Posted by Simon Didszuweit on October 26, 2009 under Laos Info, View all | 
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.
Visit Lao Media Landscape based on IPDC’s “Media Development Framework” at http://docs.google.com/View?id=dfw46pr4_5f7pmtgg4
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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.
Posted by Simon Didszuweit on July 8, 2009 under Laos Info, Radio, TV, View all |
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.
