So as many of you may know the Digital Citizen Indaba is coming up this weekend and I shall be lucky enough to attended the event. My New Media class shall be keeping people around the world up to date with the Indaba through the use of social networking. We are going to be doing a range of things like short video’s, twittering, photographs and running a live blog.
For me, as someone who blogs about mobile media, what is the most interesting thing about this years programme is the address by Marlon Parker (PhD, Cape Peninsula University) on “Mxit and Community Blogging”. I have discussed the social impact of applications like Mxit and Meep for the younger generations, and am interested in how it can be used within a community for good.
Marlon started up a program where by he was reaching out to drug addicts using Mxit (which is the most used technology across all communities). Marlon’s PhD thesis is on how technology can be used to facilitate change within a community, and thus as an experiment he approached a school about having a counselling service on Mxit. The counsellor’s chat to patients on Mxit, off computers in the counselling center. Marlon said that during any 2 hour session there were at least 50 people online. Once the patient has chatted online, they are then invited into the center to have a one on one counselling session.
There is also an Interactive Panel entitled “How cellphones can empower African digital citizens” which also promises to be informative. The discussion will be moderated by Peter Verweij from the School for Journalism in Utrecht.
I am hoping to do a short interview with Parker so check in again on Monday!
Mobbed by Mobile Media 