Communication Infrastructure and Community Mobilization: The Case of Gram Vaani's Covid-19 Response Network for the Marginalized in India

"With public policies and mainstream media largely serving the urban residents and the digital haves, Gram Vaani's Covid-19 Response Network gives voice to the overlooked and the ignored, representing an inspiring case of pandemic community mobilization in India..."

During COVID-19, access to social welfare benefits, both regular and pandemic-related, often eluded marginalised groups in India (and elsewhere). Gram Vaani ("Voice of the Village") , a social technology enterprise in India that operates a federated Mobile Vaani network of voice-based participatory media platforms, especially for less-literate and low-income populations, focused its efforts on reaching out to the unreached in the wake of the pandemic. This article draws on communication infrastructure theory (CIT) to analyse Gram Vaani's Covid-19 Response Network, which it launched in March 2020 in partnership with civil society organisations (CSOs) and government departments.

The article begins with an overview of CIT, which is an ecological framework that describes the communication infrastructure of a community. Key CIT components include the storytelling network (STN), which operates at micro (e.g., individual members), meso (e.g., community-based organisations), and macro (e.g., media institutions that broadcast regional stories) levels. The STN also includes insterstitial actors (e.g., community health workers) with dual identities: They belong to the same community and serve a local organisation. Another key CIT component is the communication action context (CAC), which refers to the physical, technological, psychological, economic, and sociocultural factors that can enable and/or constrain communication among STN actors. To bring these conceptions to life, the article highlights relevant CIT examples and studies regarding civic engagement, health disparities, and crisis mitigation.

The article then applies key CIT concepts to analyse the structure, operations, and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) data of Gram Vaani's Covid-19 Response Network. In short (see also Related Summaries, below), the voice-based mobile network of participatory media platforms sought to meet the pandemic-related needs of rural communities and migrant workers and to provide timely support on the ground. Results show that, over a 15-month period (March 21 2020 to June 24 2021), 870,000 individuals used the organisation's Mobile Vaani platforms, made 2.5 million calls, recorded 24,880 voice reports, and shared 2,327 impact stories. Taken together, the platforms sought to amplify the voices of the most vulnerable, provide direct assistance, and hold government agencies accountable in three major areas:

1. Health promotion and healthcare access: For instance, organisational partners who were trained in public health helped create appropriate awareness messages related to COVID-19 prevention, detection, and management. These messages were published as audio recordings on Mobile Vaani to bring actionable information to people who did not have access to other digital media channels.
2. Livelihood support and working conditions: For instance, Gram Vaani team members and their research collaborators used the Mobile Vaani voice reports to publish articles in the mass media. Other collaborators in the Covid-19 Response Network used these data to highlight the problems faced by vulnerable communities, leading to a demand for prompt action by the government.
3. Safety nets and essential services: For instance, volunteers working with Mobile Vaani directly assisted people through online registration for social welfare schemes and helped correct errors in their personal details, which had impeded their access to emergency governmental measures.

The case study applies CIT to this work by examining the STN actors, as well as enabling and constraining CAC. Impact stories are shared in order to illustrate how pandemic community mobilisation - that is, the Covid-19 Response Network - made a difference in civic engagement, health disparities, and crisis mitigation. Specifically: "The impact pathways through which the Mobile Vaani platforms provided an enabling and empowering CAC for relevant STN actors to serve the marginalized citizens - and that too during a pandemic - highlights the enormous value of participatory digital storytelling for community outreach and mobilization. These pathways were effectively mobilized because the micro-level STN actors (the Mobile Vaani users) were connected with meso-level STN actors (CSO partners) and macro-level STN actors (government departments and mass media). These connections work ed as the interstitial STN actors (groups of volunteers) directly and promptly assisted those who were needy, while holding government agencies accountable to respond to these needs speedily."

The article concludes by discussing lessons learned from the CIT case analysis and its implications for establishing technology-enabled networks for the marginalised. "In particular, Gram Vaani's volunteers...represent significant interstitial STN actors who helped the information have-nots overcome the digital divide, ensuring their voices were heard and amplified. Their efforts are not only understudied and deserve attention, but their offline actions need be investigated in how they created an enabling container for social and behavior change communication..."