TakingITMobile is a community-based research study conducted in partnership with the social network TakingITGlobal that examines how youth leaders across the globe use mobile communications to create social change within their local communities and internationally. As an e-PAR study, youth participants were encouraged to take the reigns as researchers through the online TakingITMobile Working Group, which comprised of 39 youth representing 20 different countries. TakingITMobile participants (n = 565) paint a picture of the diversity of mobile youth activism around the world.

It was found that the majority of youth reported using their mobile phones to generate Citizen Media to share their message globally, mobilize protests, fundraise, educate their peers and spread solidarity. TakingITMobile participants were passionate about a number of global issues, including the Environment (39%), Human Rights (36%), Poverty (28%), Health (24%), Peace (23.8%), HIV/AIDS (22.4%) and Violence (11.6%). While the most common mobile feature was Voice Calls (75%), TakingITMobile participants used a variety of mobile phone features, including Text Messages (46%), Web Browsing (38%), Social Media (27%), News (26%) and Photography (22%).

It was also discovered that youth who own smart phones are more likely to use their phones for activism (81%) than youth who don’t (71%).  As well, females are much less likely (70%) to use their phones for activism than males. Youth ages 25-29 show higher levels of activism (84%) than youth in their teens (67%), early 20s (75%) and 30s (75%). GDP per capita was an influencing factor on both monthly costs, monthly average number of minutes used, number of SMS used and internet data used. Overall it was found that participants from countries with high GDP per capita received cheaper services, with the exception of very high income nations such as Canada and the United States. A number of barriers were identified for mobile youth activists, including cost of services (32%) cost of mobile phones (10%) as well as network coverage (9%) were the biggest barriers to accessing mobile phones.

If you are interested in further exploring how youth activists are using their mobile phones for social change you can download the full report here.  As a participatory action research study, TakingITMobile aims to disseminate the results back to the community in order to share best practices in mobile activism and inspire others to take action. In conjunction with TakingITGlobal, we are hoping to produce a Mobile Guide to Action that can serve as a compass for youth activists interested in using their mobile phone for social change.  For those looking to help in developing this resource the TakingITMobile Working Group is always open to new volunteers! As well, we are hoping to partner with influential blogs in order to spread the results far and wide.  If you are interested in blogging about the TakingITMobile results feel free to contact lisa [@] mobilerevolutions.org for more information.

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.

Globally 1.5 billion people have access to televisions, and 1 billion to the Internet; yet overall the most actively used electronic gadget is the mobile phone, with over 3 billion users worldwide. Reaching the 4 billion mark before the end of 2008, that equals to approximately one cell phone for every two human beings. Under 30-years in existence, cell phones are one of the most rapid developing technology the world has ever known. According to Touré, Secretary General of the ITU, “The fact that 4 billion subscribers have been registered worldwide indicates that it is technically feasible to connect the world to the benefits of ICT and that it is a viable business opportunity.”  According to Touré, “Clearly, ICTs have the potential to act as catalysts to achieve the 2015 targets of the MDGs.”

Mobile phones are the first telecommunications technology to be more popular in developing nations, than their developed counterparts, far outnumbering internet coverage (Zuckerman 2007). More and more people are using their phones to access the internet instead of computers.  Soon there will be more cell phone users than literate people on the planet. This signifies a shift into a new age of digital literacy, where avatars, emoticons, pictures, sounds and videos often hold more power than names and numbers.

Economists around the world are hailing cell phones as the solution for ICT development and a ray of hope in bridging the digital divide. At the London Business School it was found, “for every additional 10 mobile phones per 100 people, a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) rises 0.5 percent.” With the power of decentralized networked communication, fisherman are able to monitor market prices in the next village over, and new applications are being brainstormed from the grassroots up.

Once again on the front lines of this new revolutionary technology are youth. According to the MSN/MTV Circuits of Cool report, “The mobile phone is ingrained into young people’s everyday lives, with 42% claiming it’s the first thing they look at in the morning and they last thing they do at night.” 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, blogs and text messaging. In Howard Rheingold’s book Smart Mobs, we are reminded of the incredible social ramifications of crossing hand held mobile devices with networked technology, allowing activists to communicate instantly through a variety of media.

Yet despite the range of global examples from Asia to Africa, little research has been produced about the potential of mobile phones as a medium for social change within the Latin American region. One of the only available resources online is MobileActive.org’s ¡Acción Móvil¡ Guía de Móvil Activismo para Latino América, highlighting a series of efforts from both NGOs and grassroots groups to harness the power of mobile technology for social change.

Yet what is missing in this document is the ways that everyday youth outside of formal social organizations are using mobile technology in their own lives.  There is a vast difference between Greenpeace sending out mass SMS campaigns, v.s. a Costa Rican youth recording riot footage on his/her cellphone, or a Panamanian youth blasting a banned reggaeton song calling out government corruption as a ringtone.  These are examples that fall beneath the radar of the mainstream; those which have no representation in peer-reviewed journals, nor newspaper publications. In the following paper I will expand on the activist potential of mobile technology, focusing on how mobile phones can be used to increase media democracy in Latin America and beyond, creating access for a new generation of young global citizens.

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When looking at new media communication, it is clear that across class, race, and gender, 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, brainstorming new functions that CEOs had never dreamed possible. Yet as innovations in Citizen Media continue to rise, many gaps still exist blocking people from self-expression and access to the digital commons. While it is obvious that both Costa Rican and Panamanian youth are using new technologies such as Social Networks and Mobile Communication, when one compares the two countries there is an obvious gap in access.

While Costa Ricans have a nationalized telecommunications network, ICE (The Costa Rican Institute of Electricity), Panamanians have to rely on private networks in order to participate in the digital commons. According to MobileActive.org’s section of International Mobile Data (See charts below), Costa Rica has way higher access to the Internet, and but Mobile phone use is higher in Panama. This data draws out the realities of the countries economic structure, with Panama having a huge gap between the rich and the poor, and Costa Rica having a more middle class economy.

The average Costa Rican cellular phone plan is $4.20, while the average Panamanian is $18.10. The Internet is on average $10 more expensive for Panamanians than Costa Ricans, even though the level of poverty in Panama is over 5% higher. While Internet use in Panama is popular in urban context, the majority of the country remains without access. While mobile phone subscriptions in Panama are at a rate of 28%, Costa Ricans are only at 22%. Yet in Costa Rica personal computer rates remain at 22%, with Internet use at 29%. In contrast, Panamanians have a personal computer rate of 0.4%, and an Internet use rate of 0.78%. (more…)