Youth Internet Radio Network (YIRN) - Australia

YIRN is a project that connects young people across the state of Queensland, through the use of new media technology, whilst supporting them to learn marketable skills and providing them with an interactive distribution platform for their own creative content.

Here is a general overview of the strategies that are planned:

• A streaming website is being developed with youth input and hosted at QUT. Groups of young people across Queensland will be trained in how to produce content for the site - audio (music, speech), text (stories, reports, journals), and visuals (photographs, artworks).
• Through the network and the website, young people will be provided with a distribution platform for their locally created content. In addition, the network will allow groups of young people to interact with each other and with others (including government representatives) on the topics and issues that are relevant to them - through forums (for an example, click here), messaging services, message boards, and emails.

Specifically, YIRN provides young people with the opportunity to investigate how information and communication technologies (ICTs) can be used for interaction, creativity, and innovation. The YIRN research methodology combines 2 research approaches - ethnography and action research - and is participatory in that those taking part in the projects are fully engaged in the research approach. This methodology was developed specifically for community media research by members of the YIRN Research team and is currently being applied to UNESCO's South Asia ICT projects.

The project has created partnerships with 10 different organisations that are broadly distributed across the state and include a range of different geographical, social, and cultural communities. Training in content creation will provide this project with a means of interacting and getting to know young people in their localities. A series of 3 workshops over 2 years will be carried out with each group. To date, 5 workshops have been carried out using a method called ‘Digital Storytelling’. This involves a 4-day workshop in which young people write a 2-minute personal story about their lives, which they then turn into a short film.

These Digital Stories will be included with other content young people produce on a streaming website to be launched later in 2004. Organisers say that this website will comprise a mosaic of local content reflecting the diversity of the lives of young people across the State as well as their shared experiences and interests. Through the workshops, young people will learn about the possibilities (and restrictions) of new technology and through their experimentation they will shape the content of the website and the development of the network.

One key aspect of the ethnographic research that constitutes this project is an exploration of the ways in which YIRN works as a communication space: On the one hand, how will young Aboriginal people in Napranum talk to other young people in nearby Weipa or far-away Mount Isa or Brisbane? How will they represent their very local lives and their notions of local and national identity? On the other hand, how will they communicate with the government? What information will they ask for, what information will they present? Do young people in different parts of Queensland see themselves as active citizens? Do they want to be active citizens?

Youth, Technology, Political and Economic Participation.