Technobiography

Radio Browsing

September 7th, 2007 | by edXcribe |

Hi there this is Edong and I’m going to talk about radio browsing in this episode of Ka-Edong’s podcast.

Radio browsing; let me first have an intro about perception of the internet for people who have not used the internet. So let me describe this through a story.

I was assigned in Cuyo Palawan for one year. In Cuyo Palawan in the island where I was, we did not have electricity. We had a generator which provided a few households with electricity for around two hours in the evening. And back then, in 1998 our contact with the outside world was the transistor radio- of course we were looking in to AM programs. And in some of the news items there were news about the internet. So this is how rural folks-some rural folks hear about the internet and the wonder of the internet.

The thing is when you hear about the internet on the news, it’s usually bad news. For example, internet fraud-that makes the news, when there was news about the Franc Swiss scam-that made the news. And people who are not familiar with the internet they would say: “oh ok that’s what the internet is about, it’s about fraud, it’s about people stealing money from other people.” Other news items would include pornography, how a starlet has sued an internet service for publishing nude pictures of her which were edited and things like these.

And when people, who are not familiar with the internet-hear some things like these- They have a negative perception of the internet. So that is how my foster parents in Cuyo Palawan learned about the internet and I told them that this is just one aspect of the internet and there are many other interesting things about the internet things that are useful. So that’s just me talking to my foster parents about the internet. But there’s a better of improving the image of the internet and the World Wide Web to a greater population. To the population which does not have access to the internet-the people who are in the mountains, many of our fisher folks, the poor, people who listen to programs like the program of the late Ernie Baron, people who listen to the AM radio…who listen to DZMM. These are people who may have very limited access to the internet and have a limited perception of the internet.

This is where radio browsing comes in.

What is radio browsing? Radio browsing is a program where the DJ goes on the internet and goes on air on FM or AM radio. And then for 30 minutes or one hour on the radio program he surfs the internet and then via the radio he describes to his audience what he sees on the internet, what website he is visiting, what services are available       etc.

A radio browsing program could start off with explaining the concept of the internet and then having a few examples like search engines, travel, how to find friends, how to find information, how to find interesting facts, or how to find information on the weather. Anything that is appropriate for the audience for, the locale, for the current events, things that are happening. This program-radio browsing program is there to help its audience, the listeners to have a better understanding of the internet. Although the audience does not see the PC, does not see the browser, they are able to listen to the kind of information that is available, the kind of services that are available in the internet.

When I heard about this program being done in Bangladesh or in India, the DJ the, technology guy-the DJ who is doing the program described how he would talk on air about the web service that he is surfing at the moment. But the thing is, with them, he did not have a feedback mechanism, he did not know what his audience was thinking, what kind of questions they had.

Radio Browsing for the Philippines 

I got to thinking, in the Philippines there is a feedback mechanism-that is SMS. So in the Philippines, if there is a radio browsing program it could be a question and answer, something similar to Ernie Baron’s ‘Knowledge Power’. So there is a better interaction between the DJ doing the radio browsing and his audience. So for example, the DJ can go to a government service like sss.com.ph and then he could describe what kind of information they have in sss.com.ph he can describe the kinds of forms that can be downloaded form website, he can describe how to contact SSS, where the branches are, he could describe the kinds of online services available on the sss.com.ph website. These increase the awareness of the audience and make them realize that yes indeed that the internet does have some services available-good services available that people can use.

And then here comes the interaction between the audience and the radio browsing DJ. The audience can send asking questions about the service-about the website being featured for that day. And then and there can answer-“yes that service is available all you need to do is click this and that, visit this and that…etc”

That is radio browsing. Radio browsing in the Philippines can be done to improve the awareness of the people about the internet. This can be used to promote government services or non-government services, this can be use to promote local government services available to the citizens. And then this can be used to increase participation in online services.

That’s radio browsing. That’s a tool that Filipinos can use to further increase the awareness of our countrymen about the internet-not the negative side of the internet but maybe both the positive and negative side of the internet.

That’s radio browsing for you.

 

podcast permalink: Radio browsing 

EdXcribe

04 September 2007
Technobiography