Diva Chat makes headlines

The first impression

On the 18th of November 2010, I first posted a brief overview of what I knew about Diva Chat then. I discussed the pros and cons of this tool, with many health professionals and a few top researchers in the country on HIV/AIDS and sexual health. None of them had heard of Diva Chat and didn’t seem that interested. I was troubled by their lack of curiosity when questions like mine were being ignored because they were technology and social media related.

Then in July 2011, through a guest blog by Rachel De Sain (@rdesain), the Director of Flaxworks, we raised the subject of Diva Chat again, hoping to create a greater awareness amongst policy makers and researchers, based on her observations around youth online communications in Cape York. She said,

‘Diva Chat was widely known and used by many of the youth community. There were mixed reactions by older community members as to the effectiveness of this as a communication tool for youth, particularly police and some health workers who stated that they hated the service, they felt that it led to a lot of bullying and had acted as an ignition to an already fragile community where multiple families/clans have been displaced, have little to do and as such fights erupt easily.‘

My other source of information on Diva Chat is a contact who lives in a remote community and prefers to remain anonymous. The information provided through our discourse is credible and unbiased.

ABC News and The Herald Sun

Now, Diva Chat has been picked up by traditional media. The ABC Radio in Darwin, presented Diva Chat in context based on interviews with myself and a few other key informants. I stressed that whilst Telstra is providing a service that is being utilized by Indigenous youth in remote communities, it cannot monitor the way the service is being used adequately because it was not designed to operate like Facebook. The bullying that happens online is a clear amplification of attitudes and behavior that is born and fueled in real life.

This is our opportunity to increase our efforts in understanding Indigenous youth and their relationship to online communications and build/provide a service that is adequate whilst promoting a safe environment. Facebook has evolved to provide such a service through its ‘report abuse’ and ‘block’ features. Maybe Indigenous youth should be encouraged to switch to Facebook? Should Telstra provide services that promote a safe environment? To what extent should the responsibility lie with a telecommunications provider?

The following week after the ABC article on Diva Chat was aired nationwide, The Herald Sun published an article entitled ‘Indigenous leaders want to ban or censor social media including Facebook’. This information brought much concern to me as this proved that there is very little awareness around what social media is built for and how it can be harnessed for social good.

In my TEDxDarwin talk last year in August, I said ‘…social media functions like a typical Indigenous community’. I said this because Indigenous communities, whether in Australia or beyond our region, are known for their collective values of sharing and collaboration, which is the essence of social media. Because there is such poor levels of engagement and education on social media and technology for Indigenous communities in remote Australia, social media is being used in a damaging way and the positive potential is not being maximised. I wish the NT Mojo (NT Mobile Journalist) project has just as much traditional media hype as the Diva Chat story. This project is the embryonic reflection of Indigenous control over their online space in the future, but we should try to make it happen today. There is no time to lose.