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Gender Equality and Big Data: Making Gender Data Visible

Claudia Abreu Lopes, Savita Bailur

UN Women (2018), 25 pp.

"This report provides background context on how big data can be used to facilitate and assess progress towards the SDGs, and focuses in particular on SDG 5 – “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”. It examines successes and challenges in the use of big data to improve the li ... more

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Paying for Access or Content? Blurred Understandings of Mobile Internet Data in Ghana, Kenya and Uganda

Savita Bailur, Emrys Schoemaker, Jonathan Donner

In: GlobDev 2016: Proceedings Annual Workshop of the AIS Special Interest Group for ICT in Global Development

Association for Information Systems AIS Electronic Library (AISeL) (2016), 11 pp.

"The paper addresses the blurred understandings of what developing country mobile internet users feel they are paying for. The move towards increasing online news and music consumption around the world has resulted in low growth in paid content consumption and a digital advertising market that is no ... more

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Digital Access in Africa

Chris Locke, Jonathan Donner, Bryan Pon, Savita Bailur, Francis Hook, Ambacontributors Kak

Farnham (UK): Caribou Digital Publishing (2016), 60 pp.

"The mobile industry has, for the past 15 years or so, done a phenomenal job of connecting users in emerging markets to voice, SMS and Internet access services. But as we strive to reach the remaining unconnected users, we may need new models of connectivity to reach them. In the first section of th ... is document we discuss the need for new Internet access models, and ask the question of what we mean by “Internet Access” and why it’s important to understand what the impacts of limited service and capability are. We then move on to look at the barriers to scaling Internet access, and why, despite the availability and affordability of mobile phones, Internet access remains sub-scale. On the supply side, we discuss the issues around the costs of delivery access, and the difficulty of making connectivity affordable. Many attempts to reduce the cost have been tried, with varying levels of success. From Universal Service Funds delivered at a policy level, to zero-rated services from the private sector, it is important to understand the considerations around subsidizing access for poor or hard-to-reach users. The debate around this is nuanced, as the recent decision by the TRAI to ban Facebook Free Basics in India has shown. Supply side barriers are not easily solvable, and some mix of new industry business models and policy efforts to make regulation fit for purpose is required. Providing affordable—or free—Internet access will require negotiating the original principles of the Internet, the desire for an open and fair architecture, with the real costs of delivering this vision. From a user perspective, even when the available infrastructure enables connectivity, it doesn’t always drive adoption. Users require a reason to go online. A certain amount of this can be demand driven by access to essential government services, but a carrot as well as a stick is required. We have previously researched the digital lives of users in Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda, and have shown how users come online for non-instrumental reasons (social media, games, etc.) but then often use these platforms for instrumental activities such as self-directed education, searching for employment, or sourcing essential information.3 User research can show us how these needs can be balanced, and we discuss this within this report." (Introduction, page 4-5) more

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Digital Lives in Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda

Savita Bailur, Jonathan Donner et al.

Farnham: Caribou Digital Publishing (2015), 186 pp.

"[...] Specifically, we argue that development programs with an eye on instrumental outcomes are well-served by the cultivation of an understanding of broader digital practices—of people’s increasingly digital lives. This work explores not only what devices people use, but also how they get onli ... more

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Closing the Feedback Loop: Can Technology Bridge the Accountability Gap?

Björn-Sören Gigler, Savita Bailur (eds.)

Washington, DC: World Bank (2014), xxiv, 303 pp.

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The Impact of Online Freedom of Information Tools: What is the Evidence? Part 2: Practitioner Study

Savita Bailur, Tom Longley

mysociety (2014), 62 pp.

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The Impact of Online Freedom of Information Tools: What is the Evidence? Part 1: Literature Review

Savita Bailur, Tom Longley

mysociety (2014), 39 pp.

"While academic studies on the impact of FOI are still surprisingly few and far between, many more studies are available as institutional reports (e.g. the 14-country study by the Open Society Foundations in 2006). Around the world, government and non-governmental organisations are launching web pla ... more

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Who is the Community in Community Radio?

Savita Bailur

Economic & Political Weekly, volume 47, issue 17 (2012), pp. 92-99

"Despite the enthusiasm for community-owned radio, a movement which has been steadily gaining pace since the implementation of new legislation of 2006, we are yet to find an understanding of who the community is in community radio. Through an extended case study, this analysis shows how “community ... more