When looking at new media communication, it is clear that across class, race, and gender, there are inequalities in terms of access, influence and control. The digital divide is still apparent, yet everyday youth are working to bridge these gaps by seizing the means of communication and creating alternative networks for social change. TakingITGlobal is a prime example of this trend, a social network founded by youth social entrepreneurs Michael Furdyk and Jennier Coriero when they were teenagers.

Launched in 2000 as an effort to address the digital divide TakingITGlobal was the world’s first social network for social change. TakingITGlobal is also one of the world’s first multi-lingual networks with a team of youth volunteer translators that allow the site to be offered in 12 languages. TakingITGlobal was a central node for youth leaders around the world to plug in to a variety of networks, tools and opportunities.  TakingITGlobal has a number of member features including projects, groups, resources, forums, blogs, the global gallery, magazines, games and much more. TakingITGlobal’s community grew to over 200,000 members in 2008, and they are celebrating their 10^th anniversary this year. TIG continues to feature the voices of youth activists from around the world. TakingITGlobal is dedicated to bridging the digital divide and promoting ways for youth to use technology as a tool to facilitate social change.

While TakingITGlobal’s social network provides tools, information and resources for global youth leaders the digital divide prevents all youth from having access to the website. TakingITGlobal currently provides two versions of it’s website, one for dialup internet connections and another for high speed. In order to make TakingITGlobal more accessible to youth around the world who don’t necessarily have a computer or internet access, TakingITGlobal must branch out onto new platforms like mobile phones to help youth leaders access information.

Mobile phones have been used by youth around the world as a tool for political mobilization, from getting youth out to vote, to organizing protests through social networks, micro-blogging and text messaging. Much like the Internet, mobile phones have the potential to help young people improve their education, access critically important information and distribute information globally about themselves and the work they are doing locally. This is especially true in developing countries, where mobile phones are now the primary form of telecommunication. Mobile phones are playing the same role fixed-line phone networks did in facilitating growth in Europe and North America in the 20th century and the potential that mobile phones have in supporting young people to create better lives for themselves, and the societies they live in, is enormous.

In exploring the new ways that media shapes knowledge production and distribution, we can explore new possibilities for youth activism, as well as gain understanding on how new media transform group power dynamics. As youth activists are increasingly using media as a tool for increasing community participation in the collective encoding/decoding of community issues, it is imperative to develop theory around the different effects media have in allowing for community participation in knowledge production, sharing and collective problem solving. If “the medium is the message” as Marshal McLuhan posits (1964), then there is a direct relationship between the media that youth activists use, and the resulting group products and processes. Taylor (2003) reminds us that, “we might explore the relationship of embodied practice to knowledge by studying how young people today learn through digital technologies.”

For TakingITGlobal to engage with a diverse range of activist youth leaders from different socio-economic levels it must adapt to the new trends of youth in developing countries who are increasingly using mobile phones to access the internet. The results of the survey will be used to create a mobile platform, allowing TakingITGlobal to broaden and diversify their reach, offering relevant information, inspiration and community development tools through a medium young people are extremely comfortable with.  It will further enhance their relevance as the world’s largest online community for young people interested in creating positive social change. Additionally, by developing mobile services, TakingITGlobal will strengthen their position as one of the leading innovators in the use of Information Communication Technology for community development (ICT4D). My objectives are to find out the ways that youth use mobile communications to build critical discourse and communities for grassroots organizing. I hope to achieve my objectives and answer the following questions which guide my research inquiry:

• How are youth leaders across the world using mobile phones as a tool for social change in their community organizing?

TakingITGlobal’s online social network was the perfect platform for participatory data collection, and integrated a variety of information sources including stories from frontline activists, articles, blog posts and quantitative data. Since undertaking this research project I have been in touch with youth across the world from Ghana to Argentina who work in a variety of fields, from human rights activists to HIV/AIDS organizers.  The TakingITMobile Working Group guided the research, which included 30 members from Algeria, Argentina, Canada, Germany, Ghana, India, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Liberia, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, United Kingdom, United States and Venezuela. The survey results are as diverse as the working group, with over 531 respondents from over 200 countries.  The survey was translated by TakingITGlobal volunteer translators into 9 languages, including; English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, Turkish, Dutch and Russian. An iPod was offered as an incentive to boost multilingual participation, with one given out for each language group. Through both participatory qualitative coding and rigorous SPSS evaluation I discovered key trends in global youth mobile use and creating a series of recommendations for future directions for TakingITGlobal in developing mobile features for their social network of global youth leaders.