Aidnography

There is always space for more snark, memes, satire or ironic commentary on development-related topics, so it is worth documenting a great teachable moment that happened on facebook yesterday; it basically confirms that if you maintain a great network, great insights are only a few connections away. This example does not solve the issue of filter bubbles and is by no means a cure for everything that’s broken on the Internet right now, but it quickly became a great, positive example of learning and respectful sharing. " Time Machine ", posted in September 2015 by Build Africa has received just over 2,000 views on YouTube so far, but it sparked interes ting comments on women's empowerment projects by educational NGOs focusin g on formal schooling: It started with a simple question: Friend 1: Thoughts? Is it just me or does this video suggest that it is a girl's (sole) responsibility to get educated, not marry young, etc.; an undercurrent of victim blaming? T...

Hi all, Many of us will be celebrating Easter and/or enjoy a long weekend of sorts so this is a good opportunity to catch up with some interesting readings! Development news travels with Barbie Savior; Norway’s fake refugee camps for children; the white savior complex industry is alive and well; Angola’s Wikipedia pirates; INGOs have a right to exist-says ActionAid; MSF & 3D printing; Ellen Page as an imperial LGBT voluntourist; displaced dissent; from fail fests to learning; evidence-based policy crisis. Our digital lives : Virtual reality is the next big thing in (humanitarian) storytelling. Academia : Twitter creates academic hierarchies and celebrities; do we really need more PhDs in Canada and the OECD world? Enjoy! New from aidnography Opportunities and challenges of the European refugee situation for Communication for Development My main argument of this short post is that development, especially communication for development, experts based in the global North can cont...

There has been a constant flow of recent critical writing about traditional development and communication approaches* – often in the context of the current European refugee situation. As important as fresh debates about the ‘North’ and the ‘South’, ‘us’ and ‘them’ are – especially in the context of new communicative ecologies and mediatized development realities – I firmly believe that we Northern development and communication experts can, and should, play a bigger role in the debates ‘at home’. For the first time in recent history core ‘development’ issues have become part of domestic discussions and all of the sudden migration, refugee, humanitarian, poverty, peace & conflict and gender issues are no longer just taking place ‘there’. Among the very loud noise of politicians pretending to have ‘solutions’, shortsighted calls for ‘integration’ and a steady flow of equally shortsighted news broadcasts from the latest ‘front-‘ or ‘borderline’ the voice of development and communicati...

Hi all, After the recent link review #175 anniversary, the blog passed another milestone: This is blog post #401 ! Development news with humanitarian issues in post-quake Japan; 10 ways for deskbound aid workers to feel ‘fieldish’; the limits of NGOs speaking ‘for’ people; UN's discourse of impotent language ; data-driven ICT4D resources; Geneva orgs paying interns; next UN SG-female and feminist? Complexity book review essay; re-negotiating informed photographic consent; the trouble with the Gates’ – plus a really, really terrible long read on G4S and the private security business. Our digital lives : New research: Twitter pushed racial justice in the US – but hashtags don’t help Darfur; inside Amazon UK’s power-reviewer community wars. Academia : The pressure when researching digital extremism; academics (including those at #ISA2016) need to engage publicly; has Twitter transformed the PhD experience (well…not really?); Elsevier, Sci-Hub & the Streisand effect. Enjoy! New...

These are exciting times at our Communication for Development program ! As the spring application window for ComDev programs and courses i s now open until 15 April 2016 we have great educational opportunities lined up for you! First, the second round to apply to our flagship two-year part-time MA in Communication for Development is now open! You can find all the details on the ‘1-year MA’ page . This will be the first time that we will evaluate application letters for students starting the autumn course and based on our initial experiences for the spring course we strongly encourage you to submit a letter and strengthen your application! Second, it is now possible to apply for courses that will qualify for a 2-year, 120ECTS MA in Communication for Development ! If you already completed our 60ECTS MA program this is an exciting opportunity to return to ComDev for a full-time year of practice- and reflective learning! Third, our free-standing Communication for Development: Advances i...

Hi all, Even though the 175th edition of my link review is more like a 'small' anniversary, it is a good moment to go back 75 reviews and revisit my reflections from November 2013; essentially, not much has changed when it comes to the importance and joy of curating development (and digital media & communication) content: 100 weekly link reviews later: Why I still like curating #globaldev content Development news with women challenging the development power that be; a Silicon Valley’s intelligence firm’s uneasy business with the humanitarian sector; digital development watchdogs; apps gathering digital dust; the old song of SDGs; transparent, but meaningless: DFID’s annual reviews; ICT4D and lack of privacy; the end of the ‘management set’?; Airbnb in Africa; ethnographic insights into ‘China in Africa’; tackling ‘heropreneurship’ (with better jargon?) Our digital lives and meeting non-digitally plus Google’s surveillance capitalism Academia: ‘ Why we post ’ launches t...