Abstract

We examine the dissemination of mobile phone videos in the context of Projecting Health - a community health project in rural India. Our research objective was to identify the most effective means of promoting the distribution of health videos on a largely offline network of mobile phones in a resource-constrained environment. We compared three different distribution channels: mobile shop owners, laptop owners, and community health workers in a fourteen-week intervention that relied on data collected via missed calls from viewers and callbacks made to them. We present the design of our experiment, describe the challenges in deploying this experiment, and discuss overall findings. All three distribution channels were successful in targeting the community; mobile shops had access to most community members but the community health workers were most successful in getting videos out to those who were most interested in viewing them. Many participants were motivated to distribute the videos for the benefit of community. However, the number of missed calls received decreased over time, suggesting the exploration of alternative mechanisms to extrinsically motivate intermediaries and viewers for broader video distribution.