Radio 2.0

Discovered an interesting site this morning, aiming at enhancing the synergies between new information technologies and the radio. These links can be particularly useful for the developing world. A specific article I recommend reading is about Community media and SMS text messages, which seems to prove to be an interesting linkage in developing countries. Here is an extract :

Internet connections and fixed line telephones are still out of reach for much of the world’s population, but mobile telephones have spread faster than any other communication technology in history.

“The only technology that compares to the mobile phone in terms of pervasiveness and accessibility in the developing world is the radio. Indeed, considered together, radios and mobile phones can serve as a broad-distribution, participatory media network with some of the same citizen-media dynamics of the Internet, but accessible to a much wider, and non-literate audience.”

A study of mobile telephone use by people from low-income households in seven Latin American and Caribbean countries indicates high level of SMS by the region’s poor, apparently attracted to the technology because of its low-cost.

Several examples of creative and helpful SMS services provided by medias are given in the article.