Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
skip to main content
10.1145/1753326.1753484acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PageschiConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

MOSES: exploring new ground in media and post-conflict reconciliation

Published: 10 April 2010 Publication History

Abstract

While the history of traditional media in post-conflict peace building efforts is rich and well studied, the potential for interactive new media technologies in this area has gone unexplored. In cooperation with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia, we have constructed a novel interactive kiosk system, called MOSES, for use in that country's post-conflict reconciliation effort. The system allows the sharing of video messages between Liberians throughout the country, despite the presence of little or no communications infrastructure. In this paper, we describe the MOSES system, including several innovative design elements. We also present a novel design methodology we employed to manage the various distances between our design team and the intended user group in Liberia. Finally, we report on a qualitative study of the system with 27 participants from throughout Liberia. The study found that participants saw MOSES as giving them a voice and connecting them to other Liberians throughout the country; that the system was broadly usable by low-literate, novice users without human assistance; that the embodied conversational agent used in our design shows considerable promise; that users generally ascribed foreign involvement to the system; and that the system encouraged heavily group-oriented usage.

References

[1]
Videoletters Project. http://www.videoletters.net/.
[2]
Gurtong Peace Project. http://www.gurtong.org.
[3]
Oddcast. http://www.oddcast.com/.
[4]
Agarwal, S., Kumar, A., Nanavati, A.A., and Rajput, N. Content Creation and Dissemination by-and-for Users in Rural Areas. (2009).
[5]
Bell, G. Satu Keluarga, Satu Komputer (One Home, One Computer): Cultural Accounts of ICTs in South and Southeast Asia. Design Issues 22, 2 (2006), 35--55.
[6]
Best, M.L., Jones, K., Kondo, I., Thakur, D., Wornyo, E., and Yu, C. Post-conflict communications: The case of Liberia. Communications of the ACM 50, 10 (2007), 33--39.
[7]
Best, M.L., Smyth, T.N., Serrano-Baquero, D., and Etherton, J. Designing for and with Diaspora: A Case Study of Work for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia. Extended abstracts of CHI 2009, (2009), 2903--2918.
[8]
Blake, E.H. A field computer for animal trackers. Extended abstracts of CHI 2002, (2002), 532--533.
[9]
Cassell, J., Bickmcre, T., and Campbell, L. Embodied conversational agents. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000.
[10]
Catrambone, R., Stasko, J., and Xiao, J. ECA as user interface paradigm, From brows to trust: Evaluating embodied conversational agents. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell, MA, 2004.
[11]
Frohlich, D.M., Rachovides, D., Riga, K., et al. StoryBank: Mobile digital storytelling in a development context. Proceedings of CHI 2009, (2009), 1761--1770.
[12]
Hayner, P.B. Unspeakable truths. Routledge, 2001.
[13]
Hieber, L. Lifeline Media: Reaching populations in crisis. Media Action International, 2001.
[14]
Ho, M., Smyth, T.N., Kam, M., and Dearden, A. Human Computer Interaction for Development: A Brief History. Information Technologies and International Development, (2009), To appear.
[15]
Howard, R. The Media's Role in War and Peacebuilding. In G. Junne and W. Verkoren, eds., Postconflict Development: Meeting New Challenges. Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder, CO, 2005.
[16]
Kalathil, S., Langlois, J., and Kaplan, A. Towards a New Model: Media and Communication in Post-Conflict and Fragile States. 2008.
[17]
Kearsley, G. Public access systems. Intellect Books, 1994.
[18]
Kules, B., Kang, H., Plaisant, C., Rose, A., and Shneiderman, B. Immediate usability: A case study of public access design for a community photo library. Interacting with Computers 16, 6 (2004), 1171--1193.
[19]
Kurtenbach, G. and Buxton, W. The limits of expert performance using hierarchic marking menus. Proceedings of CHI 1993, (1993), 482--487.
[20]
Marie-Soleil, F. The Media and Conflicts in Central Africa. Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder, CO, 2007.
[21]
Medhi, I., Sagar, A., and Toyama, K. Text-free user interfaces for illiterate and semi-literate users. Information Technologies and International Development 4, 1 (2007), 37--50.
[22]
Melone, S.D., Terzis, G., and Beleli, O. Using the Media for Conflict Transformation: The Common Ground Experience. In Berghof Handbook for Conflict Transformation. Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management, Berlin, 2002.
[23]
Nielsen, J. and Molich, R. Heuristic evaluation of user interfaces. Proceedings CHI 1990 (1990), 249--256.
[24]
Plauché, M. and Nallasamy, U. Speech interfaces for equitable access to information technology. Information Technologies and International Development 4, 1 (2007), 69--86.
[25]
Price, M.E. Restructuring the Media in Post-Conflict Societies: Four Perspectives the Experience of Intergovernmental and Non-governmental Organizations. Cardozo Online Journal of Conflict Resolution, (2000).
[26]
Ropers, N. From Resolution to Transformation: The Role of Dialogue Projects. In Berghof Handbook for Conflict Transformation. Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management, Berlin, 2004.
[27]
Sherwani, J., Ali, N., Mirza, S., et al. HealthLine: Speech-based Access to Health Information by Low-literate Users. Proceedings of ICTD 2007, (2007).
[28]
Sterling, S., O'Brien, J., and Bennett, J. Advancement through Interactive Radio. Proceedings of ICTD 2007, (2007), 1--8.
[29]
Strauss, A.C. and Corbin, J. Basics of Qualitative Research. Sage Publications, 1998.
[30]
United Nations Development Program. Human Development Report 2007/2008. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2007.
[31]
Wyche, S.P., Aoki, P.M., and Grinter, R.E. Re-placing faith: reconsidering the secular-religious use divide in the United States and Kenya. Proceedings of CHI 2008, (2008), 11--20.

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Technologising Tradition or Traditionalising Technology?African Mind, Culture, and Technology10.1007/978-3-031-62979-2_4(59-80)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2024
  • (2023)Cultural Considerations in AI Systems for the Global South: A Systematic ReviewProceedings of the 4th African Human Computer Interaction Conference10.1145/3628096.3629046(125-134)Online publication date: 27-Nov-2023
  • (2022)Liberating Stories about a Terrorist AttackProceedings of the 2022 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development10.1145/3572334.3572380(1-7)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2022
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
CHI '10: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
April 2010
2690 pages
ISBN:9781605589299
DOI:10.1145/1753326
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 10 April 2010

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. conversational agent
  2. liberia
  3. new media
  4. post-conflict reconciliation
  5. user generated content

Qualifiers

  • Research-article

Conference

CHI '10
Sponsor:

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

Upcoming Conference

CHI 2025
ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
April 26 - May 1, 2025
Yokohama , Japan

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)19
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2
Reflects downloads up to 26 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Technologising Tradition or Traditionalising Technology?African Mind, Culture, and Technology10.1007/978-3-031-62979-2_4(59-80)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2024
  • (2023)Cultural Considerations in AI Systems for the Global South: A Systematic ReviewProceedings of the 4th African Human Computer Interaction Conference10.1145/3628096.3629046(125-134)Online publication date: 27-Nov-2023
  • (2022)Liberating Stories about a Terrorist AttackProceedings of the 2022 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development10.1145/3572334.3572380(1-7)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2022
  • (2022)UX Research on Conversational Human-AI Interaction: A Literature Review of the ACM Digital LibraryProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3501855(1-24)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
  • (2021)Intergenerational place-based digital storytelling: a more-than-visual research methodChildren's Geographies10.1080/14733285.2021.1916436(1-13)Online publication date: 20-Apr-2021
  • (2021)Outlook Towards a Syrian-Led Approach to Transitional JusticeEngaging Displaced Populations in a Future Syrian Transitional Justice Process10.1007/978-3-030-73970-6_6(101-119)Online publication date: 24-Aug-2021
  • (2021)Lessons from Liberia’s Transitional Justice ProcessEngaging Displaced Populations in a Future Syrian Transitional Justice Process10.1007/978-3-030-73970-6_5(89-100)Online publication date: 24-Aug-2021
  • (2019)Biographical PrototypesProceedings of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3322276.3322376(35-47)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2019
  • (2019)Digital Silence and Liberating StoriesExtended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3290607.3310418(1-10)Online publication date: 2-May-2019
  • (2019)Development through digital family stories in BangladeshProceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development10.1145/3287098.3287136(1-5)Online publication date: 4-Jan-2019
  • Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media