An interesting example of how communities uses web 2.0 to change their society is the case of Chilean “Pingüinos” (high school students). This group of teens, about 100.000 boys and girls, organised themselves mainly using blogs cell phone message texts (and without “adult supervision or guidance”) to pressure Michele Bachelet governmet in roder to change the way public schools were managed.

These are the new netizens… consumers of public services self-organized to negotiate with the major coporation of Chile and its CEO (The Government and its President).

I can send you some pictures and links (videos) about this not-enough-researched consumer-netizen tribe.

Pablo

You’re right, the changes are just beginning, and they have the *potential* if realized to be quite dramatic. It’s immensely important to me to link two of my research streams, that of consumer activism and resistance with that on online communities. I see online communities as much more than just “word of mouth marketing tool” (although they certainly can be this). They are a social phenomenon. A Sea Change. The harbingers and maybe even enablers of a Paradigm Shift. They key is to see how communication and unification (”communification”?) lead to empowerment.

Your question is bang on. It is certainly time to think about good examples of how communities are empowering themselves in a general political way, thinking Big about what Consumer Culture (or, let’s just say Culture) is and can be. There are scads of examples out there. What about YouTube and the mass media? What about Wikipedia and informational asymmetries? What about the entire blogosphere, and many sections within it? What about dieters? What about medical care? What about the DIY communities? What about the Obama campaign? Wow, this question is giving me great ideas for future writings and researches. Do you have any ideas, research, and investigations of your own? Let’s talk!

I am a “Bolivian Human Being” (Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in the world, with approx. a fourth of its population living somewhere outside Bolivia).

As a consumer-citizen 2.0, a netizen… but also as a “wikonsumer researcher-networker” I am amazed about the way citizen-consumer-relationships has changed last 12 years.

YES… WE, consumers (wikonsumers), are more conscious about our power. I wish we also could have the same consciousness regarding what kind of “consumer society” we would like to live in.

Do you have any info about a real transnational and transcultural “consumer tribe” thinking about its role in “desingning” the New Consumer Culture?

Let’s talk!

Pablo Sánchez
http://www.linkedin.com/in/pablosanchezkohn

P.S. You will find a “mirror” of this post at www.insights-qualitativos.com