Social media & Development

Posts on development blogging & social media 

Social Media and Global Development Rituals: a content analysis of blogs and tweets on the 2010 MDG Summit

Forever Young: Kony 2012 and the quest for teenage belonging and community


5 questions for a post-Kony 2012 debate


Research on development blogging reloaded-new survey on audience and impact

Development evaluators, make blogging part of your workstyle!
 
Do we need an MA in Social Media for International Development & Change?
 
Twittering your MA? Development studies, social media and challenging dominant discourses
 
The globalisation of aid rituals-MDG summit and twittering about peace in Darfur

Popular posts from this blog

Squeezing development research juice out of the Millennium Village Project evaluation

Thirteen years after the project started in 2005, the Millennium Village Project (MVP) founded by Jeffrey Sachs, has reached ‘peak evaluation’ with an article by Shira Mitchell and co-authors, ‘personal perspective’ by Jeffrey Sachs and another comment on the ‘fog of development’ by Eran Bendavid in the recent issue of The Lancet (all open access).
"The Millennium Villages Project: a retrospective, observational, endline evaluation"

* The evaluation in @TheLancet: https://t.co/M1HkL8jR9s

* Reaction from @JeffDSachs: https://t.co/JWJBEAA8JV

* Andrew Gelman's (@StatModeling) summary post: https://t.co/zjTCd8Bw4mpic.twitter.com/X752Ffbgko — David Evans (@tukopamoja) April 14, 2018Some commentators were quick to point out that the final-final word may be left to yet another evaluation with a DfID-IDS-3ie-connection, but right now, the discussion about the findings is in full swing.

Not sure how I missed this, but the evaluation of the Millennium Villages Project is out. I didn’…
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Links & Contents I Liked 276

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Hi all,

After a short Easter break, your favorite #globaldev link review is back!

What I realized when going through 2-week's worth of content was how quickly a nice review shaped up that features powerful and empowering stories by and about women.
There are stories about women shaping the Canadian foreign service, Helen Clark's challenges as senior UN diplomat, how journalism contributed to social change on FGM issues in Liberia, but also on how menstrual pads and consumerism won't 'fix' debates on periods. There is also new research on women's care work and a post on the commodification of self-care.

The other theme for this week is how 'the digital' interacts with development and humanitarianism: From the challenges of employing digital volunteer humanitarians and multiple digital identities to questions of how social media contribute to crises, biometrics in the humanitarian sector and big data for resilience!

Plus: Skip the annual report, don't li…
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The Office meets global politics: New sitcom on life inside the United Nations

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I caught up with the creators of The MissionMarie-Marguerite Sabongui and Benedict Moran via Zoom in Istanbul to learn more about their UN sitcom project.
We discussed how to communicate development and international politics issues differently in an age of new TV platforms, satirical commentary as edutainment and what could be the beginning of a global movement of creative talent taking on the absurdities of the aid industry.

There is a lot of crazy, absurd stuff happening in the UN

Aidnography: I am always intrigued about new and different forms of how development issues are communicated-so naturally your UN sitcom caught my attention. What triggered your project?

Marie: Ben and I broadly work in the field of international development. I studied international development and environmental issues and Ben and I were both working at the UN in New York. I was a climate advisor for small islands at the UN and Ben the producer for Al-Jazeera’s UN coverage. We kept crossing in the…
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Links & Contents I Liked 277

Hi all,

Some of the highlights from this week's review: ICC prosecutes gender-based violence; how we are getting China in Africa wrong; OLPC in Madagascar; the blockchain refugee camp in Jordan; the value of communicating 'human experience' & in Japan an AI is running for a mayoral position!

Enjoy!

New from aidnography
Our Communication for Development program is hiring a full-time, permanent teacher & researcher!

Development news
ICC prosecutes Islamist militant on groundbreaking gender-based charges
The former extremist fighter is accused of a long list of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including torture, extrajudicial punishments and participation in a policy of forced marriage, which the court argues “led to repeated rapes and sexual enslavement of women and girls”.
Jason Burke for The Guardian on latest developments in how the ICC includes gender-based violence in its charges for war crimes.

NGO Leaders Sign Pledge to Show Commitment for Change
More than a hu…
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Should I consider a PhD in International Development Studies?

After the Economist’s piece on the (non-)value of doing a PhD and some comments later (e.g. Prometheus doesn't read the Economist (I like the slightly cynical dichotomy between ‘civilians’ and the ‘academic insiders) or the '100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School' (they are only halfway through so check it out regularly in the future...) I had an interesting conversation with a prospective PhD student a few days ago.
This was not the first time that I had been approached about doing a PhD and I always try to be as frank as possible, even playing the ‘devil’s advocate’ when it comes to the complicated ‘should I or shouldn’t I?’ decision-making process. At the end of our conversation I sat down and tried to summarize a few important and generic points from the point of view of doing a PhD in Development Studies and in the UK.
I understand that every case is different and involves a range of motives, options and rationales, but there a few important questions and topics t…
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