Design Lessons from Creating a Mobile-based Community Media Platform in Rural India

It is well known that technology based interventions targeted towards development need to look beyond technology to be successful - cultural nuances, capability and intentions of the people, institutional linkages, financial sustainability, etc all need to fall in place to build a robust development program. Supporting this argument, we describe an interactive voice-based community media platform in rural India that works through mobile phones, and how several non-technological innovations in content management, community mobilization, and social impact processes were brought about to make the program an effective social development intervention. We believe that the challenges and insights described in this paper, which span over the last three years of functioning of the platform, will be useful for other researchers and practitioners involved in both mobile and non-mobile based community media projects around the world.