Mobile Technology in Community Radio—Still Ad Hoc and One-Off.

In 2008, Bruce Girard concluded in a MobileActive.org guest post that the addition of text messaging technology into the community radio toolkit was still in its infancy. SMS use at radio stations was informal, he wrote, and the few cases of more complex use of SMS messages accompanied political crisis or natural disaster and were largely donor financed.

Two years later, we delve once again into the state of SMS and mobile technology at community radio stations, by way of an informal survey. While advances have been made and creative projects have emerged, integration remains an ad-hoc and individual enterprise.

This report summarizes existing projects and success stories, highlighting the most popular uses of mobile technology. It concludes with a discussion of the challenges that community radio stations face in adopting SMS and mobile technology.

To summarize the current state of SMS and mobile technology is to suggest that despite being used in a multitude of ways by community radio stations, integration remains a somewhat ad-hoc and highly individual enterprise. Aaditeshwar Seth, a 2008 Knight News Challenge Winner who works with community radio in India, wrote in an e-mail to MobileActive.org that, "Stations do need SMS. Right now they just do it in an ad-hoc manner with people sending messages to cellphones of different station staff and volunteers."