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| Mobile Warriors: Costa Rican Youth, Mobile Phones and Social Change |
 PRINTABLE VERSION |
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 signals during protests.
Taken from a Latin American perspective this resistance by activists is laid manifest on the public domain of the internet as videos of activist events are uploaded to computers or, alternatively, forwarded to friends. At the same time, the world of ringtones is going 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 Stanford 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 their identities and express cultural resistance. According to the MSN/ MTV Circuits of Cool report, it provides a “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 a private domain and 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. They provide users with the tools to 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 and 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 information.
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. The 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 not an exception to 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 bear witness to the wide extent to which mobile phones have fast infiltrated the region. Indigenous women pull their phones out from their traditional dress, and gum-popping teenagers text 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) cell phone prices are dirt cheap. Universal broadband internet access is a pipe dream for many regions, but low cost wireless internet access through mobile phones is becoming more popular as prices are lowered ($4-20).
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Comments
circulating a film on AIDS thru mobile nielu patekar | Mar 30th, 2009
is it possible? if yes, how?
whom to contact?
hello,
i am a woman writer-director-actress-cinematographer from mumbai, india.
have you seen my following films?
a film on AIDS, ‘it’s just unjust’ duration 3 min. access to the link,
http://tigurl.org/uk0xo4
a film on baba amte , dur 7 min.s access the following link to view it in two parts.
http://tigurl.org/spytmi
I would like to share these with you, your family, friends , groups & your communities by including them in your video section, you can put the respective url s on your site so that visitors to your page can view it.
pl. also let me know your comment on viewing my films.
Regards,
neelkantee
Thank You! Timothy G. Branfalt Sr. | May 3rd, 2009
My younger brother died of aids at the age of 32. You are an incredibly determined mind that is of what this world needs more of. I live in Costa Rica, and if you ever seem to dwell on over, Me Casa es Su Casa!
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