Angry residents are confronting a housing contractor on an Asian Development Bank project. The mood is one of aggression; the contractor has his hands out trying to calm down the men who've come to complain.

Nothing unusual about that. Two years on from the tsunami, there is, understandably, frustration in Banda Aceh among people still waiting to be rehoused. Nor is it unusual these days that a photographer from the local newspaper, Serambi Indonesia, is on hand to snap the protest as it happens.

The aid agencies who arrived in Banda Aceh after the tsunami to help rebuild the place that suffered the most devastation may not have been aware they were entering a society that was articulate and determined - and which has learned to use the media to its own advantage. Similar scenes to the one I saw have been reported dozens of times by Serambi Indonesia, TV channel TVRI and 68H radio station.

"The community is smart in playing the media game," says Christelle Chapoy of Oxfam GB in Banda Aceh. "We have had geuchiks (village chiefs) and communities saying to us we will call the media in if you do not respond to our demands."

SURVIVORS TURNED JOURNALISTS

Dan Gillmor, author of "We The Media" called the tsunami a "turning point" in citizen journalism. He was talking about the extraordinary images taken by Western tourists on their videos and mobile phones as the wave approached the shore, as well as the explosion in blogging that followed.

This need to communicate turned out not just to be confined to rich Westerners with video cameras. When the South Asia quake occurred in October 2005, the BBC started getting emails from local people within minutes. It received 3,000 in the first day alone.

So perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that in the aftermath of disasters and during reconstruction, local people want to continue making the news - or at least influence the media for their own benefit. And nowhere more so than Aceh.

All tsunami-affected countries have been dogged by reports of reconstruction falling behind schedule. In Aceh, the ambitious target of rebuilding 100,000 homes by the end of 2006 was not met. The Aceh-Nias Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (BRR) reported in March this year that 64,000 units had been built. That means many people have still not been properly rehoused two years after the tsunami, with thousands living in cramped barracks where sanitation is poor.

Mr Hasbala is a tailor in his sixties who's been living in barracks on the outskirts of Banda Aceh for more than two years. He is lucky: an NGO gave him a sewing machine so he can carry on his trade, and he has received rice from the World Food Programme. But he's increasingly nervous about the future.

He's now living more than 20km from his original home, and fears he may never be able to return. As the weather gets hotter, flies buzz around the trenches of water encircling the barracks. "I'm worried about getting ill because I don't know if I'd be able to get treatment," he says. "We feel cut off here generally, far from the town and away from the main road."

In April, 300 people demonstrated outside the BRR in Banda Aceh, asking for the agency to be dissolved because survivors felt it was working too slowly. But the Acehnese are also using the media to put pressure on aid groups to get what they want.

If a geuchik doesn't think his village is getting a fair deal, he will contact the local press to tell them so. One enterprising local in the Lely district of Banda Aceh daubed the graffiti "Oxfam Bandit" after a disagreement with the aid agency, and it ended up in the media.

POOR WAGES HURT REPORTING

The situation can be exacerbated by the fact that journalists earn a very poor wage and so don't tend to spend a long time checking out both sides or writing stories. "There is a problem with the media in Aceh - they often don't investigate too deeply, they publish one rumour and then apologise afterwards," says Taufan Damanik of the Aceh Institute and the KKSP Foundation which works in Medan and Aceh.

"A journalist in Banda Aceh can often earn around 200,000 rupiah a month [around £11]," explains Yon Thayrun, previously a journalist and now also a spokesperson for Oxfam. "To survive, journalists have to have another job and they don't have time to spend hours on a story."

Some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are concerned about the increasing use of advertorial - the practice of paying to place a story. According to T. Ardiansyah of the Kata Hati Institute, who monitors media coverage, half a page in a local newspaper costs about 15-17 million rupiah, with the journalist getting around 15 percent.

Other NGOs say they've been rung up by a journalist and told that if they don't give the reporter some money, they'll run a critical story. Journalists also increasingly expect "travel expenses" - an envelope of cash - if they turn up to a press conference.

"That's a no go for us," says Oxfam GB's Chapoy, who feels her agency has made real efforts to co-operate with the media. "If we have journalists ringing up asking for money, we say run the story but get our comments and run a balanced story."

Increasingly for NGOs, one of the unexpected effects of the rise of citizen journalism may be that it's not so much the media they need to convince as the communities they're working with.

"What you have to understand about Banda Aceh is that it is a big part of the culture to sit in the coffee shops, read the newspapers and complain if they see something different from what they hoped for," says Taufan Damanik. "While in Java they may not want to say things straight out, in Aceh they are right in your face. They've been fighting for a long time, so their spirit is very strong."

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