Civic Media Projects in Latin America
In this panel we will hear from the actors who developed, designed, implemented or applied projects that use social media and digital technologies to attempt social change. It is fundamental to evaluate the projects from the point of view of the strategic choices their creators made in order to generate analytic common basis and accumulate knowledge. It is also important to hear from the actors themselves on what has worked in their particular contexts and what has not. Latin America is still a space where technological innovation is put to the test by implementation, budget restraints, and connectivity limitations. The adaptation of technologies, the language constraints and the cultural challenges will be discussed in respect to the ways in which social change is motivated by technology. This panel will amass experience from Mexico, Panamá, and Chile.
Presenters
Jorge Luis Sierra is a Knight International Journalism Fellow, creating crowdsourcing maps to track crime and corruption in Latin America.
Currently Luisa is the CEO of Nova Mexico Digital Solutions a non-profit dedicated to produce complex digital solutions for social responsibility projects geared towards social change.
Former editor and project manager for NPR, BBC, Yahoo! and Esmas.com
Her interests also encompass teaching, researching and developing academic projects and non-governmental initiatives related to internet use, digital awareness, digital communications and social media use.
Journalist and entrepreneur. Founder and CEO of Poderopedia (2011 winner of the Knight News Challenge). Es deputy director of ElMostrador.cl, chilean news website. New media teacher at Universidad Diego Portales. One of the guys at Hacks/Hackers Chile.
Yesica, a researcher in urban design with a master's degree in Architecture and Urbanism from MIT, who devotes most of her research in border issues between Mexico and the United States. She challenges the notion of pair-cities as separate entities, instead looking at them through a unilateral lens where the conflict manifested in opposing relations between needs, values, interest, and concerns of the two different entities can become the tool for negotiation among multiple systems.
Following her graduation from MIT, Ms. Guerra was granted an Internship at UNESCO’s headquarters in the Social and Human Science department. While in that organization, Ms. Guerra collaborated to create a toolkit/guide for social and spatial inclusion for international migrants where she confirmed the need of collaborative approaches to integrate different systems.
Currently, Yesica is the Director of Crónicas de Héroes/Hero Reports -- an instance of the Center for Civic Media at MIT as well as Research Affiliate of this center. Her expertise in leading multi-media initiatives, as she has been doing with Crónicas de Héroes and achieving excellent results assures the Center that projects such this are needed and have great impact. Ms. Guerra believes that conflict and disparities through pair cities along the border between México and the United States is a subject that cannot be ignored. However, by only focusing on the negative happenings in those regions, the everyday perspective of citizens is dragged down and possible positive outcomes obstructed.
Monday, March 12
