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.

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.

I created this post for the TakingITGlobal’s Net Generation Video Contest.  I submitted late, so I didn’t end up getting a prize, but I did get a $100 gift certificate to Amazon.  I made the video on my experiences as a Netcorps Intern for Defensa de Niñas y Niños Internacional Costa Rica.  My friend Erin Lewis won the Gold, so be sure to check out her video too.

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.