Demo - A WhatsApp Bot for Citizen Journalism in Rural India.

Increasing penetration of Internet-enabled smartphones in low-resource areas makes them an attractive platform for engaging emerging users. In this paper, we demonstrate how a voice forum for citizen journalism in rural India– previously accessible via an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system– can be naturally supported and enriched using a chatbot. Implemented using the WhatsApp Business API, the bot enables submission of both audio (with or without image) and video stories. Following review by moderators, stories are published on a website and social media sites, and can also be browsed interactively using the WhatsApp bot. This multi-way, intermediated model of communication expands the scope and functionality of typical WhatsApp groups while offering significant cost savings relative to IVR systems. In the first 9 weeks of a long-term deployment, the bot demonstrated high usability and acceptance and resulted in 218 published stories from 27 users.