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Send to friendFeature Online Dialogue: Using Mobile Phones for Action
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Using Mobiles | SMS (Short Message Service)
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Intro
Mobile technology is being used by citizens all over the world as the most affordable and massively adopted piece of technology. How can we harness this technology for advancing human rights and civil society participation?
Our outstanding resource practitioners for the November-December tactical discussion shared and discussed many ideas for "Using Mobile Phones for Action". You can still contribute your ideas, questions and experiences!
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Philippe Duhamel - in his interTactica blog - Harnessing new technology for new tactics provides some great examples to get our creative ideas flowing.
- Sending out an SMS -- Supporting human rights work and activism with text messaging, or SMS - Short Messaging Service - functionality
- Organizing demonstrations -- Such as the Orange Revolution in Ukraine
- Coup de text -- Like ousting a president, it happened in the Philippines
- Protest Ringtones -- Highlighting corruption, it's being used in the Philippines
Links from the dicussion:
Nigerian election monitoring - response
Nancy
The very concept of citizens helping monitor an election is an interesting one. Of course, it was done alongside 'official' monitoring by the international community and was seen by NMEM as a way of getting a Nigerian voice into the process. As NMEM put it, and many people who have worked in Nigeria will know, Nigerians are generally frustrated by the view of their country and there are many organisations working very hard, often against this prejudice, to get people to take them seriously and to help make their country a better place. The very fact that a loose coalition of NGOs in the country were able to use mobiles to carry out monitoring is significant, in my view. It is believed this is the first time citizens have been involved in monitoring an election in Africa.
Since then, of course, Sierra Leone has had an election monitored by mobiles (by official monitors, not citizens) - covered by Katrin at http://mobileactive.org/texting-it-in - and Kenya is about to go to the polls next month. The Kenyan elections, I believe, will see by far the most mobile-based activity, and I've heard from many people and NGOs planning to engage in the process in one way or another. FrontlineSMS is being looked at as a solution in two further national elections, one inside and one outside Africa.
In answer to your questions more specifically, NMEM did register many of the monitors (who were required to send in information before the polls opened), although from my understanding they received many messages from people who only heard about it after the event (and therefore didn't have details for everyone). Therefore, some people may have been comforted by a sense of anonymity. Secondly, NMEM did everything they could to publicise their SMS hotline, and get word out on their activities. Without doubt the BBC picking up on their story was a massive boost (it was reported on the BBC News website and the BBC World Service), without which they may not have received such a response (10,000+ messages). This number might not seem that impressive for a country with over 120 million citizens, but news only broke on their efforts a couple of days before election day, and the project was run on a shoestring. As a proof of concept I think they did a great job.
Interestingly, NMEM are now seeking funding to engage the Nigerian population in the day-to-day politics of their country. They touch on this in their report. If anyone knows anyone who may be interested in funding something like this, please let me know and I'll happily make the introductions.
Ken