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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? This dialogue is a space to share and discuss many ideas for "Using Mobile Phones for Action."
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[Photo: from the Private Sector Development blog]
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:
Variation on flash mobs?
Hi Ellene
I'm not sure if flash mobbing - where people spread news on a place to congregate - was around before this now famous 2001 event, but if it wasn't this is a very nice example of a political 'kind' of flash mob (see the Wiki entry for more details on flash mobbing at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_mob). Flash mobs usually end with people quickly dispersing, and this may not have happened here, which is why I put inverted commas around the word 'kind'.
Mobile phones and SMS are clearly a very effective way of mobilising the masses, and to inform them of places to congregate and/or demonstrate. I wonder if there are any other examples from the New Tactics community? Maybe they've been (flash) mobbing without realising it... =)
Ken