#vojo.co

I decided to explore social media for the digital public sphere (#SM4DPS) as my multi-media “deep dive” case study. This project included researching the topic, interviewing four experts and using social media tools – namely Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pearltrees, Storify, Slideshare, Google Drive and Google + to design, implement and present the in-depth analysis of a particular digital tool.

Here is a screenshot of my Google+ hangout with Professor Ward:

The public sphere is a concept elaborated by Jürgen Habermas to describe the discursive space where private people come together to debate “the general rules governing relations.” With the emergence of new technologies, some of the debates and discussions started taking place in a new environment dubbed “the digital public sphere.”

In order to explore the role of social media as a space to identify and discuss societal problems, I decided to interview four journalists that deal with participatory media on a daily basis – Marcos Pérez-Ramírez, Lillian E. Agosto-Maldonado, Myladis Soto and Greg Munno. The interview highlights are available in my Slideshare below.

There are several examples of how social media can serve as conduits for political action – namely, the role of Facebook and Twitter in events like the Arab Spring uprisings and the Occupy Wall Street movement. However, using popular networking sites like Facebook and Twitter requires certain technology that most people don’t have access to. Thus, the main question guiding my case study is as follows: How do people without access to the Internet get their stories across and participate in the digital public sphere? 

Here is the Pearltress of all the materials I used for my teaching presentation:

Challenged to talk about something other than Facebook or Twitter, I actually found a lot really cool initiatives and projects geared towards helping marginalized, disenfranchised and/or remote communities engage with technology to organize and ultimately influence political action involving the issues that concern them:

Textizen: “asks questions on posters in public spaces, then collects citizen feedback via text message. Anyone with a minute and an opinion can reply.”

Awaaz.de: “is a software platform enabling organizations to engage with poor, remote, and marginal communities by providing on-demand, many-to-many information access through mobile phones.”

Vojo.co: “is a hosted mobile blogging platform that makes it easy for people to post stories from inexpensive mobile phones via voice calls, SMS, and MMS. Our goal is to foster greater inclusion in the digital public sphere.”

The presentation was a great experience where I really had a chance to harness all the different tools I’ve been taught to use during the semester. Below is the Storify of all the social media activity during the presentation – a big thanks to the class for being a great audience:

Lastly, we had to perform analytics to gauge how far our social media engagement had resonated. I was very impressed with the results, below a screenshot of the tweetreach analytics results:

Finally, attached is the Slideshare of my #NewhouseSM6 presentation #SM4DPS – Social Media for the Digital Public Sphere: