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(Cross-posted on my fellowship blog - How International Values Shape Communications Technologies)

Here’s a brilliant TED presentation by Hans Rosling on how to look differently at development indicators across countries and continents, using Gapminder’s trend visualization tool Trendalyzer –

I spent an hour playing around with Gapmindmer and discovered some interesting trends related to the diffusion of communications technologies in BRIC countries.

In all these charts comparing Brazil, Russia, India, China and United States, the X axis represents the income per person (in fixed PPP$) on a logarithmic scale while the Y axis changes. By pressing the ‘play’ button, you can see how the variable changes for these five countries over years.

Let’s start with the Y axis representing the number of cell phones users on a logarithmic scale. It’s fascinating how each country seems to stay close to the X axis until something happens and it rises vertically. It happens to the USA in 1980, China in 1986, Brazil in 1989, Russia in 1990 and India in 1994. As of now, these five countries have the biggest cell phone user bases across the world¹ (China at #1 with 601 million, India at #2 with 305 million, USA at #3 with 260 million, Russia at #4 with 172 million and Brazil at #5 with 135 million).

(Cross-posted at my fellowship blog — How International Values Shape Communications Technologies)

In the introductory episode of our weekly fellowship podcast, Ben, Pavneet and I explain why our research on social media in BRIC countries is uniquely interdisciplinary, share the personal biases with which we are approaching our research, summarize what we have learned so far, and share our plans for the rest of the year.

The starting point of our research is to understand how differences in culture, access and language in BRIC countries impact the three core values of social media usage — collaboration, community and user generated content — across tools and devices. Pavneet’s focus is on the community and he explores two really important use cases for social media — consumer advocacy and civic engagement. Ben’s focus is on the individual and he explores issues of identity and privacy in the context of social media usage. My role is to pull it all together into a meaningful framework.

So, our research really lies at the intersection of three worlds that (surprisingly) don’t really understand each other — the web 2.0 world, the technology policy world, and the ICT4D world. But, beyond that, it’s really rooted in the tradition of cultural studies and borrows heavily from research related to business, government and development.

Rob Pongsajapan at The Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS) at Georgetown University totally delighted me yesterday by setting up the official “ISD Yahoo! Fellow Blog” within hours of our discussion.

How Global Values Shape Communications Technologies is a group blog co-authored by the 2008-09 Yahoo! Fellows — Ben Turner, Pavneet Singh and myself. We will be writing between 5 to 10 posts every week on how international values apply to the development and use of new communications technologies, especially in BRIC countries. I’ll mostly focus on how social media will be used differently by individuals and institutions in BRIC countries as compared to their first world counterparts, but also riff frequently on the broader theme. Ben and Pavneet will also write mostly about their own research areas (to be announced soon) but also contribute to the bigger conversation on the blog.

From mid-September, we will start a weekly podcast with thinkers and practitioners from the Georgetown University community and beyond on social media in BRIC countries and how to use social media for social change.

In December, we will invite contributions for a crowd-sourced paper (or even a crowd-sourced e-book!) on how global values shape communications technologies.