Aidnography

This has become a pit of a pet peeve of mine, but I am getting increasing annoyed when colleagues announce new publications and only include a direct link to the (mostly) paywalled source. Especially on social media I often roll my eyes when links start with ‘ sciencedirect.com ’, ‘ tandfonline.com ’ or ‘ cambridge.org ’. Your exciting new product deserves better! For the majority of ‘members of the public’, i.e. ‘normal’ people on social media this will almost inevitably lead to the frustrating experience of being faced with a paywall; if they are lucky they can still read the abstract, but it still feels like missing out. I doubt that anybody would share your article further. I am, in fact, an academic with access to many journal databases-and I still find the experience of following a link to the publisher ’ s website frustrating! Most of the time I use social media on a mobile device-usually not connected to the university network which often enables direct access to the

Hi all, If you are celebrating Easter you are probably looking for some good readings for the long weekend! Development news: AP investigates UN peacekeeping troubles in Haiti; do we need less humanitarian crises appeals? The complexities around outsourcing surrogacy; extreme poverty to rise in Southern Africa; Skoll World Forum between innovation & buzzword bingo; ICT4D failings around Syrian refugees; how to protect staff who have to watch digital atrocities? Aid worker lives in the Philippines; Is ‘beg-packing’ a thing in Asia? Finding a good M&E guide; #allmalepanel. Our digital lives: Who benefits from ‘fake news’? How Al Jazeera grew its video audience . Publication: C4D Network Mapping study. Academia: A syllabus for the refugee crisis; #OER17 was a good conference; gendered academi a & women’s service load; the extinct species of the dangerous academic. Enjoy! Development news AP Exclusive: UN child sex ring left victims but no arrests U.N. officials

Hi all, Some writing took place ‘behind the scene’ this week, but there’s still time for a great link review with lots to explore across all the themes! Development news: Diabetes in Mexico; malpractice in Ghana; immersive storytelling; organizational growth-what is it good for?; UN bureaucracy in Lebanon; the forests of the Congo Basin; BBC Media Action’s new data portal; gender security for aid workers; case studies on drones for humanitarian use; African podcasts. Our digital lives: Digital newsrooms in Botswana & Sri Lanka; the demands of friendliness; love in the time of cryptography. Publications: New books on industrialization, doughnut economics, cultural anthropology, women in the digital sector & Nepal’s peace process. Academia: A day in the life of an academic mom; rules for academic commentary in media; crowdsourcing needs more scrutiny; the myth of tenured radicals in the neoliberal university. Enjoy! Development news "A career-defining experience"

Hi all, A busy week wrapped up with a fresh book review and the Friday link collage! Development news: Why do expats earn more than locals? Southern online workers (also) get a rough deal; advice on development career starts; Niger Delta suffocating in oil; how dangerous was Zika? More on chickens & cash; Comic Relief needs to become political; gendered leadership gap; the irony of accessing the humanitarian ICT forum remotely; burnout in the field. Our digital lives: Facebook fundraiser individualize risk & support; do-good capitalism is a lie; AI misinformation epidemic; #NakedDiplomacy Academia: Female sessional instructors’ heavy gender toll; Elsevier & Dutch open access; can universities have local and global engagement? Enjoy! New from aidnography Failing in the field (book review) And while the short and very well written text provides some practical insights into how to learn from failure in development field research, the further along t

I bought Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel’s book Failing in the field: What we can learn when field research goes wrong as a potential addition to our Research Methods course reading list. And while the short and very well written text provides some practical insights into how to learn from failure in development field research, the further along the book I read, the uneasier I grew about some of the underlying discourses of the book. First and foremost, the book is about randomized controlled trials (RCTs), surely the authors’ expertise, and at no point in the book is the view on field research broadened. Today, conversations about poverty alleviation and development are much more focused on evidence than they were before-a shift due, in large part, to the radical drop in the price of data and the growth of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) (p.2). This obviously sets the tone for the book, but it also phrases ‘failing’ and ‘field research’ in a certain way right away: Failing happ