VozMob or Mobile Voices/Voces Móviles (est.2010) is an open-source

Open-source software

Open-source software is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.Open...

 "mobile media

Mobile media

The mobility and portability of media, or as Paul Levinson calls it in his book Cellphone, “the media-in-motion business” has been a process in the works ever since the “first time someone thought to write on a tablet that could be lifted and hauled – rather than on a cave wall, a cliff face, a...

 project that supports immigrant and low wage workers in the Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 area in the documentation of their own stories and communities." It is "specifically aimed at those on the dark side of the digital divide

Digital divide

The Digital Divide refers to inequalities between individuals, households, business, and geographic areas at different socioeconomic levels in access to information and communication technologies and Internet connectivity and in the knowledge and skills needed to effectively use the information...

." It enables people with cellphone

Mobile phone

A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...

 access to send content to an internet site, and to communicate to a larger audience.

It began as a participatory design

Participatory design

Participatory design is an approach to design attempting to actively involve all stakeholders in the design process in order to help ensure the product designed meets their needs and is usable. The term is used in a variety of fields e.g...

 project of the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California and the University of Southern California

University of Southern California

The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...

. Other affiliates include the Los Angeles Community Action Network.

Story contributors record video, photos and audio content, and then "send their dispatches by phone to an email address, which directly uploads the messages to Vozmob's blog." The "VozMob content management system is a customized version of Drupal

Drupal

Drupal is a free and open-source content management system and content management framework written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. It is used as a back-end system for at least 1.5% of all websites worldwide ranging from personal blogs to corporate, political, and...

."

Further reading

• Esmeralda Bermudez. "Giving immigrant laborers an online voice: a new program teaches workers to use cellphones to tell their own stories and to document their lives and work." Los Angeles Times, September 19, 2010
• Philip M. Napoli and Minna Aslama, eds. "Mobile Voices: Projecting the Voices of Immigrant Workers by Appropriating Mobile Phones for Popular Communication: The VozMob Project." Communications Research in Action: Scholar-Activist Collaborations for a Democratic Public Sphere. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011

External links

• VozMob website
• Flickr. VozMob's photostream
• Flickr. VozMob at Northern Voice 2009