Aidnography

Hello all, As we are starting a fresh week, we all deserve some good, critical readings for the breaks, waits or evenings... The Development news section features sex (well, in the context of development and health work...); open data hypocrisy courtesy of USAID and the World Bank that continue to preach open water and drink closed off wine; how Mark Zuckerberg has become a 'natural leader' in philanthropy (hint: he has money...lots of it!); a long and sad read from on the 'forgotten' crises in the Central African Republic; the question of how and what we should pay participants of C4D campaigns & new reports; Our digital lives starts with quite a disturbing long-read into the work and lives of global content moderation workers; a veteran blogger reflects on 20 years of blogging; Academia & Anthropology looks at new research on social media use for science communication; I still disagree with Jill Rettberg on her decision to pay 7500 pounds for her open acc...

Forgive the catchy headline, but this is still a development blog ;)! To answer my question straight away: No, of course not. But wait, there’s more… In a recent NPR feature How Millennials Are Reshaping Charity And Online Giving Elise Hu shared the story of Charity Water founder Scott Harrison: Harrison volunteered to spend the next two years in West Africa. What he found when he first got to Liberia was a drinking water crisis. He watched 7-year-olds drink regularly from chocolate-colored swamps — water, he says, that he wouldn't let his dog drink. Most childhood diseases in the developing countries he visited could be traced to unsafe drinking water, so everything changed for Harrison. He got inspired to start raising money for clean water when he returned to the states, but his friends were wary But this is not a critical post about Charity Water and development entrepreneurs (there was a nuanced debate on the organization over at Humanosphere last year). The real dynamit...

Hi all, This week's revi ew comes live from Istanb ul where UNICE F and academics are going to discuss child rights in the digital future. And there are plenty of interesting links and read ings to be discovered ! New publication s focus ing on the digita l representations; more on the recurring theme on all-male panels and conferences , RCTs, sanitation in Ba ngladesh, Ebola & global governance, Ebola & failed technology , expat living without staff; in our digital lives we ask whether you should y ou stop reading news, explore the a ge of 'super- excitedness', learn about the future of tra nsportation in a brilliant piece of critical futuristic wr iting, and visit Zadie Smith's 'beach' in Manhattan ...the academic links focus on twittering scientists, the emergence of 'non -elite journals' and an interview with anthropological blogging veteran Savag e Mind! Enjoy! New from aidnography Should the voices of senior consultants feat...

It has probably happened to you before as well: Every so often I receive a short facebook message or email by a senior development consultant – women and men with probably 15, often 20 or more years of paid professional employment inside the ‘aid industry’ – they basically started before it was even called an ‘industry’! The messages are usually short, sometimes straight from ‘the field’ (i.e. really uncomfortable, dangerous and complex locations ) and often along the lines of ‘little do you/that researcher/this journalist really know about organization X or the crisis in region Y’. But with very few exceptions, these voices rarely make into the development blogosphere , let alone find their way into virtual, classroom or policy discussions. The proverbial ‘I will write a book about my time in the industry once I have retired’ approach only works for very few and even if they manage to write that book, the distance of a few years between what happened in, say, Rwanda and the publica...

Hi all, It's Friday and time for some recommended readings! New publications, development news with a peace & conflict focus, digital lives with Firec hat, traveling chef Anthony Bourdain and V ice news ' missing Chinese wall between content and mar keting (?); an open access issue of Anthropology Matters and the question of how Oxford's PPE degree fosters elite group -think. Enjoy! New from aidnography Celebrity development bullshit bingo-Victoria Beckham UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador appointment speech edition I went to Cape Town and I was so touched by the women that I met. I felt inspired and I came home and I knew that I had to do something. I didn’t know what I had to do, but I knew I had to do something. Victoria Beckham ticks basically all the boxes of how not to communicate development as a celebrity ambassador... The development-digital lives-academia tweet of the week (via Brian Gaensler) : No women winning your prestigious fellowships? Here are some...

Nobody said the work and life of a communication for development researcher would be easy! Therefore, I conducted painful field research by transcribing a 1:40 minute video recording of Victoria Beckham's appointment press conference as a new UNAIDS International Goodwill Ambassador.  As it is also Friday afternoon I invite you to use her template for a round of development bullshit bingo! I already underlined key words and terms-so go ahead and indulge in a very bad example of celebrity savior complex discourse! I am a passionate supporter of women . I want to support women . I want to empower women and I believe that everybody has the right to a healthy life. I’m a mother , I’m a woman. I want to do whatever it is I can do to lend my voice , raise awareness . This is something I feel really passionately about. I recently visited South Africa…I was so… touched …(you went to Cape Town?)…I went to Cape Town and I was so touched by the women that I met. I felt inspired and I c...

Hello all, A note on the 300th blog post Wow! Blog post no. 300...how time flies! Before we move to another comprehensive link review, I want to take a moment to thank you, dear readers, fellow bloggers, students & random people of the Internet, for an amazing virtual time! In some ways, this has been the most rewarding research project I have undertaken so far and at the same time, it does not feel like a research project at all...it has become a reflection and learning space-and, more importantly, a cherished alternative space that provides some balance to the formal writing aspects of academia-from peer-reviewed articles to proposals, from student feedback to meeting notes; I am fortunate that blogging is part of my job and that is has influenced publications, teaching and my engagement with the digital development community. Again, thank you for reading, sharing, doing great things and discovering gems in the wide ocean of the virtual world on which Aidnography's little ...