Background: Community health workers (CHWs) are used increasingly in the world to address shortages of health workers and the lack of a pervasive national health system. However, while their role is often described at a policy level, it is not clear how these ideals are instantiated in practice, how best to support this work, or how the work is interpreted by local actors. CHWs are often spoken about or spoken for, but there is little evidence of CHWs' own characterisation of their practice, which raises questions for global health advocates regarding power and participation in CHW programmes. This paper addresses this issue. Design: A case study approach was undertaken in a series of four steps. Firstly, groups of CHWs from two communities met and reported what their daily work consisted of. Secondly, individual CHWs were interviewed so that they could provide fuller, more detailed accounts of their work and experiences; in addition, community health extension workers and community health committee members were interviewed, to provide alternative perspectives. Thirdly, notes and observations were taken in community meetings and monthly meetings. The data were then analysed thematically, creating an account of how CHWs describe their own work, and the tensions and challenges that they face. Results: The thematic analysis of the interview data explored the structure of CHW's work, in terms of the frequency and range of visits, activities undertaken during visits (monitoring, referral, etc.) and the wider context of their work (links to the community and health service, limited training, coordination and mutual support through action and discussion days, etc.), and provided an opportunity for CHWs to explain their motivations, concerns and how they understood their role.

Ten Mozambican Community Multimedia Centers (CMCs) were investigated by analyzing Social Representations of users and staff members. Photo-elicitation, an underexplored methodological approach in the domain of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D), was employed to conduct the study, and a three-step qualitative content analysis was performed on both visual and textual data. Results tend to confirm and build upon outcomes from the existing literature on Public Access Venues (PAVs). Local communities value these centers because they bring social recognition to people working or learning there. The venues are associated with a symbolism that extends from the social recognition of the individual to the development and social inclusion of the whole community, which, because of the presence of the venue, does not feel left behind. In this vein, the study also shows that the importance of CMCs is often not related to the newest technology available, but to the technology that reaches the most of the community. The study also highlights neglected dimensions of CMCs, such as the importance of the exterior appearance of the venue, and the perception of a switch in their nature from static centers funded by third parties towards more entrepreneurial-driven ones. The presented research also contributes to the ICT4D field by proposing a promising research protocol, which is able to elicit representations otherwise difficult to obtain. Keywords: Community Multimedia Center; Social Representation; Photo-elicitation; Telecenter; Community Radio; Mozambique. 1.INTRODUCTION Community Multimedia Centers (CMCs) are one of the numerous ways of providing access to information to all, as well as reducing the digital and development divides. The model of CMCs (UNESCO, 2004) combines the characteristics of a telecenter, a public access venue (PAV) where people can access a number of different Information and Communication Technology (ICT) services (usually computers, internet, fax, photocopy machines, etc.), and a community radio station, broadcasting in both the official national language and local languages; all managed by members of the community where it is located.In 2003, Mozambique was chosen for a scale-up phase of the CMCs program. This phase envisaged the creation of 20 new centers in two years and was projected to reach a total of at least 50 centers. The country, which at the end of the 1990s had already seen the appearance of both community radio stations and telecenters separately, was considered to be a promising field for the development of this model (UNESCO, 2004 (MCT, 2008). This article aims to inform academics, practitioners, and policy makers of local stakeholders' perceptions of CMCs in Mozambique and is grounded on the concern of understanding the contextual reality as an essential requisite to guarantee the impact and sustainability of ICT-based interventions for development (Brunello, 2010;Heeks, 2002;Irani et al., 2010;Kleine & Unwin, 2009;Tedre et al., 2006 (Moscovici, 1...

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Community Multimedia Centres (CMCs) are considered by initiating agencies as instruments able to inform, entertain and educate the population, as well as to offering them a voice into the knowledge society and to public initiatives.This article presents a quali-quantitative content analysis of 230 interviews held with staff members, users of the venues, people of the community who listen to their radio component but do not use their telecentres, and community members not using CMCs. The sample includes 10 CMCs around Mozambique. The purpose of the study is to investigate the perception of local communities of inbound, outbound, and shared information and communication flows connected to CMCs.Results highlight how CMCs are perceived as inbound information enablers, mostly by means of their community radio component, and as means to share information and communication within the communities' boundaries. Yet, CMCs still do not appear to be widely recognized as participation means to a reality that transcend the communities' physical borders.Keywords: telecentres, community radios, community multimedia centres, Mozambique, qualitative research, social representations. IntroductionCommunity Multimedia Centres (CMCs) are community-based public access venues (PAV) that combine a community radio with a telecentre. Their primary aim is to foster equitable access to information and knowledge for development, reduce the digital divide, promote social inclusion and civil participation, and promote the circulation of content that supports communities in improving their daily life conditions (Creech, 2006). The official documents of the model of CMCs emphasize the dimensions of information and communication among its grounding aspects, and underline how information and communication should be catalysed and reinforced by the synergy among the two components of the radio and the telecentre (UNESCO, 2004). Through CMCs, local community members can access and use a number of different Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), such as computers, the Internet, digital libraries, fax, photocopy machines, etc., and can listen and participate in a local radio station that is managed by local people and broadcasts community relevant information in native and national languages. Section 3 presents the adopted research design, while Section 4 presents and discusses the research results. Implications for CMCs sustainability and for further advancement in the research area of PAVs are drawn in Section 5. Social Representations: A Communication PerspectiveIn this article, information and communication are considered in their different typologies of acquired, transmittable, and sharable flows, according to (i) the location of the sender of the message (inside or outside the community); and (ii) the direction of the message in relation to the local community (within or across its boundaries). This approach is inspired by the work of Heeks (2002), who suggested an informationcentred perspective, adopted an information chain approach t...