A Picture and A Thousand Words: Visual Scaffolding for Mobile Communications in Developing Regions

Abstract

Mobile communication is a key enabler for economic, social and political change in developing regions of the world. The authors argue that engaging citizens in developing regions in information creation and information sharing leverages peoples’ existing social networks to facilitate transmission of critical information, exchange of ideas, and distributed problem solving. All of these activities can support economic development. They describe Picture Talk, a mobile social computing application framework designed to facilitate local information sharing in regions with sparse Internet connectivity, low literacy rates and having users with little prior experience with information technology. Picture Talk runs on today’s internet-enabled smartphones as well as camera phones with multimedia messaging, now available in many of these regions.