Mobile Voices - LIRNEasia

Mobile VoicesOpen‐source storytelling platform for immigrants in 

Los Angeles to create and publish stories about their 

community, directly from

mobile phones

cheapintuitiveany phoneany networkprivateour waymulti‐lingualmulti‐country www.vozmob.net

community partner and users

“day laborer”

google search

“Do you really want this in your neighborhood? Day Laborers site in Farmingville, Long Island, NY

Photograph courtesy of Dave Drew”

day laborers on

the internet

who are day laborers?

Mobile Voices was created to “give voice to the voiceless”

theoretical framework• Freire (1970/2003) -

education as

conscientization for the purpose of individual and collective transformation

• ICT4D (Heeks, 2007, 2008; Ramirez, 2007)

• Communication for Social Change (Gumucio- Dragon & Tufte, 2006)

• Participatory Design/Research (Al-Kodmany, 2001; Dart & Davies, 2003; Viswanathan et al., 2004)

participatory learning goals• Media literacy

– Citizen journalists representing their own reality

• Technological literacy– Mastering phone features; using an online

platform/blogging; video editing

• New forms of public participation– Civic engagement, collective action

mobile phone survey at day laborer centers

what do they use their phones for?

what features do they use?

participatory prototyping

Weekly workshops with  members of the 

popular communication team

‐

tell the story voice‐mail radio 

‐

show it.  photo‐reporting

‐

pictures and sound slide shows

‐movies

Storytelling –

with mobiles 

Storytelling: say it. 

Voicemail – to –blogGcast ‐> RSS call 1‐888‐65‐GCAST (888‐654‐2278); a voice will ask you for the number 

of the phone you registered with; enter 888‐8‐VOZMOB (888‐886‐

9662); it will ask you for a 4 digit pin; enter 8888 record something. 

then press # [all in english].

Gizmo ‐> email ‐> drupalone number, message in Spanish, post to blog

Storytelling: show it. 

Storytelling: narrated  stories

participants’

voices

• Feeling empowered to tell their own stories in contrast to the mainstream media’s distortions/omissions

• “We want to become visible. From invisible to visible. From voiceless to people that scream.”

participants’

voices• Zamoran:

“Mobile phones are a created necessity, but one that can be useful for other purposes….”

“I always say that I work on a project … and that this project is to make the

voiceless heard”

participants’

voices• Mancia:

“Before participating in the project I had no idea that I could do so many things with my phone, and that’s the case among 90% of the population--most people carry their phones and don’t know what they are useful for.”

participants’

voices• Mancia:

“One of the main goals of this project is to keep learning and to keep teaching…

we must always ask ourselves what we are and what we are doing for our

community”

system features

Uploads from phone‐

cheap: any phone, pre‐paid, 

MMS bundles‐ easy: voice, text, mms

Content management system‐ customizable: open source‐multimedia: voice, text, pictures...‐ private: strip identifiable info

editexpandtagtranslatesubtitlelocatere‐usepersonal pages

Universal design‐multiple outputs‐many inputs?

http://prueba.vozmob.net

‐

sandbox test site

http://blog.vozmob.net

‐

research blog

http://wiki.vozmob.net

‐

project wiki

http://class.vozmob.net

‐

USC class wiki

http://tags.vozmob.net

‐

del.icio.us tags for ‘vozmob’

http://list.vozmob.net

‐

project mailing list

http://devlist.vozmob.net

–

development mailing list archive

http://dev.vozmob.net/projects/show/vozmob

‐

bugs, features requests

http://code.vozmob.net

‐

code repository

irc: http://irc.freenode.net

#vozmob

creditsvozmob teamSteve Anderson, Murali Annavaram, François Bar, Melissa Brough, Mark Burdett, 

Adolfo Cisneros, Sasha Costanza‐Chock, Pedro Espinosa, Amanda Garces, Maria 

De Lourdes Gonzalez, Carmen Gonzales, Chris Guitarte, Josh Haglund, Philip 

Javellana, Crispin Jimenez, Charlotte Lapsansky, Manuel Mancia, Gabriela 

Rodriguez, Marcos Rodriguez, Yazmin Trujillo‐Arevalo, Cara Wallis

fundingAnnenberg Program on Online Communities

(APOC)MacArthur FoundationNokia Research CenterSocial Science Research Council

(SSRC)

graphicsadapted from originals by Rini Templeton (riniart.org)http://vozmob.net