Promoting diversity in media at the Big Tent Activate Summit in Delhi
The media is powerful. It informs public opinion and influences policy. But while the world has never been more connected, millions of voices worldwide still go unheard as a result of poverty, social exclusion and political repression. Without the power to share information, some of the most critical news falls under the radar. Corruption and abuse go unreported, successes and innovation go unnoticed and the opinions of the majority remain undocumented.
While India has a strong and active civil society, the media is still driven by the educated middle to upper classes. Those who are most vulnerable in society are also the least likely to report on their experiences. Slum dwellers, those from rural communities particularly women and girls, those with disabilities, and those from marginalised castes within Indian society are overlooked as sources, contributors and reporters.
As one Delhi-based blogger said: "It is easy to find instances of media manufactured struggles in India if the victims are elite, educated or middle class but to say the same for this very media taking up the causes of the underprivileged, oppressed or rural masses is difficult. No wonder there is hardly any coverage of Vidharba farmer suicides or of atrocities on Dalits across the length and breadth of the country."
By 2020 India will have the biggest internet market in the world, with 600 million online users. However, the people generating and consuming online news and digital information will be those who already have access to disposable income, already enjoy a relative level of social freedom and live within reach of a sufficiently developed infrastructure to allow for connectivity.
According to the Internet and Mobile Association of India, only 2% of rural India currently has access to the web and around 18% of those rural internet users have to walk more than 10km to access the web. However, approximately one in two rural households now has a mobile phone. India has one of the lowest call tariffs in the world and NGO and government authorities are already drawing on the high mobile prevalence to deliver education, health advice and mass development messages to rural districts.
Mobile can also offer a cheap and easy means for traditionally voiceless communities to share news that has an impact on their daily lives. At a time when media budgets are being cut and overseas staff reduced, mobile is a great way to source information from within hard-to-reach groups, track stories as they develop and gather fresh, diverse opinions.
With that in mind, the Guardian has teamed up with Radar, a communication rights organisation that harnesses the power of mobile as a tool for diverse citizen reporting in areas with few resources and low connectivity. Instead of introducing new hi-tech equipment, Radar trains people to report using whatever they have in their pockets, from old Nokias to smart phones.
In the run up to the Big Tent Activate Summit in India, Radar are holding a series of practical training workshops for representatives from the most under-represented communities in Indian society including Dalit women, rural farming communities, youth with disabilities and female slum dwellers. The workshops, to be held in Delhi and Himachal Pradesh, will train people on how to capture news and opinion via mobile and share that by text message.
All trainees gain a basic grasp of reporting principles and information verification as well as a chance to develop story ideas. Radar runs a central hub from London that receives these SMS reports and subjects them to a swift yet rigorous editorial process before broadcasting them online and alerting international editors.
The Guardian Foundation and Yasir Mirza, Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Guardian News and Media, are partnering with Radar in order to help bring these unheard and marginalised voices to the event. 
Yasir says: "Tapping into the wealth of diverse and marginalised voices out there is central to what we are trying to achieve with truly ground breaking and open journalism. It's easy to talk, but we need to get out there and provide the means and tools for these voices to be heard, drawing them in using our platforms and influence."
During the summit, Radar will be running the hub from within Big Tent Activate so that these SMS reports can be broadcast direct to the conference from a screen in the networking area. Newly trained citizen reporters will be sitting in sessions and sharing live information with the Radar India network via SMS. There will be a focus on the social, cultural and economic impact of the digital divide on India's marginalised communities and solutions for access and inclusion.
In the lunch break, five of the Delhi-based citizen reporters will have the chance to pitch a story idea to a panel of Guardian and Indian national editors. In a Dragon's Den style, each editor will be encouraged to 'invest' their interest in the development of one of those stories in partnership with Radar.
In keeping with the Guardian's aim to promote diversity and open journalism, this project uses the most simple mobile technology to bring together community leaders, activists and citizens from the most marginalised groups within Indian society and ensure their active engagement with this high-level summit.
Libby Powell is founding director of Radar, a communication rights organisation training and promoting citizen reporters and media professionals in low resource settings.
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