18 Mobile Multimedia: Uses and Social Consequences

In chapter 22 of this volume, Kenneth Gergen analyzes how mobile telephony is transforming the political process and democracy. For him, the structure of political communication in Western societies has gone through a series of highly significant changes during the past fifty years. Between the government and the individual voter, there has always been a layer of face-to-face relationships in which people deliberate social issues and political issues. The fourth layer, a more recent addition, is mediated communication that was originally monological: the public was informed, but had only limited possibilities in participating in opinion formation in media. However, with mobile phones, the nature of mediated communication changes. For example, people are able to organize political protests, as the ousting of Joseph Estrada, the former president of the Philippines shows (see Rheingold 2003a). The history of how he left his position was largely a story of urban crowds organizing massive demonstrations with mobile phones and text messages. With messages such as ‘‘Go 2EDSA, Wear blck,’ ’ people organized a series of demonstrations at Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA), a major Manila thoroughfare (Rheingold 2003a, pp. 157–160). We can cal