The Value of Science Journalism: Rewrite

Science journalism, arguably like journalism itself, is a dying field. CNN slashed its entire science department. BBC cut a quarter of its science reporters. Yet, according to the video below, the challenges of science journalism are perennial.

From the beginning of time, science has been viewed as something for the elite only. And in the advent of media and informing the public, it continued to be viewed in a similar way: something only a few people could understand. Science is constantly misrepresented in the news. It is already difficult enough for a journalist, who might not be trained in a particular field, to understand it and reduce it to the terminology of eighth-grade English. Sometimes events are only reported if they are thought to be game-changers, overthrowing long-held theories like Darwinism or climate change. The incremental nature of science is not understood. Scientists are portrayed as people who can never agree. Misconception abounds.

The video ends with the vague statement that changes need to be made to save science journalism.

This is true. And these changes need to take place in the way that people view science.

In the above video, Elinor Bartle, a science journalist, says that the field is valuable because it serves as a bridge: it popularizes science. It explains scientific topics in an enthusiastic ways, ways in which scientists are unable to do themselves.

Any other section of a newspaper is written in this same style. Because people care about business and international affairs and what is going on in the local beat. Why not science as well?

The change needs to begin at the educational level. The challenge lies in making people understand from an early stage that, whether they personally are interested in science or not, whether they want to understand it or not, that it influences their lives every day. And if they have opinions on a wide variety of social and political topics, science should be among those topics.

In high school, I was required to conduct an independent scientific research project. Though my preferred career path - journalism - is far from science, I was left with an appreciation of how important science is, how my project (which dealt with the negative effects that iPods have on hearing in teenagers) influenced my everyday life. It is not what I want to do every day, but I still recognize that it is important. This is the change in attitude that needs to be seen in order for the survival of science journalism.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science gives out annual awards for excellence in science journalism. In 2010, Richard Harris of NPR won a Kavli Science Journalism award for a series that challenged initial estimates of the damage of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Deepwater Horizon was and arguably still is a hot-button issue; one can simply talk to a Gulf Coast resident or business owner to be assured of that. Without the work of Harris and his colleagues, and those who read his work and took action, the scale of the catastrophe might not have been realized for some time.

In this instance, understanding the science of the matter isn't the most important part of the issue. People will read an article about the Gulf Coast because, to understand how much money they will be making in the year or what will happen to their family tomorrow, they need to learn about the science behind an oil spill. Science is important because it affects us; it has become personal; in fact, it has always been personal. It isn't a matter of being intelligent; it's a matter of being informed. It's a matter of understanding the complex interplay of science, economics, history, culture, and politics to live one's daily life at a higher quality.

Therefore, I don't think that science journalists need to convince the public that science is important. Whether they actively realize it or not, this is a fact that they already know. The challenge is in forcing people to apply that knowledge to greater understanding and political and social action.

And once they do, I believe that they will find they have opinions and problems with how the system is conducted. The bias in the media on what topics are covered. The way that scientific institutions frame what they are doing. Just as journalism does for every other field, it must hold the system accountable. In the below video, science journalist Jean-Marc Fleury describes the necessity of this reporting.

Just like any other issue given attention in the media, I believe that science is a field whose value must be engrained in the population from the beginning: both in terms of its significance on its own but also its policy and day-to-day implications. In this way, journalists will eventually stop having to "sell" science in the media; like journalism itself, stories on science will be printed because they are important enough to sell themselves.

Mobile Banking in Uganda: an Example

In the video at the beginning of this BBC article, the reporter demonstrates how he is able to buy four samosas using transfer of money via mobile phones through Kenya’s M-PESA system.

According to BBC, across the world, there are over a billion people who lack a bank account but have a mobile phone. Seen from this light, using mobile phones for banking simply makes practical sense.

Not only can it be used for convenience, as in the samosa purchase, but it can often be necessary. How African societies have survived in a modern world without it is almost incomprehensible.

Michael Landau explains the benefits of mobile banking in Uganda in this video. He describes a scenario in which a villager arrived home to find his friend’s grandmother in need of medical attention but with no money to pay a doctor and no agents available to refill his mobile bank account with money.

In Uganda before the advent of mobile banking, “[he’d] probably have a dead grandmother and a weeks' worth of coming and going and moving.”

With a phone from which money can be obtained electronically, the doctor was summoned and paid within an hour.

Not only did mobile banking potentially save the grandmother’s life, it also saved money because she did not die nor develop further complications in her illness. Mobile banking lends itself to an increased level of connectedness and opportunities to live a more modern life.

This is just one of many advantages to developing mobile banking in African nations. 

A mobile banking system has emerged in Uganda in 2009. It was launched by MTN and reached 890,000 users in its first year, double what was predicted. By 2012, it is expected to reach 3.5 million users.

Mobile banking in African countries like Uganda is a new venture, mainly because it is an immensely challenging one. Uganda, like the majority of central African nations, is plagued with low incomes, high illiteracy rates, and large signal black spots. Additionally, it has tax rates as high as 30%, a disincentive to purchasing a mobile phone.

As a result, according to this BBC article, most of the private sector has cherry-picked the nations to which it provides mobile banking services, sticking to Kenya (with its successful M-PESA system), South Africa, and Francophone North Africa.

But the risk that MTN took by reaching out to Uganda may pay off.


Mobile banking creates opportunities, chances to lift people from the status quo, chances to alleviate poverty. According to UK International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell, "Access to basic financial services - the ability to save, transfer and invest even small amounts of money - can make a huge difference to people around the world. It can help a farmer to survive a bad harvest, or provide a slum-dweller with the vital capital needed to start a small business."


Additionally, according to Aletha Ling of Fundamo, it is more reliable. "Money gets sent from the cities to the rural areas where it is required. Less cash passes hands so it is much more secure. Previously people were travelling with huge amounts of money."

But the most important factor in providing this service has been a means for people in Uganda to trust those who are administering it.

With a largely non-banking population - only 38% of Ugandans use a banking system and only 7% have more than one banking service - most people originally didn't believe in the benefits MTN when it made its arrival into Uganda.

Said Gavin Krugel, head of mobile money at GSMA: "At first they don't trust the system. Then they can see that it works and eventually they start to leave some money in their account. This is how they start lifting themselves out of poverty."


The way that this is accomplished is through agents.


In Uganda, where 60% of the population lives in remote and rural areas, the only person who can handle money transactions are fellow villagers. While this lack of professionals may seem to be a disadvantage, it is a factor that works highly in favor of promoting mobile banking. Through the MTN service, these people are put through rigorous training. But their most significant asset is that they are already trusted by the community. They can serve as advocates and ambassadors of a technology that will change the lives of the people in their villages.


Realistically, when people have so few resources, they will not entrust them to someone they do not believe is worthy. So in order for a system to work, agents who are known to be reliable must speak for the system, and in that promote it more than any logical argument ever could. Uganda has used this fact to great effect.


Additionally, the media - particularly, the radio (which is a key way of transferring messages to a largely illiterate population) - has played a large role in promoting the MTN mobile banking service.


Yet the system is not perfect. Uganda reports several instances of agent fraud per week. But MTN says these agents are immediately removed and that rates of fraud are decreasing as mobile banking becomes more accepted.


The first challenge of mobile banking in Africa is to convince the private sector that central African nations are a worthwhile investment - and this has been done through the success of programs such as that of MTN, which has shown the private sector that they will need to invest in these nations to remain competitive.


In a MAP International promotional video, it is said the most important part of mobile banking is that it will reach out to the people instead of the other way around. This is why mobile banking is so necessary in Africa: because most people do not have the capability to reach out to banks.


The second challenge is that the people in these nations need to learn to trust the system.


Through agents, through accepted media such as radio, Uganda has seen staggering and unprecedented success in this area. The system is not perfect, but it is a model for other nations.


The technology is there. Now it is time to apply interpersonal skills and demonstrate how these resources can best work for the people.

Social Media: Ally or Impediment to Democracy?

In this video, Prof. Alex Sévigny of McMaster University discusses the potential positive implications of using social media in a political context. Sévigny describes its use as a relatively new concept that was embraced by the Obama campaign in 2008 to great effect. He says that the Obama campaign used social media to "drive real-world connections between people...[which] would translate into a more engaged electorate as well as people who were fired up and ready to understand and take up Obama's message."

That is the impression that most politicians seem to have of social media, judging by the amount of politicians at every level of government who have gotten themselves Facebook and Twitter pages in the last couple of years. If for nothing else, social media is necessary because of its universality. Yet Sévigny notes that increased amplification of political issues through social media could actually lead to a downturn in actual voter participation: if social media makes people feel already sufficiently engaged before they reach the polls, election day could experience even sparser turnouts.

Of course, the opposite could also happen, and that is what most politicians hope for as they continue to make dozens of Tweets per day and update their Facebook statuses on a consistent basis. But that does not mean that social media's role in today's society should be glorified; in fact, social media can be used as a way to control the message and keep the public even more uninformed than they previously were.

I will demonstrate my point with two examples: the Anthony Weiner scandal, clearly a negative issue,  and Pres. Obama's recent Twitter Town Hall, portrayed to the public as a positive utilization of social media.

In this video (until 2:40), Megan Lieberman and Ashley Parker discuss the implications of the Anthony Weiner scandal. Parker, a reporter for The New York Times, notes something I had not previously known: that Weiner was actually considered a connoisseur, so to speak, of Twitter before his scandalous photos reached the Internet. His honest reflection of his true persona won him many followers and arguably a larger voter base at election time. However, his scandal has prompted politicians to become even more cautious about the messages they are sending out and how those messages will be perceived by mass media. They often actively prevent the public from inserting their own opinion into what they say; Parker provides the example of Sarah Palin, who often uses close to all 140 allowed characters in her Tweets, to prevent people from re-Tweeting them with their own comments. The constant danger of revealing too much or displaying a politically unsound message, via social media, has resulted in politicians becoming less open to commentary and less open about themselves - two results that I view as contrary to democracy.

My second example, Obama's Twitter Town Hall, is a personal issue to me. This summer, I am working at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a non-profit that seeks to advocate public policy that accommodates the needs of citizens who need to use low-income housing. Last week, on July 6, Obama's Twitter Town Hall was an event that was important to the non-profit. The communications department had been fielding questions from our various sub-groups, which include low-income housing coalitions at the state level and other housing advocacy groups. We consolidated these questions and included our own questions, the most important of which asked Obama how he intends to continue to provide for the increasing amount of people who rely on low-income housing in a time when the federal budget is decreasing.

Yet during more than an hour of questions, Obama did not answer a single question that related to low-income housing. This disappointed many at the Coalition, who vowed that - should Obama hold another Twitter Town Hall - the communications department must forge better connections with those who select the questions that Obama answers.

But that's just the problem. In my idealistic view, the Coalition shouldn't have to play politics to receive an honest answer. Obama should be answering questions about low-income housing because it's an important issue, one that directly relates to the economy. With unemployment rates at 9.2% and the country in the midst of recession, Obama should be making a priority of dealing with the nation's economic issues and answering questions truthfully about how he intends to deal with them.

Instead his Twitter Town Hall, meant to forge open communication between Obama and the American public, proved to accomplish just the opposite. Obama's Twitter Town Hall masked the fact that he was trying to promote his own image under an image of increased transparency. This article from the Huffington Post describes it well in its lede: "President Obama didn't say anything particularly newsworthy." Though Obama claimed he was not using the Town Hall as a means to promote his re-election campaign, he did use the opportunity to describe to the public the positives of his own administration and make pointed references to the weaknesses of Republicans, including their role in the debt ceiling debate.

Meanwhile, I suspect the National Low Income Housing Coalition was not the only group upset by Obama's lack of meaningful rhetoric. The Twitter Town Hall served as a disappointing example of using social media as a means to promote a crafted message and not the truth.

But is social media in general making people more aware? Perhaps. Can it increase voter turnout and election participation? Perhaps.

But can politicians use it to continue to play politics? Absolutely.

The effectiveness of mHealth technology

I admit that when I was first introduced to the concept of mHealth, I thought it seemed rather excessive: an instance of people using technology because it exists rather than because it serves some sort of productive purpose. As a resident of the United States, where most people can simply see a doctor if they have need of medical attention, the concept of needing a mobile phone to ensure one's health seemed somewhat unnecessary. But after Tuesday's lecture and after viewing the above video, I've become convinced of its merits.


The video depicts the proposed application of mHealth technology in an indigenous Amazonian region of Brazil. In Brazil, routine levels of immunization have just missed the standard set by the National Immunization Program. In order to raise these levels, a partnership between the United Nations Foundation, Vodaphone Foundation, the Pan American Health Organization, and the Brazilian Ministry of Health has set out to implement mHealth technologies in a remote indigenous Brazilian community in 2011.


In a press release from the United Nations Foundation, Adele Waugaman, the Senior Director of the UN Foundation and Vodafone Foundation Technology Partnership, says that mHealth technologies in Brazil will assist in three areas: quantity, quality, and timeliness of health care. 


According to Jody Ranck, who was an author of a report published about the study, "The ubiquity of mobile devices presents a unique opportunity to break through an often fragmented universe of health data." Though many indigenous Brazilians cannot provide themselves with basic human needs, they still own mobile phones, and this is a trend that is on the rise, with 55% of Brazilian consumers purchasing mobiles in the last year. Clearly, if a tool is to be used, it is the mobile phone: it is simply the best way to affect the largest volume of Brazilians.


In terms of quality, the best way that mHealth technology can make an improvement is in terms of simply providing more information. While transportation and infrastructure barriers often prevented medical professionals from knowing the true gravity of the situation in a population, mobiles make it possible for large quantities of data to be collected and analyzed. And in terms of timeliness, this analysis can be conducted at a much faster speed and solutions can be subsequently reached that much faster.


These are valid, albeit obvious, points in the favor of mHealth technology, and I would add two more: reduced economic cost of healthcare and increased accountability of medical professionals. As mobiles are continuously declining in price, and are so affordable that even the very poor can own them, they seem to be, in addition to universal and efficient, a cheap way of addressing a very large and complex problem. In terms of accountability, mobiles provide an indisputable record of, essentially, "who did what, and when, and where." This increases the pressure on medical professionals to do their jobs correctly and provide the best possible care to the indigenous population.


The vote is still out on the results of the Brazil project, though a paper is expected to be released this summer on its progress. However, I'm inclined to believe that the results will be in the favor of mHealth technology. In 2009, a report conducted by David Banta of the University of Maastricht and Rosimary T. Almeida of the University of Rio de Janeiro assessed health technology in Brazil, and concluded with a recommendation that the Brazilian government create a national agency specifically devoted to the field. Given that Banta's and Almeida's findings clearly showed the benefit of mHealth programs, one can only imagine that this need will have at least remained consistent, if not increased, in a world that has become increasingly reliant on technology.


While my view of it is not as disparaging as it originally was, I still don't believe that mHealth solves every medical problem. The largest issue that I can identify with mHealth technology is the fact that its capabilities may be somewhat glorified. In class, I asked Jody Ranck how he thinks that the role of doctors will change with the advent of mHealth technology; this led to a discussion in class in which it transpired that most people felt that doctors are irreplaceable. I would tend to agree.


The UN Foundation and Vodafone Foundation identifies seven application categories for the mHealth technology: education and awareness; helpline; diagnostic and treatment support; communication and training for healthcare workers; disease and epidemic outbreak tracking; remote monitoring; and remote data collection. While these areas are important, they are very general; they are not the equivalent of treating the woman with Parkinson's or the man with cancer. For specific cases, doctors are needed, and I am skeptical to believe that any technology can replace the necessity for that physical presence in certain instances.


Yet as I've learned more about mHealth technology, I wonder about their application potentially in the United States. In my senior year of high school, I conducted a statistical study that I presented at the national finals of an epidemiological research convention; my study centered on how lower-income areas of the United States tend to produce people with more health problems. It made me wonder if applying similar systems of mHealth technology, as done in lower-to-middle income countries throughout the world, might make a difference in the United States. It's true that problems in the US are not as severe as those in other countries: unlike in indigenous Brazil, there are few, if any, transportation barriers to receiving vaccines, for instance. But in an informational sense--using mobiles to transfer medical data or to communicate with a wide variety of medical professionals, especially those that poorer people may not have the means to see without proper insurance--mHealth in the US might be a worthwhile attempt. Though very few, if any, studies have been conducted in this area, I think it is a topic that can and should be explored.


mHealth technology has the potential to change healthcare in remote and poor areas of the world, and this could be seen in the coming weeks in Brazil. With few disadvantages, it is a fantastic way to use the resources that almost everyone has to improve quality of life on a global scale, regardless of socioeconomic status or privilege.

The value of 1:1 computing

To paraphrase Nicholas Negroponte in the article "Phone vs. Laptop," technology lends itself to increased connectivity. The reason that many countries of lower socioeconomic status are called "third world" is because they are truly of a different sphere than prosperous "first world" nations. This disconnect from the resources and advantages of "first world" nations is a contributing factor to their lack of success. Therefore, to improve their chances at success, they must be connected to those nations that can provide them with an example of how to better their status. With this connection comes the possibility and necessity of education.

The value of 1:1 computing is that it allows more people to become more connected, which theoretically should lead to more people becoming education. However, the issue isn't this straightforward. What needs to be realized is that different nations are, simply, different. Every nation will start out at a different level of disconnect and have different needs to bring it up to speed. What may work in one nation may not work in another. To simply hand every child a laptop, expect that child to teach himself how to use it and apply the information he has learned, and that they and their nation will suddenly become that much more educated, is an unreasonable expectation. Specific plans must be developed and implemented to increase the chances of success.

Plan Ceibal, the plan that gave laptops to all Uruguayan children, has specific strategies that it plans to employ, including a new robotics competition and an online nationwide mathematics competition, to enhance the educational experience. Whether these plans have produced results remains to be seen. I do, however, believe that they are a step in the right direction. As much as it is true that children can teach themselves how to use technology, they also need to be steered in the right direction on how to use this technology for the betterment of their educations. Specific academic programs need to be implemented, perhaps in the form of games. These games should teach children marketable skills, such as economics and science. They should be enjoyable and interactive and bring the learning experience outside of the classroom. But the most important aspect of these games is that they need to be appropriate to the audience that is using them. In other words, the use of laptops for children needs to be geographically and age-appropriate to produce the best results. However, to tailor the use of 1:1 computing to differ areas and age brackets is a formidable task, one that will require much time and money. That fact should not be diminished, but it also should not discourage the potential implementation of 1:1 computing. While there is no definitive evidence that it clearly is effective, there is no definitive evidence to the contrary either.

In the above video, children in the Kent (WA) school district talk about the potential advantages that a 1:1 computing program could offer them. While they say that some students may take advantage of the new technology, most expressed gratitude for being able to bring their learning experience home and become more involved in their academic material. Ultimately, Kent's 1:1 program worked excellently, according to studies. Though practices in implementing 1:1 computing would be different in foreign nations than in a struggling community in the United States, there are still concepts from what happened in Kent that can be applied elsewhere. Studies found that the 1:1 computing system created higher expectations for students (and that they rose to the challenge to meet) and that it fostered creativity among teachers, who were expected to come up with innovative ways to encourage students to use their computers. There is no reason to think that similar results could not be occur elsewhere, and to me, this is a strong argument for implementation of 1:1 computing systems. Much of the challenges in third-world countries have to do with poor student-teacher relationships; if both students and teachers were encouraged to put forth extra effort, the learning experience would be extremely enhanced. Increased involvement on the part of both students and teachers is a lacking but essential part of the learning process in many "third world" nations, and perhaps 1:1 computing programs can increase participation and enthusiasm among both parties.

However, the practicality of implementing 1:1 is also questionable. In Benin, the cost of a PC is equivalent to a teacher's salary for eight months. Considering the fact that the success of 1:1 computing is still highly debatable, many wonder if it's a risk worth taking. I argue that yes, it is. We live in a world with such great possibility and as the UN stated, Internet usage- which to me, entails connectivity and education- is a human right. Whether 1:1 computing initiatives succeed or not, they are the best step in the direction of ensuring the existence of a future society that has the right to be as productive as possible.