HAITI Media and Telecoms Landscape Guide - Infoasaid

129Traditional and informal channels of communicationWord of mouth, known locally as - ‘Radyo Bouche’ – is still an important means oftransmitting news and information in Haiti.However, it is not considered to be particularly credible.The DAGMAR media audience survey of 4,907 people in November 2010, rankedword of mouth as the third most important source of information for people after radioand television.3.9% of respondents said word of mouth was their preferred source of information.Word of mouth came a long way behind radio, preferred by 83.7% of thoseinterviewed.But it came fairly close to television, which was the first choice of 7.4%.Separate research by the US-based media development organisation Internewswww.internews.org in 2011indicated that word of mouth was actually the secondmost important source of information after radio.This is not surprising.Haiti has a strong oral tradition, only a minority of thepopulation has access to television and half of all adults cannot read or write.However, Internews found that word of mouth was less trusted than any of the othermain sources of information available to Haitians – radio, television, the church,newspapers and SMS text messages.In rural areas, local leaders and voodoo priests can play a central role in thedissemination of information. They sometimes have huge influence on publicperceptions.Red Cross experience with text messagesThe International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) setup a system for delivering humanitarian information to the victims of the 2010earthquake through text messages.Developed in collaboration with the Voila mobile telephone network, it was called theTrilogy Emergency Response Application (TERA).129