Mobile Smartphones as Tools for ‘Efficient’ and ‘Effective’ Protesting: A Case Study of Mobile Protesting in Jamaica
Faculty of Social Sciences
The paper draws attention to the discourses surrounding the use of mobile smartphones for protesting (M-Protesting) in Jamaica. More specifically, it presents the findings of a qualitative descriptive research project, which utilised a fusion of the case study and discourse analysis methodology to illustrate how protestors describe their experiences with mobile smartphones for protesting a cause.
The findings suggest that the respondents interviewed for this study regard the mobile smartphone as an ‘effective’ and efficient’ tool for protesting their cause. These findings have wider implications for how and in what ways civil society groups can efficiently and effectively engage citizens and issues; how these issues may be received and by whom; as well as whose voices and whose causes may be included, or excluded, in social and political life. Certainly there is a need for a greater unpacking and deconstruction of how different types of mobile technologies (and the different features/functions of these mobile technologies) are used or can be used as tools of social activism and change.
