Presented at the Mobile Web East Africa conference, Nairobi
4 February 2010

m-Novels for Africa:
A South African Case Study

Steve Vosloo, Shuttleworth Foundation

Agenda

Why mobiles for literacy?Kontax, an m-novelAha moments

51%

South African households that own no leisure books

National Survey into the Reading and Book Reading Behaviour of Adult South Africans (PICC, 2006) http://www.saccd.org.za/objects/sabdc_reading.pdf

6%

South African households that have more than 40 titles on their bookshelves

National Survey into the Reading and Book Reading Behaviour of Adult South Africans (PICC, 2006) http://www.saccd.org.za/objects/sabdc_reading.pdf

7%

Public schools in SA that have functional libraries of any kind

http://blogs.uct.ac.za/blog/sa-libraries-in-the-news/school-libraries Quoting DoEs 2007 NEIMS Report

The default device

Great infrastructureGreat coverageHigh uptake of phonesCheap dataMXit: mobile IM service (13m users in SA)Mobile web access on the rise in the townships(Donner and Gitau, 2009; Kreutzer, 2009)

Teens don't read enoughTeens don't write enoughTeens love their phonesMobiles for literacy project goals:To explore whether teens are interested in reading stories on their cellphonesWhether and how they write using their cellphonesWhether cellphones might be used to change their attitudes towards reading and writing

Explore m-novels as a compliment and alternative to printed literature

Would our teens read novels on their phones like in Japan?Can mobile phones alleviate the chronic shortage of books?

Rin, 21, wrote a mobile phone novel, with 400,000 hardcover sales.Photo: The New York Timeshttp://www.theage.com.au/news/world/mobile-phone-novels-ring-up-big-sales-but-critics-fear-forjapanese-literature/2008/01/22/1200764265347.html

Kontax: a teen m-novel

www.kontax.mobi
(GPRS-enabled phones or computer browser)

Aimed at 14-17 year olds

Written in English and isiXhosa (world first)

21 days, 21 chapters

Embedded in a lite social network

Prizes for comments and sequel ideas

Cross-media

Research design

Working with Assoc Prof Ana Deumert, Dr Marion Walton (co-authors of paper) and Assoc Prof Mastin Prinsloo (all UCT):50 teens from Langa and Guguletu (low-income urban townships)14-17 year olds who own/have daily access to GPRS-enabled mobile phones

Pre-story survey

Technology use observation

Post-story survey

Post-story focus group

Mobisite and MXit usage data

Kontax.mobi: Location

Kontax.mobi: Home language

Kontax.mobi: Comment times

Kontax.mobi: Comments by user

*What i like*Kontax is the most exciting thing that i've ever experianced i mean im not holding heavy book anymore its me and my phone

*Gr8 idea*I think this is the nxt best thng since sliced bread,cnt wait 4 the next chapter.its rly interestn,i cnt stand readn a novel bt this is diffrnt coz its jst lyk facebook

*Obrigado* Congrats guys dt ws a gr8 story thnx 4 d infortainment i lrnt a lot 4rm u till we mt again. L8r!

(On Song's Wall) Hey grl...curently im sitn wita br0ken ankl so i fl ur pain...lets gt thr0ugh ths 2gtha;-)

Kontax on MXit

Simpler experience:No registration, comments or Kontax social network

All 21 chapters at once

Marketing: 11-14 and 15-18 age groups

Go to Tradepost > MXit Mix > Education

>7,200 reads by teens>17,200 reads by all>2,000 competition entries

Kontax stats as of 15 December 2009

Page view trend (by chapter)

MXit: Ages

Research findings

Most digital writing takes place on mobile phones (but its short, like SMS)

Most reading takes place on mobile phones or on paper

Teens want to write their own pieces (poems, lyrics, stories, etc.)

The isiXhosa version was popular

Aha moment no. 1 Mobile phones are a viable platform for distributing longer form texts and enabling reader participation

Aha moment no. 1 Mobile phones are a viable platform for distributing longer form texts and enabling reader participation

Aha moment no. 2This removes the barrier of printing costs, putting information back into the hands of the people

Aha moment no. 1 Mobile phones are a viable platform for distributing longer form texts and enabling reader participation

Aha moment no. 2This removes the barrier of printing costs, putting information back into the hands of the people

Aha moment no. 3 Learning is social again (reversing the Gutenberg effect which mass introduced self-study)

Learning is social again (thanks to Barry and Patrick Kayton for this insight)

Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press

iPad of AfricaKindle of Africa

Coverage and awards

Future

One platform (mobisite accessible via MXit)

m-Novels and public domain books

Africa-wide

The proposition, the ask

Publish your content (entertainment or edu)

Engage your readers

Work those eyeballs

Business models: sponsorship, advertising, sell books/chapters

Publish our content: it's open and free

Create and share your content

Thank you

m4Lit: m4lit.wordpress.com

email: steve.vosloo@shuttleworthfoundation.orgblog: vosloo.netslides:slideshare.net/stevevoslootwitter:twitter.com/stevevosloo

Click to edit the title text format

Click to edit the outline text formatSecond Outline LevelThird Outline LevelFourth Outline LevelFifth Outline LevelSixth Outline LevelSeventh Outline LevelEighth Outline LevelNinth Outline Level

Main heading application

Sub-heading goes hereThis is mock copy, and only indicates the size, type of font and colour

This is mock copy, and only indicates the size, type of font and colour

www.shuttleworthfoundation.org

Column C

Cape Town0.362

J'burg/Pretoria0.23

Durban0.071

Other SA city/town0.327

Outside of SA0.008

No. of comments

00:008

01:003

02:001

03:001.#NAN

04:004

05:007

06:0012

07:0016

08:008

09:009

10:0011

11:007

12:0011

13:0013

14:0010

15:0020

16:0012

17:0011

18:0027

19:0019

20:0020

21:0017

22:008

23:0012

Column B

010.01

11140.07

15180.34

19250.45

26350.08

36450.01

461000.03

Other0.01

MobisiteMXit

1100100

253.47593582887741.5886653958861

331.72905525846728.2966798486443

426.084373143196725.4516486955532

523.885918003565123.0219920908134

623.351158645276321.0020199721187

724.242424242424220.3305926199892

818.954248366013123.7531650971578

919.904931669637618.296395345529

1019.370172311348817.4428859996017

1118.597742127153916.9023300805144

1217.052881758764115.7500924635125

1319.132501485442715.0701300179237

1416.518122400475314.2735212950582

1514.973262032085614.8169222452986

1616.339869281045813.3574212637628

1716.042780748663112.2763094255882

1814.379084967320312.4214060143959

1912.477718360071312.1881134598424

2013.012477718360111.613417166918

2121.449792038027311.7044581638169

Column C

Afrikaans0.053

English0.212

isiXhosa0.327

isiZulu0.133

Sotho-Tswana0.177

Siswati0.027

Xitsonga0.018

Tshivenda0.035

Other0.018