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.

Through breakthroughs in Web 2.0 technology a new form of digital democracy has emerged where the divide between media producers and consumers dissolved and citizen media rules. While before citizens had to rally for mainstream media attention to catch the ears of politicians, now it is easier ever than before for citizens to launch awareness campaigns and get their message heard by the masses. Even more importantly, new advances in digital publishing mean that we now have advance systems of filtering and prioritizing data collectively. A new passion economy has emerged, that has put news production and distribution back in the hands of the people. Sites like Wikipedia put citizens in charge of fact checking and knowledge production. Online users can choose what news they want to receive through RSS feeds, and can easily forward newsworthy items onto their friends and share them over social networks like Facebook. While media conglomerates have long monopolized media production into an industry, online culture has reclaimed the news media in such a way that everyone’s voice counts, and the potential for wide scale participation and collaboration is greater than ever. The old feminist adage, “the personal is political” rings true, as online communication means that even what you’re having for breakfast can be newsworthy. Yet has this proliferation of online media been accompanied an influx of garbage and spam? How do we sort through all the voices, let alone know that they are credible sources? What does the increase in citizen produced media mean to the profession of journalism, and what are the possible limitations of de-professionalizing news? Does more voices necessarily mean more democracy? This eBook will answer these questions and more, specifically exploring how online culture has changed the face of the news and democracy.

In the past American and Canadian elections we have seen clear differences to the types of online campaigning parties are engaged in. A weak Canadian 2008 election was shadowed by a media savvy American election where celebrity candidate Barrack Obama became the first American Black President. Using a combination of social media strategies, President Obama engaged citizens through social networks, online video, micro-blogging, emails, mobile applications, and text messaging, encouraging citizens to join the movement. In contrast, the Canadian elections had much less hype, and the amount of online cultural production was much lower with very little corresponding participation in the polls. What has clearly emerged from the two campaigns is that a strong social media strategy plays an important role helping reach great results, that openness to engage and discuss in public is a better than being closed. This has transformed both the world of politics, media, and the way we organize our organizations. Tools like social networks, blogs, micro-blogging, and other tools for mass participation have now been embraced by mainstream media organizations, making social media mainstream. While sometimes traditional media can feel threatened by new media, large media corporate conglomerates such as Gobal Media, CBC, CNN, MNBC, and the Fox News Corporation have started to integrate new media into their broadcasts, transforming the way that the mainstream receive, create and exchange news.

User generated content, which is often created and shared through social networks, has begun to dominate the field of entertainment and news exchange. Although not replacing mainstream media entirely, new forms of learning, sharing and communicating where people actually act and search for what they are interested in has become a critical way of life for many in this generation. Whereas in previous generations the newspapers, radio and TV was mainly the biggest source of information and “link” to the world, the Internet and computers have become a different and way more advanced form of information intake, creation and sharing.

Now instead of turning on Fox News or leafing through the newspaper citizens can go on YouTube to see videos of uncensored content from around the world from the Taj Mahal burning to videos of American troops taken from Iraqi youth’s mobile phones. No longer do we need the media to mediate the way we receive news, as everyday citizens can now bypass the publishers and broadcast themselves, or in some cases, citizens have created such value in the content they’ve produced that publishers can actually support and bring more attention to the single voice of a citizen. More now ever than before citizens are able to self publish and get their voices heard through low technological solutions. This overflow of data coming from autonomous devices can be mashed up and networked to create a whole new experience of news, and a larger impact on the effects of democracy. The public has a voice and it can’t be ignored.

More to come soon!

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.

okay enough sarcasm. this really is the coolest project that i have read about in a long time. thank you google. i mean it. we’re all going to see the benefits of this, and not only that, it’s going to give a lot of students jobs. most people work on projects like these for free, and they devote their entire lives to it. i was talking about this the other day with erin, about how it’s so weird that we can now apply for jobs like online marketing, blogging, and online community management. these used to be jobs that no one would pay for, and everyone just did out of their love for the internet, for the excitement of working together with a community of virtual strangers from all over the world. it amazes me that things that we do for fun (editing images, blogging, checking website stats, posting on message boards, etc.) we can actually get paid for.

so yes, thanks google, thank you for paying us to do what we love.

The following post was submitted by Lyndon from Flockblog who in his email to me with it described it as a simple ‘back to basics’ kind of post. Thanks Lyndon.

Here are ten tips that help me with my blog writing:

1. Make your opinion known
2. Link like crazy
3. Write less
4. 250 Words is enough
5. Make Headlines snappy
6. Write with passion
7. Include Bullet point lists
8. Edit your post
9. Make your posts easy to scan
10. Be consistent with your style
11. Litter the post with keywords

1. Make your opinion known
People like blogs, they like blogs because they are written by people and not corporations. People want to know what people think, crazy as it sounds they want to know what you think. Tell them exactly what you think using the least amount of words possible.

2. Link like crazy.
Support your post with links to other web pages that are contextual to your post.

3. Write Less
Give the maximum amount of information with the least amount of words. Time is finite and people are infinitely busy. Blast your knowledge into the reader at the speed of sound.

4. 250 is enough
A long post is easier to forget and harder to get into. A short post is the opposite.

5. Make Headlines snappy
Contain your whole argument in your headline. Check out National newspapers to see how they do it.

6. Include bullet point lists
We all love lists, it structures the info in an easily digestible format.

7. Make your posts easy to scan
Every few paragraphs insert a sub heading. Make sentences and headlines short and to the point.

8. Be consistent with your style
People like to know what to expect, once you have settled on a style for your audience stick to it.

9. Litter the post with Keywords.
Think about what keywords people would use to search for your post and include them in the body text and headers. make sure the keyword placement is natural and does not seem out of place.

10. Edit your post
Good writing is in the editing. Before you hit the submit button, re-read your post and cut out the stuff that you don’t need.