While perusing the latest issue of a journal that I try to follow regularly (Information, Communication & Society), I came across a piece entitled “NGOs, the Internet and Sustainable Rural Development: The Case of Indonesia.” It was written by Yanuar Nugroho, a research associate at the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, and published in February 2010.

Nugroho mentions the importance of sustainable rural development in Indonesia, and praises the role that NGOs have played in such development. At the same time, he points out that little research has examined how NGOS actually engage with the issue of sustainable rural development. Nugroho is interested in exploring this engagement by looking at how NGOs use internet technology.

His study uses surveys, in-depth interviews and a series of workshops from a total of 390 NGOs to uncover various strategies. One issue he touches on is networking: the research demonstrates a significant expansion of the Indonesian NGO network, both nationally and globally. He also finds that the internet plays an important role in building the NGO movement: Communication between global NGOs facilitates more awareness of the Indonesian situation and thus collaboration with Indonesian NGOs.

In conclusion, Yanuar Nugroho argues that such internet use has contributed to “the widening of organizational perspectives, expansion of organizational networks and thus the increase of organizational influences in the society, including in the furtherance of rural sector reform and development.”

Research like this is valuable in better understanding the role the internet plays in NGO communication. Like Nugroho says, such uses lend support to the case that the internet can be viewed as a tool for social reform and sustainable development.

The recent tragedy in Haiti left citizens in other parts of the world eager to help. Most people, unskilled in disaster relief and not possessing emergency medical training, turned to donations of either money or goods.

Aid and development organizations have well-established methods of facilitating online donations, but they are also incorporating Web 2.0 applications into the process. For example, Oxfam America made it possible for online donators to publish a news update on their Facebook page, announcing the donation to friends and urging others to participate.

The American Red Cross praised the use of social media in spreading the word about Haiti. Geoff Livingston at Mashable quoted Wendy Harman, the social media manager at the American Red Cross: “The speed and quantity with which the American public retweeted and posted to Facebook the need for donations…was unprecedented…This was the first time I truly felt like people were using these tools to take action for good. I have no doubt it wouldn’t have spread so widely without social media.”

In such cases social media presents a fascinating evolution for fundraising. Individuals – already aided by the ease of online donations – are now able to share their decision to donate with their online networks, often numbering in the hundreds. Whereas donation was limited to a solitary act in the past or emailed to a select number of friends, this new tactic may in fact help bolster donations, particularly in highly publicized emergency situations.

However, such a claim is not yet warranted. I’d be very interested to know if this tactic does indeed result in increased donations – or, for that matter, increasing awareness of an issue. For example, if you see that a friend of yours has donated to a particular charity, are you more likely to consider donating yourself?

Nielson recently polled Facebook users in the US, the UK and Australia and found that 39 percent of Facebook users have donated money, food or clothing to help the disaster relief efforts in Haiti. But what this study doesn’t explore is how many of these users publicized their donation efforts on their profiles, and whether they think their online social network responded positively to their actions.

I hope to see more research in the future that specifically addresses these issues.

The journal Development in Practice recently released a special issue on Citizens’ Media and Communication. The publisher, Routledge, has granted free access to the 20 articles plus a guest editors’ introduction (written by Jethro Pettit, Juan Francisco Salazar, and Alfonso Gumuncio Dagron).

The issue is divided into seven subject areas, many of which may be of interest to The Broker readers, such as Media and Communication as Methods of Transformation (section III) and The Role of Media in Social Movements (section VI). See the website for a full list.

In their introductory piece, the editors argue that citizens’ media “contributes to processes of social and cultural construction, redefining norms and power relations that exclude people. Local ownership and control of their own media can allow people to reshape the spaces in which their voices find expression.” Two articles from the special issue can be used in order to illustrate this claim.

The first, by Usha Sundar Harris, is entitled “Transforming images: reimagining women's work through participatory video.” This article, which is an ethnographic study conducted in rural Fiji, looks at how communities engage with processes of production (in this case, through a participatory video workshop) for empowerment. The author shows that rural Fiji women use social capital (as defined as their relationships and social networks) to focus on the needs of the broader community.

The second I’d like to highlight, by Alejandro Barranquero and entitled “The state of the art in citizens’ communication for social change in Spain” talks about how despite a rich history of Spanish citizens’ communication, academics have neglected to explore this topic (for example, because of a frequent disassociation between theory and practice). The article provides in-depth content but also food for thought as to how to better understand a variety of national contexts and how development and academic work progress within them.

This special issue of Development in Practice provides a wide variety of writing on an important contemporary topic. The content looks like it will remain open access, so there is plenty of time to have a look at some excellent recent research on the topic of citizens’ media and communication.