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Which Cities Care Most About Foreign News?

Friday, March 2nd, 2007

Over the past several weeks, PBS Frontline has had a tremendous four-part series called “News Wars” about the current state of journalism in the United States. If you have no idea when Frontline airs, haven’t watched PBS since the days of Sesame Street, or don’t have a Tivo trying to make you smarter, do yourself a favor and watch the series online. And even if you don’t watch, visit their slick web site - they’re only getting 80,000 visitors a day (as opposed to the Daily Kos at half a million).

PBS among many others has been lamenting the decline in foreign correspondents at national and local newspapers. While on a fellowship at Harvard last fall, Christian Science Monitor journalist Jill Carroll studied the state of foreign journalism. She found that the number of foreign newspaper correspondents had decreased by more than a quarter between 2002 and 2006. Many of the familiar reasons are to blame such as the proliferation of blogs or the uptick in foreign news sources like Al Jazeera that can be called upon. But it also reflects ruthless, short-sighted cost cutting. As Frontline noted, whether your consider bloggers journalists or not 80% of the blogs aren’t producing original research. We depend as much on the newspapers as anyone.

So which cities are best served by their newspaper’s foreign desks? Using the data in Carroll’s working paper (no longer online, I’m afraid), I calculated the number of foreign correspondents per million residents of the metro areas served by the newspaper or newspapers. Although I did include the Washington Post and NY Times, this measure does not count newspapers such as USA Today or Wall Street Journal which have a national or international audience.

Big cities do well, but big cities do not necessarily devote more resources per capita to foreign desks. Although Philadelphia has the fourth most populous metro area, the Philadelphia Enquirer halved the number of foreign correspondents from 4 to 2 between 2000 and 2006. Dallas reduced its staff from 7 to 3 and Houston eliminated all 3 of its foreign correspondents over the same period. Freelance reporting is not picking up the slack. According to anecdotal accounts, freelance budgets for foreign news have been slashed at mid-sized papers across the country.

More surprising is that intellectual San Francisco lags far behind glitzy L.A. and that gritty Baltimore employs as many foreign correspondents per capita as Miami. One note is that the mid-sized market of Tampa/St. Petersburg is well served by the St. Petersburg Times. It not only boasts the largest circulation in Florida, it is also the only newspaper that has not cut its foreign staff in the last six years. One reason may be that it is run by a non-profit foundation and not by a company listed on the NYSE.

Mission Accomplished in Somalia?

Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007

One week ago Ethiopian troops moved into the Somali capital of Mogadishu to quell the unrest. According to a U.S. State Department spokesman, the Ethiopian military did so at the request of the secular Somali government which has been battling Islamic fundamentalists in Mogadishu.

The invasion bears some striking similarities to the U.S. invasion of Iraq - perhaps even more so to the Muslim world. Ethiopia is a U.S. ally and a largely Christian nation with a history of enmity toward Muslim Somalia. Ethiopia seemed poised for a rapid military victory, yet completely unprepared for maintaining security in Mogadishu.

As we saw in Iraq, a power vacuum is fertile ground for extremists. Somalia’s secular interior minister ominously said, “We have a symbolic government. Ministries we don’t have, a military we don’t have.” Recent statements by Al Qaida spokesman Ayman al-Zawahri identify that Somalia and Iraq as prime Islamic battlegrounds in their war on the West.

The security picture in Mogadishu bears striking resemblance to that in Baghdad:

Six days after the transitional government took hold, very little security was evident beyond that which Somalis have grown accustomed to providing for themselves: roving pickup trucks filled with armed teenagers, and AK-47-toting militiamen who guard the city block by block, and clan by clan.

Despite similar conditions on the ground, there are important differences. For one, Al Qaeda was active in Somalia before the Ethiopian invasion. And unlike the United States, Ethiopia is appealing to the international community for assistance. With any luck the outcome in Somalia three years hence will also be starkly different from that in Iraq today.

Religion: Invaders and Invaded

Source: Wikipedia, statastic research

Same Latitude, Different World

Friday, September 8th, 2006

Days are getting shorter as winter approaches. But climate is not the same at every latitude. The jet stream gives Europe a more moderate climate throughout the year. The shadows will be the same length in Chicago and Rome this winter, but the weather will not be. We tend to associate weather to geography, but there are several surprising latitude equivalents.

Athens and Washington, DC share more than their love of Doric columns; they also share the same latitude. Istanbul in Iowa, pyramids in New Orleans, Red Square Alaska, and the Tampa Taj Mahal form a confusing impression of where latitudes from famous cities around the world fall in North America. Fortunately, the Canadians can speak some French to Parisians visiting the Vancouver Eiffel Tour. And most appropriate of all the latitudinal mix ups: Casablanca in Hollywood.

North America Latitude Equivalents from around the World

Can Innovation Save the Bottom of the Pyramid?

Friday, August 25th, 2006

Yesterday I wrote about the shortcomings of Prahalad’s book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. We left with the question of whether there was even a market to discuss. Several factors make it difficult to estimate disposable income at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP). Even if it is not a fortune, there is likely much more than a nickel a day of disposable income amongst the world’s 4 billion poor.

Most people in extreme poverty live in rural areas and derive much of their diet from subsistence farming. This means that relatively little of their income is spent of food. In family or tribe-oriented societies, there is also an income smoothing effect. Kinship networks, for example, mean that if one person in a family has a high-paying position in the government, many in the family will benefit. In addition, income such as flows from non-governmental aid, international transfers from foreign nationals living abroad, and the grey economy may be under-reported in GNP figures.

In response to Karnani’s paper, the WRI’s NextBillion.net noted that:

BOP households collectively spend money, lots of it, on a wide variety of goods and services, and are clearly willing to pay for services such as connectivity, clean water, financial services, energy, health care, and education for their children, as well as food, housing, and consumer goods. The BOP is already an economic actor, not just a passive, dependent group, and its collective actions define a market.

So there let’s assume that there is indeed a market of billions at the bottom of the pyramid. Should companies try to reach it? Karnani cautions that viewing the BOP as a vast market of micro-consumers is “potentially a dangerous delusion.” Let’s look more closely at his argument.
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Distribution and Economies of Scale

Concerned about the apparent gullibility of multinational corporations (MNCs), Karnani warns that:

“Not only is the BOP market quite small, it is unlikely to be very profitable, especially for a large company. The costs of serving the markets at the bottom of the pyramid are very high…. This increases distribution and marketing costs and makes it difficult to exploit economies of scale. Weak infrastructure (transportation, communication, media, and legal) further increases cost of doing business.”

Two words: Coke and Guinness. Both have very deep penetration in West Africa. Granted these are not going to improve the health and well-being of the BOP (though Guinness bottles do read, “Guinness is Good for You“). Somehow these MNCs have overcome the challenge of distributing and marketing their products across a large geographic area.

Regardless of infrastructure and marketing costs, the market will help align buyers and sellers if the price is right for each.
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Reducing Prices at the Bottom of the Pyramid

Prahalad’s thesis hinges on the idea that attracting more competition to the BOP will drive down product prices, thus freeing up their disposable income for other purchases. This is basically how Wal-Mart has made low-income Americans feel richer even as real income has stagnated over the last decade. But Karnani takes issue with Prahalad’s assertion that the private sector can deliver high quality goods to the world’s desperately poor at competitive prices:

“There are only three ways to reduce prices: 1) reduce profits, 2) reduce costs without reducing quality, and 3) reduce costs by reducing quality…. the only realistic way to reduce price is to reduce cost. The BOP proposition is adamant that we should not reduce quality in this process.

“Unless all the current producers are grossly inefficient, the only way to reduce cost… without reducing quality will always require a significant improvement in technology. Good examples of this are found in the areas of computers, telecommunications and various electronic products. It is difficult to find examples of such dramatic cost reduction in other product categories. It is not surprising that the BOP proposition repeatedly uses these same examples. We should also note that the ultimate impact on the real income of the poor due to these major price reductions is quite low because the poor spend only a small part of their income on such electronic products. The poor spend over 80% of their income on food, clothing and fuel – products that have not benefited from such dramatic technological changes in a long time.”

Let’s evaluate that last statement and have a look at how technology might help deliver improved food, clothing, fuel, and public health.

Food: There are constant improvements in pest-resistant crops, hybrid seeds, or high volume animal husbandry. Many famers in Africa still till individual family farms by hand. Certainly technology could help them improve efficiency which would lead to lower prices.

And technology improvements in computers and telecommunications do not exist in a vacuum. There are numerous positive spillover effects that affect the BOP as producers. The Washington Post recently reported that cell phones in Congo have enabled farmers and fishermen to “…use text messaging to check market prices, eliminating middlemen and increasing profits — and preventing long trips to the market on days it is canceled.” So a technology unrelated to agriculture has helped farmers saved on input prices (transport to the market on days when it’s canceled) and output prices.

The Economist: Real Apparel Prices 1993-2002 Clothes: Apparel prices have tumbled over the past decade. Much of this is due to reduced quotas on Chinese apparel imports in the U.S. and Europe. Thus, the assertion that “the only way to reduce cost… without reducing quality will always require a significant improvement in technology” is inaccurate. Clothing prices have dropped as a result of trade policy, not an improvement in technology. This does have a trickle-down effect for the world’s poor.

Fuel: Fuel has indeed become more expensive. Women have to scavenge farther for firewood. Oil prices lead Nigerians into the deadly practice of siphoning off crude oil from pipelines running through their villages. But technology can improve access to energy sources. Military applications such as SkyBuilt mobile solar power could find a market at the BOP helping medical centers or providing a short term power source for harvesting and processing crops.

Public Health: As patents expire on novel drugs, cheaper generic drugs will enter these markets. Playpump is an innovative approach to water delivery. LifeStraw promises to exploit economies of scale in order to drive down prices for its personal water filtration device. Rwanda's Market at the BOP

Technology: Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story about an American entrepreneur, Greg Wyler, who was building an Internet infrastructure in Rwanda. The focus of Terracom is to first focus on market access, then profits. Mr. Wyler might disagree with Karanani’s ideas about providing a quality product at reasonable prices for the poor. He is quoted as saying, “We’re on a mission here to see what happens when we drive prices down and quality up.”

And lest you think that Rwanda is an obvious market for an outside investor, have a look at the graph at the right.

As WRI writes in response to Karnani’s critique:

The pertinent development question is whether the BOP is well served by the present (often informal) markets, and whether there are unmet needs that could be better served by more competitive markets and broader participation by the legitimate private sector.

I believe that private sector innovation help can drive prices lower, maintain or increase quality, and help deliver goods that result in better livelihoods for those at the bottom of the pyramid. But what if multinationals start marketing products that the poor don’t need? Are BOP consumers rational economic actors? Or is Karnani correct when he says that, “The problem is that the poor often make choices that are not in their own self interest.”

Is There a Market at the Bottom of the Pyramid?

Thursday, August 24th, 2006

Wealth Growth map In 2004, C.K. Prahalad, a professor at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business published the groundbreaking book “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.” The basic thesis is that multinational corporations (MNCs) have concentrated their sales and marketing efforts on the richest citizens of the world while ignoring the 4 billion consumers who live on less than $2 per day at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP).

He asserts that introducing market choice to the poor will free villagers from local monopolists, creating a virtuous cycle of consumer access and improved product quality. MNCs that sell products in this enormous, underserved market stand to make hefty profit. And, as more and more companies turn their attention to the BOP, competition will drive private sector innovations that address the needs of the poor. By giving MNCs an economic stake in this market, they in turn will draw the attention to problems of governance.

Although the work is primarily empirical and draws too heavily from examples in India, the BOP argument is an intriguing one. It eschews the notion that concentrating on the poor should be relegated to a secondary “corporate social responsibility” initiative and takes an integrative approach to the private sector achieving what non-governmental institutions and multi-lateral lenders such as the World Bank have not: pulling billions out of poverty.

We should applaud the BOP adherents for their novel approach, an approach that too closely resembles the idealism typical of a first-year Peace Corps volunteer. It is only after the corruption, complacency, intestinal ailments, and constant economic opacity have wrung out the initial naiveté that the discussion becomes interesting.

And a dose of cynicism is exactly what Professor Aneel Karnani - also of the Michigan School of Business - introduces in a recently-released working paper, “Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: A Mirage.” He asserts that:

“Rather than focusing on the poor as consumers, we need to view the poor as producers. The only way to alleviate poverty is to raise the real income of the poor.”

Professor Karnani’s basic thesis is that BOP de-emphasizes the role of government in providing basic services and that we must focus on building the capacity of the world’s poor by focusing on government failures in education, health, and infrastructure.

Unfortunately, non-governmental organizations have been focusing on failures of government for decades. Billions of dollars have been spent flying experts around the world to bolster child immunization rates, build water delivery systems, and advise on bankruptcy reform. As you can see from the map above, the last 27 years have been lean ones for many in the bottom of the pyramid. This is not to diminish individuals’ efforts or passion. It is only to acknowledge that it is a very difficult goal and multi-lateral institutions do not have a recipe, much less a consensus, of how to foster economic growth.

One of the positive side effects of the BOP argument is that it makes MNCs stakeholders in a new and underserved market. To be sure, there are fatal flaws in the logic and research initiated by Prahalad. But MBAs are new to development and we should embrace that wide-eyed optimism even as we critique shakey methodology.

Is there a Market at the Bottom of the Pyramid?

Karnani points out one inexcusable fallacy in Prahalad’s work: market definition.

Prahalad used the World Bank’s estimates for the number of people living on an income of $2 a day or less (poverty), and $1 a day or less (extreme poverty). Both poverty measures are at purchasing power parity (PPP).

Why is PPP important? Because no matter where in the world you spend $1 PPP it buys the exact same goods, regardless of local price. So that $1 PPP that the extreme poor earn in a day will buy you one loaf of bread in the U.S. Actual prices are much lower in developing countries, so that same loaf of bread might only cost $.10. The market at the bottom of the pyramid will not pay MNCs in PPP dollars; it will pay them in local currency, as Karnani explains:

“[Prahalad] claims that the BOP potential market is $13 trillion at PPP. This grossly over-estimates the BOP market size. The average consumption of poor people is $1.25 per day and assuming there are 2.7 billion poor people, which implies a BOP market size of $1.2 trillion, at PPP in 2002.

“From the perspective of a multi-national company from a rich country, profits will be repatriated at the financial exchange rates, not at PPP rates. In that case, the global BOP market is less than $0.3 trillion, compared to $11 trillion economy in the US alone – making the BOP a difficult place to look or a fortune.”

Another problem is that the poor spend about 80% of their income on food, clothing and fuel. Suddenly the $300 billion market at the bottom of the pyramid shrinks to $60 billion of disposable income at current exchange rates. Spread amongst 2.7 billion people, that’s about a nickel a day for disposable income.

Karnani also takes issue with the number of poor:

“Prahalad states that there are more than 4 billion people with per capita income below $2 per day at purchasing power parity (PPP) rates…. Most researchers argue that the World Bank already over-estimates the number of poor people, with some researchers estimating the poor at 600 million (The Economist, 2004).”

There’s no shortage of poor, I’m afraid. Sanjay Reddy and Thomas Pogge of Columbia University have written a persuasive paper that critiques World Bank calculation of the number of poor in the world. While they give no new estimate, it’s likely that the world’s poor have been undercounted:

“There is some reason to think that the distortion is in the direction of understating the extent of income poverty.”

So the bottom of the pyramid is left with billions of poor who have no money. Does this invalidate Prahalad’s entire thesis? More on that tomorrow.

If Planets Were the Size of Countries on Earth

Wednesday, August 16th, 2006

Either Pluto got a demotion or Xena got a promotion. Thank goodness the scientists at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) were sensitive to poor Pluto’s feelings. Owen Gingerich of Harvard University, who chaired the IAU panel said that:

“We might be demoting it from the list of eight classical planets, but we’re promoting it by making it the head of its own special class”

Pluto, Xena (aka 2003 UB 313) Charon and Ceres are tiny, distant rocks with wacky orbits. So the IAU decided that these not-quite-planets at the edge of the solar system (where a year lasts 200 or more earth years) will be called plutons. No word yet on whether this new category will rhyme “crouton” or “button,” though we expect President Bush to weigh in on it shortly.

So why all the fuss? Well, because Pluto is far smaller than any of the classic eight planets. Several moons in our solar system - including Earth’s - are larger than Pluto. In fact all of Pluto’s 16.7 million square kilometers of surface area would fit inside Russia. If IAU’s plan is approved, the four additional plutons will be classified as planets increasing our solar systems total to twelve.

Statastico got to wondering, what if the planets were shrunk down to the size of countries on Earth? If we scale all of the planets down to about 1/3600th of their total surface area, we can find a comparably-sized country for all of the planets and plutons.

The results? Jupiter would be revoking democracy in Russia, Saturn would be curling in Canada, Uranus would be trying to figure out how to speak Kalaallisut, Neptune would be desperately looking for water in Saudi Arabia, and Earth would be in Tajikistan searching in vain for Borat.

While the big planets get countries with huge tracts of land, you’re probably more likely to vacation on a Pluton. Zena would be playing World Cup soccer in Trinidad and Tobago while Pluto takes in the sweet sounds of Cesaria Evora in Cape Verde. Meanwhile, Charon would be doing some sunbathing in Martinique, and tiny Ceres would be snorkeling in the Dutch Antilles.

If the planets were countries on Earth

Sources: Statastic research; mean planet radius: Wikipedia; mean pluton radius: USGS

Notes: Surface area was calculated from the mean radius for each planet and assumes (incorrectly, I know) that the planets are all perfect spheres.

Planet images on the map are not to scale, not even close. However, the actual scale of 1:3592 does holds up surprisingly well. If you’re really interested click here for the percentage that each country over or under-represents each planet on the 1:3592 this scale.

Republicans, witchcraft, cannibalism, breast implants and terrorism

Friday, August 11th, 2006

Google Trends is statastic! Not many web sites get the statastic adjective, but it’s no surprise that the Google Labs have pulled it off.

Google Trends is an anonymous snapshot of worldwide Google searches broken down by the geographic origination of the search. My favorite part is that terms are normalized, which basically means that Google takes the search term that you’re interested in as a percentage of all search terms from the geographic area you’ve selected. Google explains here.

The word or words that appears at the top of each section were the search terms that people around the world entered into Google. In all cases except the last one, these are the top results from around the world. The last comparison between Arcade Fire and TV on the Radio was limited to U.S. Google searches.

Now to see what the world has on its mind!
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When Republicans Google themselves?

Top 10 cities around the world searching for the word “corruption.”

Google Trends: Corruption

Hope the Romanians are voting in the midterms

Top 4 regions around the world searching for the words “democrat” and “republican.”

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Google Trends: Democrat vs. Republican

Planning a vacation?

Top 10 countries around the world searching for the words “witchcraft,” compared to their search for “cannibalism,” and “spontaneous combustion.”

. Google Trends: Witchcraft vs. cannibalism vs. Spontaneous Combustion

We care a lot. But not as much as you.

Top 10 cities around the world searching for the word “Darfur.”
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Google Trends: Dafur

When men are in charge

Top 10 countries that searched for the word “sex” compared to the frequency with which they searched for the term “love.”

Google Trends: Sex vs. Love

Now that’s not funny

Top 10 countries searching for the word “joke.” I don’t get it.

Google Trends: Joke

Time for the Butter Cow !

Top 10 cities around the world that searched for “state fair.”

Google Trends: State Fair

“Well they’re both really important issues… the boobs, I mean.”

Top 10 cities around the world that searched for the term “breast implant” versus how often they googled the name of the Iraqi prison “Abu Ghraib.”

Google Trends: Breast Implant vs. Abu Ghraib

“Jihad” must mean something else in Indonesian. Besides, there are hardly any Muslims there.
Top 10 languages that searched for the word “jihad” versus the frequency with which they searched for the word “terrorism” and “al Qaeda.”

. Google Trends: Johad vs. Terrorism vs. Al Qaeda

What exactly are the Indonesians planning for?

Top 10 countries that searched for the term “UFO” versus how likely they were to look up “Elvis.”

Google Trends: UFO vs. Elvis .

Washington DC just isn’t very hip.

Top 10 U.S. cities that googled “TV on the Radio” compared to how often those same 10 cities searched for “Arcade Fire.”

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Google Trends (U.S.): TV on the Radio vs. Arcade Fire .

Who’s the Wikipedi-est of Them All?

Wednesday, August 9th, 2006

Sure English has the most entries in Wikipedia - 1.3 million at last count - but we also have half a billion native speakers around the world. In fact, it takes 250 Internet users to produce a single English entry on Wikipedia.

So which country is the most prolific? A mere 2 million Slovenians have cranked out 32,000 entries, and they only needed an average of 30 Internet users to write each entry.

And 8.8 million Swedes have produced a whopping 177,000 entries. So if anyone ever asks you how many Swedes it takes to screw in a Wikipedia entry on lightbulbs, the answer is 50. The punchline is that it takes 389 English speakers and more than 11,000 Chinese speakers to do the same. This is hardly surprising given that Sweden is one of the most industrious and entrepreneurial countries in the world, home of Ikea, Volvo and the Swedish Chef.

But look out for the Lusophones. The 210 million Brazilians and Portuguese have produced 169,000 Wikipedia entries so far, and while they’re not the most efficient, that’s still an impressive 28% increase in entries since April, 2006.

Here are the top 25 languages used to write Wikipedia entries. The first statastic is a snapshot of which native speakers produce the most entries per capita. The second measure shows how productive the language groups are given their access to the Internet.

Most prolific writers of Wikipedia entries - by language group Sources: Statastic research, Wikipedia, World Bank, United Nations Millennium Devlopment Goals Indicators

Notes: Chinese speakers count Mandarin and Cantonese.

Internet usage: Wikipedia entries as of August 9, 2006. Internet usage data is from 2004. In cases where a language spans several countries, a weighted average was used to determine estimated Internet usage data for a language group.

Name that Disputed Territory!

Tuesday, August 8th, 2006

It’s statastic’s first contest of contestation.

There are five disputed territories below. Once you’ve figured out the name of the disputed territory, match the letter of the description to the number of the correct map. The first to email me all five correct answers wins a prize. (Possibly the opportunity to buy Statastico a beer.)

Let the contest begin!

A. This region occupies the area between two countries with impressive corruption. Today it was reported that the independence leader of this potentially oil rich territory said, “The people have declared their own republic!” They also have a snappy new blue and white flag.

B. This territory has been a de facto independent state since a 1993 war forced 300,000 into exile. The geography is mostly mountainous forests, with tea and citrus plantations in lower areas.

C. The livestock of this unrecognized de facto sovereign state outnumbers the Muslim population by 7 to 1. May 17-18 is this state’s “Restoration of Sovereignty” holiday.

D. This separatist region has an economy based on the production of a strong spirit that appears on their currency, out-moded industry, and, allegedly, the trafficking of women.

E. This province is currently in talks with the United Nations about a path toward independence.

Note: Maps are not to scale, but they are oriented with north at the top.

Contest of contestation

War, Peace and Video Games - pt. 3

Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006

It should come as no surprise that war made quick inroads into gaming. It translates well: war is a vastly simplified solution to complex problems. War is good versus evil, it has an enormous historical body of work to draw upon, and it appeals to men who make up 62% of gamers. But in 2005, “shooter” and “fighting” games only made up only 13% of total games sales. In fact, when you look at the $1 billion computer game market, strategy games outsell shooter games by 2 to 1.

As games have become more sophisticated, they have also become less black and white in interpretation of the world. The gray areas are starting to be addressed by a genre of gaming dubbed “serious gaming.” Serious games include any training and simulation games - including the games developed for the military mentioned in pt. 2 of this series - and they are an emerging resource for policymakers as well as war mongers.

The DC-based think tank Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars founded the Serious Games Initiative to “help usher in a new series of policy education, exploration, and management tools utilizing state of the art computer game designs, technologies, and development skills.” A growing subset of serious gaming is known as activist games. Activist games are designed to raise social awareness of issues near and dear to many non-profits - issues such as poverty, war, environmental protection, even genocide. Nonetheless, the oxymoronic genre of “serious games” has met some resistance in the world of social activism, despite good intentions:

“It’s like what Adorno said, the idea that it’s barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz. But you saw this around film too, when it first started: ‘The medium isn’t serious enough to allow for serious discourse.’ I find it somewhat contradictory because people criticize games for saying there’s nothing good in them, nothing serious. But when games try to talk about a serious issue, they say, ‘You can’t talk about that in a game.’ ”

-Professor Ian Bogost, an assistant professor at the George Institute of Technology, whose book on serious games will be published next spring by M.I.T. Press - New York Times, July 23, 2006

So what do activist games look like? While some of the games have share war games’ complex interactivity in massively multi-player online games (MMOG), most are much simpler. These stripped-down games often reflect the limited non-profit budgets which support the development costs of activist games. And with few exceptions, activist games are significantly lower quality than commercial games, which may further limit their reach.

Activist gaming still faces an uphill battle with more mature media: video games are hard to create on the cheap. Activist leaflets are cheap, web sites and blogs for social change are almost free. But even comparing the motion picture media reveals that blockbuster independent documentaries such as Supersize Me, which was produced for a budget of $65,000, can be made for less than blockbuster games.

The game A Force More Powerful is a role-playing game that puts you in the position of planner for a nonviolent movement seeking social change, pitting you against a regimepowered by artificial intelligence. The game required $3 million in funding and sells for about $20. Whether it will break even is doubtful.

But do games that inspire social change need to be as complex and expensive as Sim City? The online game Darfur is Dying was produced with a $50,000 grant and has attracted almost a million users. And one of the most simple and effective meassages highlighted below is conveyed in the editorial game September 12. The harder you try to exterminate the terrorists with violence, the more you terrorists you create. Perhaps President Bush should have played this before he invaded Iraq.

If our president is unconvinced that his current tactics create more terrorists than they destroy, at least he can take solace in the fact that there is a virtual suicide bus simulation in development for the treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Games have come full circle to reflect the complexity of the world around us. They train U.S. war fighters, inspire terrorists, rally the local activists, teach diplomacy to the next generation, and treat the victims of our wars that exist not only in virtual reality.

A Survey and Screenshots of Activist Games

International Aid & Development Games

Food Force

About: World Food Programme’s “Food Force” simulates a country threatened by a hunger crisis. Acting as a humanitarian aid worker, the player completes a series of missions to plan and complete a successful emergency response. Players have to complete a series of missions ranging from dropping food parcels from the air to using food aid to rebuild a country’s economy.

Developer: United Nations World Food Program

Reach: Downloaded 4 million times in its first year online, audience target is children ages 8-13

Price: Free

Download at: www.food-force.com

Food Force

3rd World Farmer

About: Players manage an African farm, and are confronted with the difficult choices caused by poverty - drought, war, and starvation.

Developers: The first prototype of the game was developed as a students’ project at the IT-University in Copenhagen, Spring 2005.
Price: Free

Play online here: http://www.heavygames.com/3rdworldfarmer/showgame.asp
3rd World Farmer

Water Alert!

About: UNICEF’s unfortunately pedantic and un-engaging game, Water Alert takes you through the minutae of collecting water sample. This is more educational than most of the games mentioned here.

Price: Free

Play online here: http://www.unicef.org/voy/explore/wes/explore_1818.html

Water Alert!

Activist Games

Darfur is Dying

About: Users play the role of a Darfur refugee. In the simualation, your character runs to fetch water risking rape or abduction by Janjaweed militae before returning to the refugee camp.

Developed by: University of Southern California, Reebok Human Rights Foundation and The International Crisis Group

Funding: Reebok Human Rights Foundation

Reach: 700,000 in the first seven weeks of its release

Developer: Susana Ruiz, Ashley York, Mike Stein, Noah Keating, and Kellee Santiago - all graduate student at the University of Southern California

Cost: $50,000 grant from Reebok Human Rights Foundation and the International Crisis Group in partnership with by MTVu, MTV’s online network geared toward fostering actvism amongst university students

Price: Free

Play online: www.darfurisdying.com

Darfur is Dying

A Force More Powerful (AFMP)

About: AFFMP is a strategy game that is intended to teach budding activists how to use non-violent methods to influence government policies. Non-violent resistance tactics include training, fund-raising and organizing, protests, strikes, mass action, civil disobedience, noncooperation, and even such mundane actions as leafletting.

The game was developed by Ivan Marovic, co-founder of Otpor (Resistance) the Serbian youth movement, the non-violent movement that helped topple Milosovic in Serbia. Another apparent collaborator is the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), which claims to have helped oust tyrants in Serbia, Georgia and most recently Ukraine.

Developer: International Center on Nonviolent Conflict allied with commercial game developer Breakaway LTD.

Funding: $3 million from International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

Price: $19.95 Order here

Web site: http://www.afmpgame.com/index.shtml

A Force More Powerful

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September 12

About: Newgaming.com has created a new sub-genre of editorialized serious games that they call newsgames. September 12 is a simple, browser-based game where your apparent goal is to bomb terrorists who are wandering amongst civilians through an Arab market. When you bomb them, collateral damage kills innocent bystanders. Grief-stricken relatives are drawn to terrorism themselves and you see that bombing only produces more terrorists.

Developer: Newsgaming.com and Gonzalo Frasca, a game designer and professor at the University of Copenhagen

Price: Free

Play online: http://www.newsgaming.com/games/index12.htm

September 12

Peace & Peacekeeping Games

Madrid

About: Produced by the creators of September 12, Madrid was designed within two days of the Madrid train bombings as a memorial to the 192 victims.

Developer: NewsGaming.com – “This new site showcases video games that editorialize on current international news. Its team gathers a group of professional game developers and artists who believe that videogames can not only entertain but also encourage critical thinking. Periodically, Newsgaming.com will launch online video games related to major international news events.”

Play online: http://www.newsgaming.com/newsgames.htm

Madrid

Foreign Ground

About: A first-person perspective training game used by the Swedish military to that simulates peacekeeping operations. Instead of focusing on combat it deals mostly with solving problems using non-violent means without relying on duels and combat. The user play the role of a UN Peacekeeper and solves various tasks while on foot or vehicle patrol.

Developer: Swedish National Defence College

Web site: http://www.defencegaming.org/foreign_ground.htm

Foreign Ground .

Diplomacy Games

Peacemaker

About: Simulates the violence and political turbulence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Players choose between the role of an Israeli prime minister or a Palestinian Authority president, making policy decisions and communicating with the international community while dealing with unexpected violent events. The games teaches high school and college students about the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by focusing on the goal of cohabitation rather than on occupation and destruction.

“It’s meant to teach people about the different perspectives. It’s just a turn-based strategy game, but we’ve inverted the war model so it’s about conflict resolution. The end goal is to create a peaceful resolution to the conflicts.” -Eric Brown of Impact Games

Developer: Impact Games

Reach: Developers are currently testing the game in limited pilots and have not yet announced a release date.

Web site: http://www.peacemakergame.com

Peacemaker

Global Kids Island

About: “Second Life is a 3D virtual world in which the residents are provided with the tools required to lliterally shape the world around them. Teen Second Life is a space restricted to 13-17 year olds. Beginning in February, 2006, Global Kids has been exploring how to bring a youth development model around global issues into an island within this teen grid.”

Price: First Basic Account is free. Premium: ranges from $6.00 to $9.95 per month

Second Life blog: http://www.holymeatballs.org/second_life/

Global kids Island

Treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder with Virtual Reality

Suicide Bus Bomber Virtual Reality PTSD Prototype

About: Researchers Tamar Weiss (Haifa, Israel), Azu Garcia-Palacios (Spain) and Hunter Hoffman (U.W. Seattle) are developing an immersive virtual reality simulation to help survivors or witnesses of terrorism who have developed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The simulation of a terrorist bus bombing is designed to give the therapist control over the progression and intensity of the experience, including the addition of realistic visual and audio affects.

Developer: Imprint Interactive

Developer web site: http://www.imprintit.com/index.html

More info: http://seriousgamessource.com/features/feature_053006_ptsd.php

Suicide Bus Bomber Virtual reality PTSD Prototype

9/11 Virtual Reality PTSD Prototype

About: A Weill Cornell Medical College therapist and a virtual reality researcher from the University of Washington HITLab are using virtual reality to treat victims of the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, and their regimen appears to be effective in helping patients cope with the severe psychological trauma of the event.

Web site: http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/ptsd/

Serious and Activist Gaming News

New York Times: Saving the World, One Video Game at a Time - reprinted in full here

Business Week: Getting Activist Video Games to Market

Overview of Games for Change Conference

Newsweek: Gaming the Poor

PBS Newshour: Can “Serious Games” Improve Your Mind?

NPR: Video-Game Designers Target World Peace

Interview with Professor James Paul Gee, professor of educational psychology, UW-Madison who recently received $1.5 million from the MacArthur Foundation to support his research on learning and video games

Use of virtual reality for treating post-traumatic stress disorder

Blogs about Serious Gaming
Blog from Games for Change Conference

Blog from Susana Ruiz, a graduate student in the School of Cinema-Television’s Interactive Media Division at the University of Southern California, part of the team behind Darfur is Dying

Good essay about the Syrian company Afkar Media that produced Under Siege

Serious Games Web Sites
Games for Change

Serious Games Source

Social Impact Games

Which Cities Care Most About Foreign News?

Friday, March 2nd, 2007

Mission Accomplished in Somalia?

Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007

Same Latitude, Different World

Friday, September 8th, 2006

Can Innovation Save the Bottom of the Pyramid?

Friday, August 25th, 2006

Is There a Market at the Bottom of the Pyramid?

Thursday, August 24th, 2006

If Planets Were the Size of Countries on Earth

Wednesday, August 16th, 2006

Republicans, witchcraft, cannibalism, breast implants and terrorism

Friday, August 11th, 2006

Who’s the Wikipedi-est of Them All?

Wednesday, August 9th, 2006

Name that Disputed Territory!

Tuesday, August 8th, 2006

War, Peace and Video Games - pt. 3

Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006

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