2017 ICT4D Conference

How can a refugee in Beirut’s Shatila camp continue her studies? What are the long-term risks of the genetically-modified crop for farmers in Bangladesh? How could members of an ethnic group in Myanmar effectively highlight police brutality? Millions of people worldwide, especially underprivileged communities, struggle to make their voices heard and receive information crucially important for their lives. Gaining access to vital information online is particularly difficult. In the digital world, freedom of expression and access to information is challenged in new ways by undemocratic regimes, inequality, corruption, and high internet costs. DW Akademie tackles this problem by using innovative approaches to develop new methods to design projects using digital technologies.

As Germany’s leading institution for international media development DW Akademie believes that these basic human rights can only be realized when all people are able to freely and independently communicate online. Moreover, this enables them to realize other human rights. In a historic step, the UN has included the right to access information as part of the SDGs, which also pledge to increase affordable access to the internet.

The presentation will feature three case studies where DW Akademie is working on digital solutions to strengthen access to information, and thus support the achievement of the SDGs. A website for refugees in the Shatila camp to facilitate integration, a content-exchange platform for community radios in Bangladesh, and a national news hub for small ethnic media outlets in Myanmar, are all instances where we use a human-centered approach and develop new methods to design projects using digital technologies. These pilots are involving the users from the very beginning, setting up an iterative process with continuous cycles of prototyping, testing and harnessing data to increase impact. The session at the conference will present these initiatives, share the lessons learnt from the ongoing projects and interactively exchange experiences with the audience.
Hashtag: #data4mediadev