Why Mobile? Indigenous People and Mobile Technologies at the Edge

Abstract

This chapter outlines a process of introducing mobile journalism skills (mojo) and technologies to Indigenous people living in remote communities in Australia. It explores the degree to which citizens can be taught how to create and publish empowering digital stories using just a smartphone. The digital era creates possibilities for new cross-cultural online communications where participants with similar social and cultural backgrounds create content and engage in activities concerning local issues and interests of importance to them. It also demonstrated that mojos could think outside the patterned story introduced. The irony was that because of the digital divide many families could only view stories on the mojos' iPhones, at school, at the local media and community centers, or when the stories were broadcast on television. The degree to which objectivity impacts a subjective treatment will depend on the mojo, the story, a level of journalistic comprehension and in a commercial situation the brief and/or response from a commissioning body.