megafone.net
A Communal Webcasting Device / Collective Process
Since 2003, megafone.net (formerly known as zexe.net) has been inviting groups of people on the fringe of society to express their experiences and opinions through face-to-face editorial meetings and mobile phones. The cell phones, which allow participants to create audio recordings and images that are immediately published to the Web, act as digital megaphones, amplifying the voices of individuals and groups who are often overlooked or misrepresented in mainstream media.
megafone.net has developed eleven projects with different communities: Taxi drivers from Mexico City 2004, young gypsies in Lleida and León (Spain 2005), prostitutes in Madrid 2005, Nicaraguan immigrants in Costa Rica 2006, motorcycle messengers (motoboys) in Sao Paolo 2007, displaced and demobilized people in Colombia and young Sahrawi refugees in the Algerian Sahara 2009.
Two projects were developed with people with limited mobility in Barcelona 2006 and Geneva 2008, and another one in Barcelona 2010 with blind and visually impaired participants. For these projects, participants used GPS-enabled mobile phones to photograph obstacles and architectural barriers they found in the streets and to create a real-time, web-based accessibility map of their cities.
canal*CENTRAL's editorial meeting, San José de Costa Rica 2006
At the heart of this project is the “communal mobile phone” concept, a portable GPS-enabled camera phone equipped with the recording and transmission facilities of the megafone software and designed to be used and shared by multiple participants. The megafone changes hands every week. During weekly editorial meetings, participants discuss the content of the webcasts, and allow each other to publish news and information. One communal mobile phone is designed for use by a group of up to four participants.
Megafone.net is a platform which can be useful as an alternative medium of communication for groups, collectives and associations who wish to organize themselves in order to project their own views and opinions, and counterbalance the negative stereotypes that the mass media disseminate when referring to them. Among its features, you will find geo-localization, which allows the carrying out of digital public cartography projects.
If you wish to start an audiovisual communication project using the megafone.net platform, we are willing to help you. Megafone.net is flexible and can be adapted to the specific needs of your group.
Please fill the form and we will contact you as soon as possible.
Directed by Antoni Abad and programmed by Eugenio Tisselli, megafone.net has eight years of experience organizing, developing and programming mobile phone webcast projects. Since the GENEVE*accessible project in 2008, Lluís Gómez from Hangar Barcelona has joined the team as a programmer of the mobile phone software.