iLab Latin America is Finalist in Changemakers’ Citizen Media: A Global Innovation Competition

Over the last few years, with the advancement of technology, particularly mobile and the widespread adoption of social media, a shift has occurred in the way news is reported.  Now, people turn to YouTube, Twitter and Facebook for real-time reports from the depths of the action.  We’ve experienced this democratization of media during natural disasters and historical moments like Arab Spring and The Occupy Wallstreet Movement.  Citizen media enables more voices from a community to contribute to the telling of critical events, particularly in developing areas where under-reporting occurs and access to information is limited.

We believe in supporting communities in the creation of tools that improve global health and safety and that is why we are thrilled that iLab Latin America was selected as one of 11 finalists out of over 420 entries in the Ashoka Changemakers Citizen Media competition! The iLab Latin America envisions several tools that would de-structure journalism by breaking the information reported into small bites.  The system could be a database for both local citizen journalists and traditional media journalists to interact with each other.  Citizen reporters would be organized by topic and location tags so that journalists could easily identify who to connect with for clarification and reporting.  Anyone could subscribe to topics and follow along, adding their voice to the reporting process and receiving information from other citizens in their region.

In order for iLab Latin America to develop citizen media reporting tools, we need your help!  Please vote for us in the Ashoka Changemakers Citizen Media Innovation competition.  The winner will receive $5,000 dollars toward the development of their tool.  To place your vote, you will need to create a login for the Changemakers site, which you can do quickly using your Facebook account.  Once you are logged in, just click the vote button on iLab Latin America’s project page and help us discover and share the true story, one bite at a time.

Voting ends on November 23rd so get your vote in now and please help us spread the word!