The TakingITMobile Survey is closed to new submissions. Thank you to everyone who contributed your information, as the results have been astounding. While the survey is closed that does not mean that our work is done yet! There is lots of work ahead including data analysis, writing and consulting with both youth and experts from the field about the results. While this is my masters thesis, really it’s a participatory project where all TakingITGlobal members have an opportunity to contribute. As anyone can join TakingITGlobal, that means anyone with an interest in mobile phones and youth activism can participate.

Very rich data that has been gathered by asking you the mobile youth leaders how you use your phones in your work. I am looking for TakingITMobile Working Group members who would be interested in responding to the data to see if you can find new themes. Currently I am finalizing the SPSS analysis for the quantitative version of the survey. If any of you are familiar with SPSS I would be happy to share my data as this is an open source project. I have coded the data according to both feature and issue but feel free to rearrange it as you see fit. If you want to share your feedback you can do it either on the TakingITMobile Discussion Board or by emailing me.

Of course in true Creative Commons fashion please do cite sources if you wish to further share the material. Another opportunity to volunteer with the TakingITMobile study is in helping to recruit volunteer mobile developers to the working group. Please share this group with your peers and spread the word!

Two burritos and many avocados later my time in San Francisco was inspiring to say the least.  The Sex::Tech conference was very inspiring and I was able to attend many sessions around using new media technology for sexual health promotion, from feminism to working with LGBTQ youth, to mass media campaigns partnering with MTV. The topic that I found the most fascinating was mobile communications, especially in relation to research methodology.

While marginalized youth do not always have private access to the internet,  across the board youth were accessing mobile phones from LQBTQ street youth in NYC to high school students in Nairobi.  Not only is there a strong case for sexual health information for mobile platforms, but the technology also lends strong to epidemiological researchers.  While at the conference I learned of a epi study in the Philippines were scientists loaded cheap Nokia handsets with open source EpiSurveyor software.  Hearing about these projects inspires me to integrate new media technology into my own research methods.

But a startling part of the process of Community Video has integrated practices such as remixing footage from other productions and mainstream music without paying for the copyrights.  This practice of remixing footage without permission is an essential part of folk culture, as popular culture is not seen as something with is private, but something that is public.  Often Community Video projects have artists in the collective who have other talents like music, or the ability to rack up some good b-roll footage.  Yet so many times clips from the news, or music from downloaded MP3s become integrated into Community Video Productions.  Personally, I think that this is perfectly fine and I don’t think that any music label or entertainment corporate conglomerate has the right to sue a grassroots group or NGO for a community not for profit production.  Unfortunately our current laws in North America make this practice illegal.

What is a Community Video production to do to avoid such liability?  There are two streams to respond to this conundrum; either take the risk of being fined and adapt a political stand on copyright issues on grounds of fair use, or embrace the world of online creative commons media and source your media from artists who are pro-sharing.  In the world of NGOs and community service organizations, “creative commons” is a term which is cloaked in mystery.  Many believe it is for radical media activists, yet it has finally become well accepted by mainstream academia.  Laurence Lessig, founder of CreativeCommons.org has just been reappointed at Harvard, after a hiatus at Standford.

Creative Commons transforms the way that we conceptualize media and sharing; allowing media makers to choose how they would like to share their media as opposed to protect it.  This allows artists to share their media for free with not-for-profit efforts, as well as allow their media to be altered and integrated into other projects as long is credit is given.  What results is an amazing media commons that can be used for a variety of Community Media projects, including Community Video production.  Really Creative Commons responds directly to this need for Community Video projects to have access to other media sources.  If Creative Commons is widely embraced by the public sector this puts pressure on the private sector to bend their media copyrights to be more open to this collective practice of video remixing.

A private media industry with Creative Commons policies means that Community Video projects could in the future borrow clips from the news, music from popular artists, and images around their issue to create more context and stronger quality to their collective videos.  Currently I am about to take on a project working with refugee youth facilitating a series of community video workshops.  I know that we will most likely be using Creative Commons licenses for the work we produce, and I will be encouraging the youth to search the internet for Creative Commons licensed media like music and stock video and photography to add depth to their videos.

In this paper I outline the transformative power of new media technologies in Latin American contexts as tools for social change, comparing examples of youth digital activism from both Costa Rican and Panamanian contexts. Focusing on two types of Social Media, both Social Networks and Mobile Communication are examined as tools for Central American youth activists. In my conclusion I summarize the effects of national media policies, the situation of the digital divide and its effect on media democracy. The powerful nature of Citizen Media illustrates how overcoming the digital divide can produce democratic access to the media and societies’ larger institutions for social change.

As media technology accelerates, new opportunities for public discourse emerge, altering the ways that we define media and power. When new media intersects with popular culture it in turn transforms societies’ hegemonic landscapes, as the power of who can speak, both when and where, is altered and multiplied (Luis Serna, 2007). Gramsci (1929-1935) defines hegemony as the way in which power is played out in society, which consists of both coercion, and consent, allowing the dominant society to control the masses through cultural persuasion. Through the media industry, hegemony is maintained, thus justifying the acts of those in power and concretizing the consent of the masses. dian marino (1998) adds to our conception of hegemony by defining it as a “rainforest of shifting relations,” a power structure which can change with every day and every new action.

With the advance of new media technology a range of new methods of communication have unfolded, providing the average citizen with a myriad of options for publishing and distributing independent work (Langlois & Dubois, 2005). This signals an increase in the biodiversity of the media ecosystem, as the media is flooded by an ocean of pluralisms; new stories being added every day, multiplying and reshaping our conceptions of truth (Halleck, 2002: Langlois & Dubois, 2005 ). New technologies such as the Internet and mobile phones are changing how we conceptualize hegemonic media landscapes. These technologies manifest themselves differently according to the hegemonic structure of the country, and the economic power it has to invest and develop new communication networks in these new technologies. While the personal computer has swept across much of North America, Central and Southern American countries have been slower to adapt, having instead adopted cheaper alternatives such as cellular phones and public Internet Cafes.

At the forefront of this new media revolution are youth, the first adapters of technology (Corriero, 2004). Often times, communications technologies end up being used in new ways which companies never dreamt possible, and in many cases it is societies’ youth who are experimenting and creating new systems and ways of organizing. While youth are marginalized in mainstream society, the Internet and cell phones act as a private domain for youth to communicate and organize free of parents’ supervision . As the Internet is a central node for global youth culture, transnational movements emerge out of this online discourse. A series of tools have surfaced allowing people to communicate across borders right from their very living room. These new developments have created a new paradigm shift; dissolving the power of major media networks, record labels are dropping profits, people are turning on to YouTube and turning off their TV (Sanchéz, 2008), and instead of learning about world issues through news papers youth are instead reading blogs written by people their age who is directly experiencing the situation.

Largely embraced by civil society and the NGO sector, these new types of media democracy have been joined under the term Citizen Media; media which is decentralized, user friendly, and easily sharable for the average citizen. Citizen Media include such new developments as blogs, vlogs, podcasts, SMS messaging, participatory video, digital storytelling, and social networks. Unlike traditional media, Citizen Media is not normally produced by journalists, yet there are many cases of mainstream media, politicians, and corporations are copying these forms of communication and adapting them to serve mainstream interest. While some object to the term Citizen Media as it refers to “citizen” as a member of a nation-state, the terminology still remains widely used and accepted. Yet with the new movement towards fostering Global Citizenship, it can be posited that these new media tools help to further stretch our definitions of what it means to be a citizen, as they cut across borders and amplify transnational discourse. While Citizen Media is a widely accepted umbrella term in the NGO social marketing world, Social Media is more popular across industries, as it more generally captures the nature of these media tools as media for social interaction.

While these types of changes are having a concentrated effect among those with disposable incomes to invest in these technologies, low-income populations around the world are now also experiencing increased access in the form of Internet Cafes and cellular phone networks equipped with Internet capabilities. Multilingual online content is increasing exponentially as cultures from all over the world are tapping in to these new forms of cultural discourse. Media access is arguable stronger than ever before, with cellular coverage reaching 90% of the planet by 2010. New media communications technology melts borders, and as anthropologist Jan Chipchase says “bends space and time.” This creates a Pangaea effect, uniting world cultures and embodying notions of Global Citizenship and a global knowledge commons.

In Social Networks the average user has access to social publishing software, where they can share their likes, interests, and share news with other friends. A Social Network is also a site for activist discourse, as functions such as message boards and groups allow users to collaborate in new ways. What is revolutionary about this new form of communication is that each user acts as a newscast to their friends and the wider audience of the Internet. When applied to mobile social networks, this gives youth the power to broadcast their concerns right from the palm of their hands. Many Social Network websites have added mobile capabilities to help make their sites more accessible.

Usually users share a variety of data ranging from music, photos, videos, bookmarks, as well as personal information, from likes, dislikes, to status updates on what the user is doing that very second. Some networks specialize in one area, like Flickr.com for photos, YouTube.com for video, and Last.fm for music; yet many of these networks combine a variety of data to allow maximum interactivity for their users. Sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, Orkut and TakingITGlobal provide users with a mishmash of these services, all catering to different populations. By using social networks, youth can share information on local and global issues that are valuable to them. TakingITGlobal.org is a perfect platform for youth from around the world, as it brings youth leaders together to share thoughts, articles, poems, pictures, and other forms of media. Social Network sites facilitate transnational communication, which can unite youth across borders to fight transnationally for social and environmental change.

From India to Brazil, youth, artists, musicians, businesses, politicians, and NGOs are embracing these new technologies in order to interact with other users, share information and reach new audiences. Globally Social Networking sites are more popular than ever among youth. According to Microsoft and MSN Advertising’s joint global research study MSN/MTV Circuits of Cool, “Young people are generally aware of social networks – only 18% of those are yet to use them or have never heard of these sites.” Youth choose with whom to share their information, and many youth use their spaces as platforms for social change. They say that the personal is political, and this rings true in the new Web 2.0. Much easier than creating a website, Social Networks allow users to generate their own personal content and connect with each other. Users define exactly what they want to chat about, see, and hear. This is different than traditional media such as radio, television, and print (Burnett & Marshall, 2003). Instead of the television network creating the content, it is the users themselves who have ultimate control. As well, users have the ability to interact with other users content, giving comments, ratings, and similar contributions.

In Latin America youth are enthusiastically embracing Social Networking websites, much like the rest of the globe. In 2007, the number of social network users in five major Latin American countries more than doubled (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico). During the same period, Latin Americans residing in the United States also increased their participation in social networks by 48%. On average, Latin Americans spend 375 minutes per user per month on social networking sites, as opposed to 249 minutes in USA. One of the world’s largest communities of social network users is Brazilian youth, who on average have 239 people in their online network of friends (Circuits of Cool – Booklet). While Brazilian youth are attracted to Google’s Orkut, Central American youth more commonly connect through the site Hi5. According to TechCrunch:

…Hi5 is now ranked as the 11th most popular site online above Facebook at 13th. If you’ve never heard of the site though, there is a reason; most of Hi5’s traffic doesn’t come from the United States. Hi5 is the No. 1 ranking site online in Portugal, Ecuador, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Guatemala, and ranks at No 2 in Jamaica, Honduras and The Dominican Republic.

In Costa Rica Hi5 is the rated the 3rd most visited site by Alexa. This shows what a central function online social networks play for Costa Rican youth.

While the majority of Central American youth are using Hi5, Panamanian youth are the exception to the rule, whom, like their Canadian counterparts, have flocked in large numbers to Facebook, with 72,413 Panamanian users at the time of writing (check hyperlink for updated number). As Facebook becomes more and more popular, it is evident that the trends will shift as to what social networking platform youth are using, but the overall trend of social networks will live on for many more years in a number of incarnations.

Social Networks provide youth the opportunity to share their thoughts, ideas, and lives in a number of formats. For example, on Hi5 Costa Rican youth use the group’s function to discuss local and world issues. The controversial recent legislation to pass the Central American Free Trade Agreement (Tratado de Libre Comercio – TLC) has caused much online discourse. Youth across the country have joined forces to oppose TLC, and their resistance has taken on grassroots communication strategies such as demonstrations, graffiti, blogs, videos and online forums. A search for groups on Hi5 containing the words “No TLC” brings up 189 results. Each individual group features discussion boards with hundreds of members and messages. The top result was “di No al TLC” (Say no to TLC), which has 1369 members and 2689 topics. Costa Rican youth use the forum to post events, announce new media campaigns, and discuss what is at stake. As of April 2008, the most recent messages include a Feria on Global Warming, an anarchist convention, and the announcement of a radio show against TLC.

On top of TLC, Hi5 has served as a platform for animal rights groups. Many youth use these groups as a news source. For example there have been many outcries on both Hi5 and Facebook against the Costa Rican artist Guillermo Vargas’s show in Managua, Nicaragua, “Exhibit No. 1.” The artist used a street dog in the art installation, placing the dog at one end of the gallery tied up, and food at the other end out of reach. The dog starved to death, causing outrage from animal rights activists around the world. Through the medium of Social Network groups and blogs, youth activists were able to post photos of the cruelty exposing the artist and causing international uproar. Doriam Diaz from La Nacion reports:

The Costa Rican artist Guillermo Vargas, better known as Habacuc, is surrounded in a big controversy because of the death of a street dog in Exhibit No. 1 in an art show that took place last August in Managua (Nicaragua). Defenders of animals in Costa Rica learned of his work through a blog yesterday and accused him of cruelty. As part of his presentation, the artist showed the viewer a street dog, weak, sick and hungry tied in the corner of the room. He captured the animal in a poor district of Managua. The dog died after a day at the exhibition, as was confirmed to The Nation Marta Leonor Gonzalez, editor of the cultural supplement of La Prensa in Nicaragua. The exhibition also included the phrase, written with dog food, “You are what you read”; As well as an audio with the Sandinista anthem backwards, photos and a burner, which burned 175 rocks of crack cocaine and an ounce of marijuana. Habacuc said yesterday that his work was a tribute to Natividad Canda, a Nicaraguan who died after being attacked by two Rottweilers in a workshop in Carthage.

Cases of animal and human rights abuse might go undetected by the mainstream media, but young activists have found a way to virally spread information to their peers with the same interests, thus also attracting the attention of the larger media networks like La Nación.

Similarly, on Facebook Panamanian youth are demonstrating similar trends.  Unfortunately, internet access in Panama is only accesible to 9% of the population, compared to 30% of Costa Ricans. As well, out of all Panamanian internet users it is estimated that 7% have access through the countries InfoPlazas, publically accesible telecentres located across the country (except for the Kuna Yala region).  There is no doubt that Panama is  dedicated to closing the digital divide, yet it is the free market forces, combined with 7% rate of extreme poverty that keeps the majority Panamanians from having access. In total, over half of Panamanian internet users are actively using Facebook, and while their numbers are smaller than Costa Rica, they make up for it in activity.

Panamanian youth use social networks in a similar fashion to their Costa Rican counterparts.  The main rhelm of political activity has its axis in the groups section, where youth form alliances for a variety of different political causes from the Environment to Feminism.  On the right you can see a sample of one users groups, as an example of how Panamanian youth use the groups function of Facebook to build alliances across the country.  Youth also use Facebook to publicly denounce government corruption.  For example, one group is titled “No entiendo cómo la gente puede apoyar a Martinelli” (I don’t understand how people can support Martinelli), denouncing political candidates for the upcoming elections.  Other groups explain  the merits of feminism, with fresh graphics and youth-friendly terminology.  While groups function almost like Brownie-like “badges” for the personal profiles of youth, youth have discovered different applications in order to more creatively display their political affiliations and beliefs.

Badges, function similarly to logos, as youth use them to communicate their values to their other friends, and convert them to causes.  In a sense, Facebook and other similar social network sites turn youth into semi-celebrities, as other youth flock to their profiles to exchange gossip and keep in touch.  Much like celebrities on the covers of magazines, the youth display their most flattering pictures, but also parade their interests.  NGOs often use celebrities to reach youth with sexual health campaigns and messages about preserving the environment, yet youth have already adapted to this celebrity culture and figured out a way for them to include themselves in it.  Part of this includes joining onto the celebrity trend of asserting ones political beliefs, and using the media as a tool for social change. While Facebook is less customizable than Hi5, youth have used a variety of different third-party applications in order to flaunt their political beliefs.

It is evident from the above digital media ethnographies that Central American youth are active in using Citizen Media to project their beliefs, using social networks as a way of broadcasting their opinions to their friends and larger societies.

More and more, the media that everyday youth produce is having an influence on the way that we perceive our world.

While some NGOs spend their money on expensive celebrity-based “peer education” campaigns, much can be said of the power of actual peers who are already engaged in social marketing as independent youth activists.  Social networks are becoming increasingly popular in Central America, and as new mobile friendly sites are constructed, youth who don’t necessarily have access to a computer may be offered alternative forms of engaging with their peers through mobile phones.  The potential for social networks as a site for social change is enormous, and further exploration is needed to explore effective ways of turning dialog into solid action.

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.

The mobile phone is now approaching the functionality of a computer; yet unlike a computer, users keep their mobile devices by their sides powered up 24/7. This provides unheard of access for marketers looking to target users with commercial messages, yet also creates opportunities for NGOs and grassroots activists to interact in meaningful ways with their supporters.

A cell phone is no longer just a phone, it is a multimedia tool used for social communication. Users can interact with music, pictures, videos, games, Internet, email, text messaging (SMS), and so much more every day. Globally 82% of youth use their cell phones to take pictures, and 66% of youth send pictures and videos to their friends. As well, 20% of youth globally are interested in viewing “Clips From Other
People on Sites Like Youtube.” Cell phones are now multimedia mini-printing presses, capable of authoring and sharing content.  Engineers and programmers are quickly developing new applications, such as solar powered smog indicators, as well as social network tools for providing sexual health peer-education, or reminders for HIV+ patients to take their anti-retroviral drugs. Grassroots activists are combining SMS technology with internet applications, creating mashups that can map election violence, as well as distribute text messages to multiple users at a time. They have been used to monitor elections from the ground up, as mobile phones have turned into the next handicam for human rights monitoring. Governments are aware of the power of this new technology, and a new anti-protester tactic has been to cut off cell phone signal during protests.

Taken from a Latin American perspective this resistance by activists lays manifest over the public domain of the internet, as videos are uploaded to computers of activist events, or alternatively forward to friends.  As well, the world of ring tones goes political, as youth blast out censored reggaeton or safe sex messages.  Twitter has turned into a portal for Costa Ricans, and has even been hacked to work on the local ICE Networks, in order to enable mobile micro-blogging.  According to a Standford Seminar on People, Computers, and Design, “Telecommunication products and applications have great influences on the ways people behave, perceive and construct their social identity and relationships.” Mobile phones are paths which youth often use to carve out identity, and express cultural resistance.  According the MSN/MTV Circuits of Cool report, “private form of connection and communication as it helps youths feel safe and is seen as a sign of being allowed more freedom from home.”  Youth around the world use mobile phones as both a private domain, as well as an expanded network which gives them autonomy over their communication networks as independent broadcasters.

Mobile phones are revolutionary in that they are not just a one-way channel of communication, as they provide users with the tools to both produce and consume media right from the palm of their hands. Traditionally media was captured on devices like handicams, transferred to a computer for editing, and then uploaded to the Internet to be shared.  Now mobile phones have the capability to bypass the computer and to do everything with one device. Networked, this mobile media can draw on Metcalf’s law and the power of social networks by aggregating data, allowing users to utilize the power of collective data. Zuckerman refers to the power of cell phones as leveraging capabilities that are, “pervasive, personal, and capable of authoring content.” These are just a few of the reasons that attract global youth into the mobile world, offering privacy away from parents, and allowing access to a multimedia world of social networks. In terms of relating to activism, ideas tend to spread rapidly.  Campaigns by youth critiquing political candidates, or lobbying for electoral candidates spread like wildfire as people rapidly exchange and share information, passing along videos, pictures, and other campaigns.

According to the International Telecommunications Union, “80 percent of the world population lives in cellular network range, which is double the level in 2000; and 68 percent of the world’s mobile subscriptions by the end of 2006 were in developing countries.” Many remote regions do not have access to regular home phone services, so a cellular phone is the only option. This technological trend is not reserved for those with higher economic resources. Prices are dropping on handsets, and many of the cell phones on the market are used and thus cheaper. Software developers are creating ways to create cross platform solutions that provide meaningful services for everyday users. Director of IBM India Research laboratory Dr. Daniel Dias reinforces the socio-economic potential of this new technology:

The world is entering the ‘Era of the Mobile Web.’ In many countries, the mobile phone has become an electronic wallet, the window to the World Wide Web, an education device, and more, and globally, mobile devices outnumber PCs, credit cards, and TVs.

Mobile phones are sweeping across the planet, and Latin America is no an exception from this trend, boasting 230 million active cell phone lines in 2005, representing 40% of the population. It is predicted that this number will rise to 80% by 2009.  Mobile phone services now extend wider than regular phone lines across the region of Latin America. One can easily bare witness to how widely mobile phones have infiltrated the region in such a short amount of time; from indigenous women pulling out their phones from their traditional dress, to gum-popping teenagers texting back and forth with their friends on their way to the mall.

Yet while mobile phones have been adapted all over the region, each country involves a different set of players in the telecommunications sector.  Not all countries experience the same levels of access, yet in many countries where access to broadband is double North American prices (around $50-180), cellphone prices are dirt cheap.  Where universal broadband internet access is a pipe dream for many regions, the low cost wireless internet access through mobile phones is becoming more and more popular as prices lower ($4-20).  While one-laptop per child is a noble goal worth fighting for, a more practical solution for bridging the digital divide might be adopting the current version of the internet to work in sync with mobile browsers, as well as new networked applications which provide services to remote populations, such as health care and banking. As well, lowering price baskets for both mobile and internet services, as there is a great gap between countries which high mobile penetration rates and low price baskets, and countries which face the opposite (Barrantes et. all, 2007).

In Central American countries where the government has recognized the power of ICTs and development, mobile phones and internet access is much more accessible.  For example, Costa Rica’s Institute of Electricity (ICE), is a national telecommunications firm which provides subsidized access to mobile services, with some of the most affordable rates in Central America for electricity, mobile phones, internet, and other telecommunications services.

Costa Ricans currently have one of the highest rates of media access in Central America, with a Mobile Price Basket $6.30 below the average in Central America.  This translates to Mobile Subscriber Rate of 227 out of 1000 people, 28 points above the national average for Central America.  Costa Rica has the lowest mobile rate in all of Central America at $4.20, with a Mobile Subscriber Rate only second to Panama at 227 out of 1000 people (Statistics gathered from MobileActive.org).

In Costa Rica telecommunications access to telecommunications services is seen as a patriotic right. Yet this right falls under threat by the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).  The Central American Free Trade Agreement is known in Spanish as TLC, and serves as a regional free trade agreement with the United States. According to one participant on a debate about a Costa Rican YouTube video on TLC and telecommunications:

Seamos claros, con todo y los defectos del ICE, uno encuentra a un chofer de bus, niños en las escuelas públicas y empleadas domésticas con celular. ¿Dónde en centroamérica ve algo similar?. Mejoremos al ICE. No al TLC.

Let’s be clear, with all the deficits from ICE, anyone can find bus drivers, kids in public school, and domestic employees with cell phones. Where else in Central America can you see something similar?  We’re better with ICE.  No to CAFTA.

TLC for Costa Rica means massive government economic reforms; the privatization of ICE, education, health care, and other social services. With TLC, national environmental legislation could be in danger. Costa Rica is around one third national parkland, which is part of it’s attraction as an internationally recognized eco-tourism destination. When TLC was announced by the Arias government, protests and strikes erupted across the country.  Protest numbers where downsized by the mainstream media, which the larger blogger community picked up on.  Ultimately, the country put TLC to a national referendum on October 7th, 2007, which drew out 73.6% of the electorate.  TLC was passed with 51.6% approval rating, but that did not stop the protests!  What the mainstream media did not pick up on, citizen media brought to life. With the upcoming CAFTA/TLC agreement passing, this means big changes for Costa Rica’s telecommunications nationalized industry in the upcoming years which will effect Costa Rica’s access to citizen media.  It is also clear that Costa Ricans have used their access to citizen media tools provided cheaply through ICE as a means of expressing their dissent as citizens through both mobile phones and the internet.

According to the case study done by mobileactive.org,

In the following years, the cellular phone has the power to become the most chosen form of electronic media by activists in order to create public mobilizations, and to become a medium for social reclamation.

There is no doubt that Costa Ricans have not taken advantage of their increased access to citizen media to protest the slashing of these rights.  From blogs to SMS messages to online videos, Costa Rican No TLC activists have increasingly expressed calls to action both pre and post the national referendum.

One of the most popular and affordable functions of a cellular phone is text messaging (SMS). Cheaper than a regular call, and much faster than using the Internet, 500 million text messages are exchanged around the world per year. Text messages can be used to vote on reality TV shows, report crimes, or get information quickly, from your horoscope to what’s playing at the local cinema. In Costa Rica national media establishments like La Nación have used text messaging to delivery the news straight to their customers.  They also provide free text messaging services to Costa Ricans through their website.  Similarly, Costa Rican credit franchise El Gallo más Gallo uses SMS messages to deliver messages to their customers.  As mobile phone usage rates continue to rise, there is no doubt that services will increase over the next decade.

While larger public organizational uses of mobile phone technology are easy to chart, the majority of mobile usage is largely personal, away from the public domain.  This is beginning to change, as some of the top visited Costa Rican websites are beginning to go mobile.  Just in the past month of writing this article Hi5 has announced its new mobile version, m.hi5.com in 26 languages.  Social networks like Facebook and MySpace have long been mobile enabled, and search engines like Google and Yahoo both have Mobile versions.

One example of a mobile social network that has swept Costa Rica is Twitter. This social network has been around since October 2006, and is well known for engaging members by asking them “What are you doing right now?”  Users post their updates in under 140 characters, which are called tweets. Since its launch, Twitter has rapidly taken over the world as a micro-blogging portal.  Twitter is best known as an activist tool from American student James Karl Buck who sent out a one-word tweet “Arrested,” while in Egypt attending anti-government protests.  With in minutes of his post from his mobile phone friends and colleagues from home and abroad came to his aid.  This butterfly effect is what Twitter has become famous for, spreading ideas and alerts like wildfire.

Capable of mobile updates in Canada, the USA, and India, users can receive their friend’s tweets straight to their mobile device.  Yet mobile updates have proven costly to Twitter, and as such the social network has had to cut down on its services in foreign countries. Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone publicly apologized to users explaining the cuts to services:

Even with a limit of 250 messages received per week, it could cost Twitter about $1,000 per user, per year to send SMS outside of Canada, India, or the US. It makes more sense for us to establish fair billing arrangements with mobile operators than it does to pass these high fees on to our users.

Twitter will continue to negotiate with mobile operators in Europe, Asia, China, and The Americas to forge relationships that benefit all our users. Our goal is to provide full, two-way service with Twitter via SMS to every nation in a way that is sustainable from a cost perspective. Talks with mobile companies around the world continue. In the meantime, more local numbers for updating via SMS are on the way.

In the past two years since its founding, Twitter has also made quite an impact on Costa Rican users, although technically not available through mobile updates during its growth period.  Community similarities are Costa Rican culture and politics, as well as high tech networked culture.  Twitter allows tech-savy ticos to forge a unique national identity.  To get a sense of the Costa Rican Twitter micro-blogsphere, look no further than Twittervision.  Micro-blogging encompases the things you do in between major blog posts, from the mundane to the profound merging locative technologies with social networks.  Blogger, web designer, and the first Costa Rican user of Twitter Josue Salazar comments on Twitter’s locative feature of creating virtual locative communities.

Personally, what brought Twitter to my attention was how easy it was to publish anything, to communicate with so many people, and to see what other people are doing.  The truth is that it wasn’t until this year that I found other ticos on Twitter, and I was always noticing how other communities used Twitter to interact with people from the same place, sharing more things, and in general relating to others from the same place (debating the local news, etc.).  Specifically, my Chilean friends took Twitter and they made it their own huge community, and had great conversations.  I was always jealous because it was all in Spanish, and because they were getting the most out of it.

Personalmente lo que me llamó la atención fue esa facilidad de publicar tonteras, de comunicarme fácilmente con tanta gente, y ver lo que todos hacen. La verdad, no fue hasta este año que encontré a algún tico en Twitter, siempre estuve viendo como muchos en Twitter eran del mismo lugar y compartían más cosas, en general relacionadas a que estaban en el mismo país (discutiendo noticias locales, etc), lo que fuera. En especifico, amigos chilenos tomaron Twitter y lo hicieron suyo hace tiempo, la comunidad chilena es grande, y tienen muy buenas conversaciones, siempre estuve celoso, porque hablaban en español, porque estaban sacandole el jugo a Twitter.

Many Twitter users don’t fit in on virtual or physical world, as their references don’t translate.  A video produced for a local Twitter Costa Rica meet up quotes scenarios where Twitter users swap comments that serve as a secret language that only they can decode:

Messages like “Have you written SMS messages that seem like they’re 140 characters or smaller?”, “Have you tried to explain how Twitter works to a group of non-users and they still don’t get it?”, “Have you converted atleast one friend to Twitter?”, “Have you run to your house with the urgent need to tell the world what you’re doing right now?”, “Have you tweeted from a party/concert/meeting/graduation/communion/church/batmitzva/mass?”, etc. Costa Rican Twitter users are marginalized on the web as it is dominated by English, but within their home circles their online social network culture is also misunderstood. While the Costa Rican Twitter community is still small, at around 150 people within the country, their is a strong movement of Tico Twitter users that is growing day by day.

Now that Twitter has been hacked to work with mobile phones, and that sites like Hi5 have been mobile enabled it is sure that the activism that has permeated public domain online social networks and private mobile communication will soon emerge.  That said, what we share in public and private are clearly different, and it is important that we not generalize mobile media and the internet as one in the same.  Further studies must be done to examine how mobile phones are being used globally by youth as tools for resistance so we can better understood the effects. It is clear that mobile phones have clearly made their mark in terms of revolutionizing the ways that society lives, works, and communicates, creating previously unheard of access to networked communication and information transfer.

David Gray from XPLANE blows our minds once again. With a world now approaching more cell phone users than literate people, it is vitally important that we begin to explore new ways of communicating in the digital age. Interesting fuel for your mind!