UNESCO defines PSB as “broadcasting made, financed and controlled by the public, for the public. It is neither commercial nor state-owned, free from political interference and pressure from commercial forces. Through PSB, citizens are informed, educated and also entertained. When guaranteed with pluralism, programming diversity, editorial independence, appropriate funding, accountability and transparency, public service broadcasting can serve as a cornerstone of democracy.” (To learn more about PSB, please follow this link.) In most industrialised countries, there are existing models of this kind (BBC, ARD, PBS, etc.) and they can easily be identified. There is also a legal system in place which provides the appropriate rule-of-law for media (Licensing, Spectrum Allocation, Competition Regulation, etc.). Yet, in many developing countries there is no such legal framework. Or it is in place but not respected in practice.
When focussing on comparability of different nations and their media, the example mentioned above shouldn’t contain any problem. In contrary: presence or absence of i.e. “Public Service Broadcasting” Models are binary indicators and thus applicable for comparison. But the complexity of real life is huge and interconnections occur everywhere. There might not be a PBS by definition, but other forms of i.e. community broadcasters or public-private-partnerships might do the job somehow similar. It would then be more important to decide how to make these connections visible within the framework.
The question: Comparison VS. Deliberation? We come to the question: “What to make out of it?” If used to categorise different national media standards and compare them, the IPDC MD framework can be used to focus and structure static data (1.). If on the other hand used to understand the status quo, follow further developments and take action if appropriate, a more flexible (and more complicated) solution (2.) is indicated.
1. Comparison: Gathering and compiling facts with an understanding of the framework as more or less two-dimensional and top-down: You start from the framework, go into the category and try to find appropriate information to answer the question: “Category X, Indicator Y: Yes/No? Quote, Source, Link”. Good for comparing different sets of the same criteria. Simple set-up.
2. Deliberation: Focussing on the connections and possible consequences: You start from the basic information and categorise as much aspects of potential influence as possible. Good for needs-assessment and analysis of interconnections. Complicated set-up.
The answer: Comparison AND Deliberation PLUS Participation! DW-AKADEMIE Team Asia has started using IPDC MDF in order to standardise profiles of focal areas in Asia and reach a better and deeper understanding of national media markets. As there is good documentation about the framework itself on the IPDC’s website, we don’t go too far into the details, but will evaluate some results of our first pilot. It must be stressed that all results can only be considered provisional and may turn out to be interpreted differently in the future.
Pilot: First we followed the procedure suggested in IPDC MDF-documentation and searched for off- and online sources, focussing on nations Bhutan, Cambodia, Nepal, Laos and Vietnam. One early result is a (still growing) list of links on social bookmarking service delicious. Together with the source-link, relevant content was then simply pasted into a Document listing all IPDC MDF categories. This document can thus be regarded as first status quo analysis. But it is very static and sometimes provides either redundant information or plain references in different categories.
We face another problem: The key to reliability of such displays lies in the editor’s ability to oversee the complete framework. He or she has to already own a thorough understanding of what is due to be evaluated – beforehand! This way, it is likely to keep reproducing the own opinions rather than reaching deeper insight or new ideas. Yet our intentions are different: in accordance with the overall status of “perpetual beta”, we want to open up both the process of gathering data and the interpretation of results. That’s where ‘Social Media’ come into play!
The verve of ‘Social Media’. Web-based Information management has changed in recent years. Having started with nothing but the plain infrastructure, platforms like “MySpace“, “Wikipedia“, “OpenStreetMap” and many more demonstrate the power of communities: Content is created, even managed and edited in a network of users who share and collaborate. Depending on the topic and the design of the platform, almost anything can be of contextual value to the contributors’ interests: from “free content online-encyclopedia” to “Friends and relatives of experimental music and free improvisation“. The ease of tagging, hyperlinking and categorising information provided by these types of open databases is a cornerstone of broad participation. The possibility to classify the quality of individual statements in terms of accuracy, relevance, reliability, topicality, et cetera provides ‘flexible accuracy’ in accordance with the context. “Social Media“, “Crowdsourcing“, “Digital Activism” – these labels describe phenomena which try to satisfy humans’ desire to not just consume but collaboratively shape what surrounds them.
The test run: Lao Media Landscape 0.1 It is only a small step now from our pilot to opening up the process. We are currently setting up a Wiki about Lao Media Landscape to be hosted on our server (planned release: September 2009). We will first fill in all the data from the pilot. The aim is to encourage specialists and amateurs, journalists, audience, advertisers and others to help creating a map of Lao media that is of relevance to all contributors. There are some examples of similar approaches like “Digital Media Across Asia” or “ABYZ News Links“, yet none makes use of IPDC MDF.
An additional idea might be to visualise connections via “argument maps” (other than “Mindmaps”, an “Argumentmap” depends on the strictly logical combination of terms into arguments supporting or opposing a certain synthesis). This could enable media developers to quickly react to previously defined new situations when they occur: Whenever details change towards a specific target, i.e. in the legal system, the market situation or the audience’s needs, a logic operation might ‘actively’ indicate direct action where previously was just passive planning and hoping. If you are confident with software like i.e. “Argunet“, feel free to contact us any time.
Stakeholders welcome! Besides all the positive aspects of modern information and networking solutions, this Wiki test run of IPDC MDF on Lao Media Market can only be as good as its content. That’s why we rely on your experience to transform information into knowledge and understanding. As the Wiki grows, every idea brought into the process can and will be useful. That’s why we want to invite and encourage all dedicated readers, listeners, viewers, reporters, bloggers, digital activists and everybody else who’s interested, to share your thoughts and comments, criticism, questions and answers. If you do have comments or ideas on the planned Wiki, please feel free to contact us.
DW-AKADEMIE Team Asia will also invite media professionals from our informal network to contribute to this test.
UNESCO IPDC Media Development Indicators Framework / DW Pilot – lessons learned: * The scope of the overall framework is manageable, can quickly be understood and gives a broad spectrum of the different aspects of media. * As predicted, there are both criteria that can easily be enlarged upon and ones that can only be analysed with difficulties, due to the fact that some categories and criteria base on definitions that may not be applicable in most developing countries, i.e. the existence of public broadcasting service or modern ways of legal spectrum allocation. * Many criteria can be assessed using free databases on the internet. * Some criteria will only be assessable through scientific surveys, i.e. the level of public trust in the media. Many organisations and researchers collect data on media markets. But the results are seldomly published in total – due to the cost of the surveys and the economic value of such information, i.e. for market-entry of private entrepreneurs. * As there is no central platform for data collection and -compilation, everybody interested can interpret the criteria differently. * The framework can be used for the purpose of both comparability of national media standards and needs-assessment for media developers. * The varieties of sources and interpretations imply a community based information management system rather than only one or few editors. * Next steps will show, if this turns out to be useful along the way.
Poor conditions More than 27% of the population of People’s Republic of Laos (Lao PDR) live with not more than 1$ per day. Some 78 million “Unexploded Ordinances” (‘UXO’) keep threatening everyday life, remains of massive US bombardments during the so called “Secret War” and the war in Viet Nam. Laos ranks 164th of 173 states on Reporters Without Borders’ “World Press Freedom Index” and is regarded “not free” by Freedom House. The leading communist party is using media only “to link the people to the party, deliver party policy messages, and disseminate political ideology”. All major media is either state-owned or -controlled and delivers mainly “protocol news”. Lao media still suffer from self-censorship although the constitution grants Lao citizens freedom of speech and information. A media law did not exist until 2008.
Promising prospects On the other hand, there is considerable economic agility and growth, especially in transfer-areas like Savannakhet, where newly built roads and bridges connect Thailand in the west with Viet Nam in the east. Together with a relative independence of the provincial sector in decentralised Lao PDR and accompanied by ‘beacon-projects’ supported by UNESCO, UNDP, SIDA, DW-AKADEMIE and others, a shift towards more audience-oriented community-radio formats has begun. This shift can also be seen in discussions among media professionals about the role of the media in society, and the public call for “good reporting [that] must focus on issues relevant to people’s daily lives”.
Laos is one of the 60 focus countries of Germany’s bilateral development co-operation policy. DW-AKADEMIE, national partner Laos National Radio and the affiliated province station currently co-operate on the development of new radio formats in the southern Savannakhet province.
DW-AKADEMIE Team Asia: Supporting Media Development in Savannakhet province From the national broadcasters’ experience, people had turned away from Lao media. This perception was supported by several surveys from international donors and researchers. Starting with nothing but the desire to win back the audience’s attention, a new project was outlined. After several years of dropping isolated training courses, we came to realise more and more that mere training without including transfer is nice to have, but next to useless. And that a strong link between training, implementation, day-to-day practice and ultimately changed programme output needs to be established.
First step was to better understand the status quo and the mechanisms of media market in Laos, and in Savannakhet in particular. This led to realising one goal: the importance of making people’s voices heard in future programmes, rather than just passing along government statements. Only then could we start considering concrete ways of reaching this goal. Since 2009, a team of DW-trainers and young Lao reporters work co-operatively on the conceptualisation and implementation of a daily one-hour morning-show in Savannakhet. It was not until the current project-phase that training-modules have been introduced. Yet, we still concentrate on fostering the understanding of our role in a media market, which develops alongside the ongoing economic growth and possible political detente.
A prosperous relationship between media and audience depends on dialogue It is the project design and the ideal behind it, what makes it special. The whole process of preparation, conceptualisation, implementation and evaluation is participative and accountable in character. Rather than implementing externally planned patterns we focus on our partner’s and the audience’s needs. It is now possible to pause at any given time within the process, sit back and reconsider some -or even all- aspects. Of course all of us imply success, but targets might turn out to be inconvertible along the way. Yet, we are not as focussed on results as that we would regard this possibility as failure. In contrary: Not just any progress made, but also the sheer process of co-operation means success by definition.
Documentation + Communication = Docommentation DW-AKADEMIE has set up the Weblog “Supporting Media Development in Laos” in order to deepen both accountability of the complete project cycle and the participation of all partners (and hopefully the audience, too). It combines the possibility to document every single step of the project with several ways of modern communication: Comments, eMail- and Twitter. This helps trainers, reporters, audience and everybody else to learn about and from the project as it grows and participate in shaping the process of media development. Beyond the actual launch of the planned morning-show, even in future projects, this open “docommentation”-tool helps to understand how we succeed or fail.
Social Media in the making To make use of Web 2.0, Open Source and Social Network applications appears to be self-evident nowadays. In accordance with the ideals of these continuously developing phenomena, we remain in ‘perpetual beta’. As Tim O’Reilly says: “Users must be treated as co-developers” to form “a world in which ‘the former audience’, not a few people in a back room, decides what’s important”. DW-AKADEMIE and partners feel confident that this approach empowers all stakeholders (including DW-AKADEMIE) to constantly learn from each other. In other words: Fostering a participatory architecture is the key tool to reach MDG 8, a global partnership for development.
Helping people get their voices heard means supporting democratic development.
A second pilot was produced the day after the first one. It was good to see how the learning of the first group was directly applied to the production of the second one. By then, everyone had been part of either hosting, producing or providing a packaged report to at least one program.
What might sound like daily bread to most journalist in the euro-american world is a small revolution for radio workers in this country: A morning show filled with music and information and packaged stories that feature the voices of people from all walks of lives.
Revolutions abound All in all a very new and exciting experience for our colleagues. Some had been working at the radio for over a decade, with the relaxed but somewhat unexciting “same same, no different” kind of feel (and look on their faces) to their day-to-day-work.
Monday morning another revolution: Air-checks. We listened to and discussed both programs at length. I had taken notes of things that I thought could be improved. To my surprise, in the following discussion I was able to tick them off one by one: The Lao colleagues had understood that there’s a lot to be done and suggested themselves which problems to tackle next.
Relax, sit back, be humble All of this was still on the “outer” level of things: Neither I, nor my co-trainer do understand Lao, and the programs had not been translated. So we were not able to take on things like phrasing, storytelling, style, etc.
Interestingly enough, these were also not the concerns of the production group: While they felt that things were too long and thus could be boring, their remedy was simple: be shorter! A good idea in principle, but it is still only looking at quantity and not quality.
Meet your process-Buddha: Letting go Yet this situation of not knowing everything is in fact quite helpful for us facilitators: It prevents us to try and intervene (and thus take control) on too many levels at the same time.
Our motto has to be: take as much control as necessary, as little as possible.
One step (and small ones) at a time is the solution. The time will come, where all the small steps add up to the big change. The last three weeks, training-module three of our project in Savannakhet, showed a first silver lining.
It was an exiting, cheerful moment when the first 1 hour program was finished – real radio, linear production, two hosts, three reporter packages, hopefully useful information for the envisioned audience: the people of the province of Savannakhet, Laos.
It was the first major achievment of our cooperation so far and judging from the faces of our Lao colleagues worth the tremendous effort they and we had made.
“The launch on September 21. is secured” said head of News, Phongsay S. in his new role as producer and host of the pilot show. Everyone in the control room agreed. To that, a good-forbidden standard-ending: “Whether that will become true, remains to be seen…”
Two things for sure: The ambitious goal all of a sudden became much more tangible for all those involved in the project. And: A lot remains to be done. Judging from the quality of what was produced – the comments about that came from Laotian colleagues and test-audience – we are only just starting!
We’re not starting from scratch in Savannakhet. Some of the people in the production group for the new daily program have received training before, some by us, DW-AKADEMIE, some by SR MDO, funded by SIDA, some by others.
Quite often, when we introduce new concepts to the group, it takes a while until find common ground to start from.
Today was a lucky day: we stood on the solid foundation of the training done by the Swedish colleagues and followed up by ourselves 2 years ago. I asked: “Do you still remember what a VoxPop is?” There was nodding and confirmation coming from some of the Laotian colleagues. Then: “What is the most important ingredient?” Some guessing, so fast forward: “An open question!”
We quickly had an open question, fitting the topic of tomorrows second pilot program. It was test-driven among the colleagues, worked fine. Two reporters went off and came back with a number of quite interesting answers from the people out on the streets and some pictures they had been taken with the “project camera”.
Tough question: the right equipment Note that the equipment used is not the M-Audio recorders provided by the Swedish project. While these here do work comparably well in the environment, they are more often out-of-order, as they have to be recharged on time. Unfortunately this is a task beyond the organisational level of most of the people at the radio.
Shiny new bus-stops /w no bus in sight It was about the bus-stops that had shown up recently with no busses in sight. A company had built them, but a bus network was abandoned due to taxi-drivers’ and peoples’ protest: It seems as if people did not like the idea of having to stop at the city limits, then changing into the inner-city busses and pay again for a new ride, when before their country-bus would take them to the downtown destinations right away.
“What do you think about the bus-stops?” One answer was: “Will you be setting up a bus company for us?”. No, but we can make it a topic on your radio and see what happens. It’s still a long way to go, but as (the chinese philosopher) Lao-Tse teaches us: Even those long journeys start with small steps…
One of the biggest obstacles for media development projects in this country is the lack of localised computer software. Computers are a necessary ingredient in the process of media production: They are cheaper, more versatile, more powerful then analogue equipment like tape-recorders. And they are available, which is increasingly no longer the case for analogue equipment.
Digital divide caused by language Yet, their interface is a challenge to many people, if it doesn’t come in a language they understand. Learning a software then becomes not only an exercise of understanding how to use the tool, but also of guessing and memorising, which word on a menu to press. Try switching your browser to a language you don’t know (like maybe Thai, Arabic or Japanese) and then save or print out this page. Good luck!
Saving files with names that make sense is another obstacle: The application might allow you to write using Lao alphabet, but the operation system of your computer is in English. Your stuck with typing just some letters of this strange Latin alphabet. How do find the file later?
Instead of working towards creating good radio programs with reports on relevant topics, you end up tackling the challenges of un-localised software programs.
Help wanted!
This is why we are very interested to learn about available software for Lao media production. So far we have found (thx mainly to Anousak Souphavanh) but weren’t yet able to test:
There is the very interesting international NGO “Jhai Foundation”, which has made remarkable progress developing a low-energy PC (“JhaiPC”) coming with a localized linux KDE.
We would like to hear from people about their experience with this software and also if there are similar projects, etc.
Due to codex.wordpress.org, there is a WordPress localization team currently forming, but service seems to be unavailable at the moment.
Also we would be very interested in a Lao localized version of Audacity. Anyone done this? Or planning to do it? Or willing to do it (and waiting for more motivation…?) Or able to tell us, how we can do it?
Comments more than welcome, you can also ping us on twitter.com/dwa_laos or send a mail to daniel.hirschler [at] dw-world.de or teamlaos [at] ymail.com
Preface As “Landlocked Least Developed Country” (LLDC) positioned between China and Myanmar in the north, Thailand in the west, Viet Nam in the east and Cambodia in the south, People’s Republic of Laos (Laos PDR) is one of the poorest countries in the region. Between 1990 and 2005 there were more than 27% of the population living with not more than 1$ per day. On UNDP Human Development Index Laos (with a scale of 0.608) ranks 133rd of 179. Laos still suffers from the results of massive bombardments during the so called “Secret War” and the war in Viet Nam: Today, some 78 million “Unexploded Ordinances” (‘UXO’) remain threatening everyday life troughout Laos. Laos is one of the key partners of German development co-operation in the region.
Background: The media situation in Laos PDR Regarding freedom of the press, Laos media still undergo strict oversight by the centralist communist government, but currently begins opening up (mainly in terms of economic freedom). Yet, Laos ranks no. 164 of 173 on Reporters Without Borders’ “World Press Freedom Index” and is regarded as “not free” by Freedom House, who argue that the leading communist party were using media only “to link the people to the party, deliver party policy messages, and disseminate political ideology”. All major media is either owned or controlled by the government or the communist party, yet few examples are allowed in the entertainment sector. Until 2008, there has been no press- or media-law. According to freedomhouse, Laos media were suffering from self-censorship although the constitution grants Laos citizens freedom of speech and information and there is no official censorship.
Thai TV rendering Lao Radio useless Radio has a lot of potential and could lead to promising developments: Laos’ radio receivers per-capita value is one of the highest in the region, but the audience would rather consume Thai media (due to similarities in language, many Laotians understand almost all Thai). The Laotian audience is simply turning away from what in their experience is mere ‘Protocol-News’ (This is the observation of a high ranking Lao media official, based on Audience surveys conducted by Lao National Radio, UNICEF and SIDA). Laotian people lose grip of ‘their news’ and ‘their stories’.
On the other hand, there is considerable economic growth (especially in transfer-areas like Savannakhet, where newly built roads and bridges connect Thailand in the west with Viet Nam in the east). Together with a relative independence of the provincial sector and accompanied by ‘beacon-projects’ carried out with support by UNESCO, UNDP, SIDA, DW-AKADEMIE and others, a development towards more audience-oriented community-radio formats has begun. The first media-law has recently been signed, raising hopes on a further consolidation of Laotian media.
Background: ICT in Laos Due to UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme’s ICT profile, Laos’ overall teledensity is only 1.31%: the nationwide mobile coverage is 2.02% (GSM network is available in 9 out of 18 provinces with coverage usually available only in the largest towns and est. less than 10% of the population being covered by the signals); less than half of Lao districts (58 out of 142) have fixed-line telephone service; and probably less than 1% of Laotian households currently own a telephone (48,557 lines in the country). There is no internet-backbone in Laos, the (hypothetical) bandwidth of 2 Mbps for uplink and 4 Mbps for downlink (combined total for the coutry’s six ISPs) is seldom reached in reality.
There exists a National ICT Policy and e-Strategy Task Force with five Working Groups consisting of government, agencies and private sector but there is also a 5% tariff on all imported hardware and a 10% turnover tax applied to all computer retailers. As these taxes are passed on directly to customers, along with an additional 20-50% markup as operating profit, there are 0.371 internetcafés per 10,000 inhabitants and only 0.18 out of 100 Laotians own a computer. The overall size of the IT-market is considerably small.
Supporting Media Development now features a mobile edition. Facing these few facts, it is easy to understand the importance for such projects as this WP-blog to think about ‘inbound’-compatibiliy, that is to try to make platform-based communication as easy as possible. Not only in Laos, but in many developing countries it is important to offer (or at least consider) low-bandwidth-solutions.
Thanks to alexking.org WP-Plugin for mobile devices (simply called “WP mobile edition” together with “Carrington Mobile Theme”) we are now able to alternatively present this blog ‘mobile friendly’. This means, the plug-in recognizes mobile clients and automatically shows an interface designed for a mobile browser. On tested devices (3G) it was possible to reduce traffic from something around 380kb to around 160kb (which is a good start, though we desire to further reduce this).
As the plug-in is both helpful and easy to use, we would like to recommend it to our readers (please follow the installation instructions on alexking.org). If you have another idea or even a different solution on ‘bandwidth’ and ‘ICT4D’, feel free to contact us anytime.
The objective of this first phase of our project here in Savannakhet is to get a new, daily program on air. While so far national and provincial radio either featured top-down information, “protocol” news or plain entertainment, the new program should get peoples voices on air, their views, their concerns.
Working towards that one goal
Working towards such a concrete objective makes things both very easy – and sometimes very hard: If things we do are not about launching that program, we don’t need to do it. If there’s an obstacle that will stop us from reaching our goal, we have to sort out what it is and find a solution. Finding that solution takes sometimes all kind of different skills: psychology, sensitive inter-cultural communications, linguistics, counselling, consulting.
Today was the day when a, after weeks of sowing and growing, it seemed as if all the toil was finally bearing fruit: A first realistic radio or format clock was established among the production group of the future program. We had been working on preparing packaged reports, finding topics, creating the right questions. Digging into the “Who?, What?, Where?, When?, Why? and How?” of those topics. Coming up with people to talk to. Talking to this people. Creating the stories. How would it all fit together?
Getting the clock right
A debate started. It was, at the end, the old against the new: Little information, lots of talk, more music? Or: Packaged, dense storytelling including everyday peoples’ voices on air? Important things first. The group voted for the new way: One hour it shall be now for the first pilot program. One hour, with three packaged reports of approx. 7 minutes, news and information, spots and announcements and of course “Lao song”, the ubiquitous music of this country.
Once that was clear, the rest was all downhill: If you want such a program, the necessary steps to create it could easily be derived. An agreement was reached: who would be in charge of organising the program and how. Off the group went: Editing, writing, recording. That’s the part that makes working towards a set goal so easy: Everything you do can be derived from it. Backwards planning: If this is what we want, this is what we have to do. Simple, yet powerful. It will be exiting to hear what comes out of it.
As we are currently assembling all (if possible) available internet-proxy-data on Media Development in Laos and Southeast Asia (which will later be presented here), there is a growing link-list on delicious (a famous social bookmarking service). You can find it here: Laos statistics
— Project Status Radio posts provide details on the current status of projects concerning radio. For basic information please refer to Project Descriptions.
— Project Status Television posts provide details on the current status of projects concerning television. For basic information please refer to Project Descriptions
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In order to provide easier access to information facilitating contextual knowledge about media markets and media development, the “International Programme for the Development of Communication“ (
1. Comparison: Gathering and compiling facts with an understanding of the framework as more or less two-dimensional and top-down: You start from the framework, go into the category and try to find appropriate information to answer the question: “Category X, Indicator Y: Yes/No? Quote, Source, Link”. Good for comparing different sets of the same criteria. Simple set-up.
