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.

This project is a working group for TakingITGlobal members who are interested in mobile communications. The aim of this working group is to share innovation in the field of youth mobile innovation, and to brainstorm projects and solutions for the TakingITGlobal platform. By sharing examples of mobile innovation, we can examine ways of building mobile tools that are compatible with the existing mobile platform. As well this group aims to tap the larger community’s mobile practices by developing a global youth mobile survey. By sharing our practices we can start to brainstorm questions, and a survey will be distributed to the over 200,000 TakingITGlobal members. From the data gathered an environmental scan will be written up to document mobile trends among TIG users and create a list of recommendations for future applications and services. Click here to get involved!

For those of us living in Canada there are a number of options for mobile fundraising. Please encourage others to give by posting these as your status update or mass texting your contacts. Please spread the word and give back through your phone!

Text HAITI to 90999 on your cell phone to make an immediate donation of $10 to the Canadian Red Cross.

Text HAITI to 45678 to donate $5 to the Salvation Army in Canada (Bell/Rogers) and World Vision.

Text HAITI to 85944 to donate $5 to Rescue Union Mission and MedCorp International.

Text HAITI to 25383 to donate $5 to the International Rescue Committee

Now almost anyone can be a media maker, and the whole world is literally watching, recording and listening. The divide between the producer and consumer has begun to dissolve. Crowdsourcing means that news can be created from the people experiencing the situations directly. Instead of producing content in house, aggregated content is the new king, with a whole flood of users openly sharing their photography, writing, and art.

Due to this influx of citizen media content, consumers are increasingly reluctant to pay for corporate media content, including the news. Citizens are turning towards each other for their news, as they send everything from reports on violence in Gaza, to updates on local public transit through text messages (sms), blog posts, and online videos about both local and global events. This eBook will explore everything from the commonalities between popular education and Open Source software; how raves and hip hop effect how we collect and visualize data; and how the participatory, open nature of new media technology have infected our world’s politics.

With citizens picking up cameras and mobile phones, and the old media slowly going bankrupt, there will be a critical disruption in our traditional media landscape. By capturing the essence of a new generation of new media technology, this eBook aims to sketch out these emerging forms of communication are transforming the media  as we know it. In the spirit of crowdsourcing I open my essay up open source for edits. Available for download for free, I encourage you to send me your comments, edits, rants, disagreements, praise, and all other feedback to lisa@mobilerevolutions.org, and feel free to remix! I hope people will send me copies of their new versions, and I look forward to your feedback.

Recently I came across this ad for koodo mobile, a Canadian brand launched by Telus in 2008 around the time when Mobile Revolutions was born. koodo sports similar sans serif sexiness in it’s branding, targeting a gen y market craving a world free of contracts and unlimited text messaging packages (although the $5 one is a thing of the past). While koodo provides super cheap services, it lacks the ability of smart phone integration and it’s cdma phones are pretty useless if you decide to switch mobile carrier. In koodo’s campaigns feature bug eyes neon youth with nerdy glasses and braces with catchy phases including; koodo-munity, loose that chubby contract, ready to beat the bill budge, and koodo-lutionary.  While koodo’s eye-popping ads predate yours truely, I have noted a change in koodo’s tone from mindlessly ironic to psuedo-revolutionary. Using words like movement (see above) or adding “lutionary” to their brand seems to envoke that to purchase a mobile phone is in itself revolutionary, especially when you are saving money.

koodo is not the only Canadian mobile brand to be pushing itself on the streets as an activist accessory.  Canada’s mobile darling Blackberry produced by Research in Motion has released an ad (that plays all to frequently on CTV) called Blackberry Loves Bono:

While it seems kind of contradictory for Palm investor Bono to perform for Blackberry, I’m sure he got paid enough and felt justified in promoting that there is a new mobile generation that is going to make change.  The ad doesn’t tell us much, but once one arrives at the website it is clear that U2 (maybe an attempt to one up Radiohead?) is producing a mobile album in conjunction with Blackberry.  The mobile album seems more like a U2 application to promote their tour.  The essence seems to be if you want to capture the “mobile generation” (MG, yo!) you have to create an innovative way of distribution that can be reached anywhere.  Simply distributing music is not enough anymore– it must also be interactive.

More and more mobile revolutions have transformed from an underground movement to a full-out full scale corporate marketing campaign.  Mobile growth is touted as activist and Canadian companies are looking to harness that spirit, whether it’s promoting smart phones or discount phone plans.  Of course mobile phones are revolutionizing communications but to use revolution as a means of marketing products seems a bit off putting. As a consumer and academic I am beginning to become more and more suspect of mobile communications companies, as anyone should of any giant corporations.

Bono has been complicit in the past in collaborating with major corporate brands like Starbucks and Apple to raise money for AIDS.  In this case no money is being raised and consumers are told that the power to make change is in our hands.  It is no doubt that mobile phones are useful to activists, but promoting this notion just to boost sales seems contradictory.  If Blackberry and koodo were giving out mobile phones to marginalized youth activists like the million campaign I might feel a bit less morally indignant but this seems like straight up exploitation.

Are you interested in mobile communications? Want to win an iPod Touch or Shuffle? The TakingITMobile survey is looking for your input! The aim of this research is to share innovation in the field of youth mobile communications and to brainstorm projects and solutions for the TakingITGlobal platform. By sharing examples of mobile innovation, we can examine ways of building mobile tools that are compatible with the existing mobile platform. As well this project aims to tap the larger community’s current mobile practices. From the data gathered an environmental scan will be written up to document mobile trends among TIG users and create a list of recommendations for future applications and services.  The survey is now available in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, Turkish, Dutch and Russian.

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!

Tell The CRTC you want Internet Freedom!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.