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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:
Mobile phones to end impunity
Hi, Evans,
You bring up extremely important points for consideration. Mobile phones are now the new "video" cameras.. Many ordinary citizens can take pictures and short video clips of what is happening NOW.
It reminds me of an incident that took place in the Los Angelos area of California, USA back in 1991. There was case of a young black man, Rodney King, who was severly beaten by policeman and captured by a citizen who just happened to film what happened on video. The video evidence was not considered by the jury. Hoever, the video was shown widely on the media. When the four officers were acquitted a year after the beating (cases often take this long or much longer to come to trial in the USA), areas of the city erupted in riots. After four days of violence in South Central Los Angeles, 55 people had been been killed, 2,383 injured and more than 8,000 arrested, and damage to property estimated at $1 billion.
Responsible journalism can now incorporate evidence from a wide variety of sources including cell phone photos and videos. But his also requires laws that respond to both the ability of technology to capture evidence as well as capability of technology to manipulate what we think we see. There are many pitafalls and dangers - most of all - the heart of the issue remains how best to truly represent events that place vulnerable people at rist and how our systems of justice respond to actually provide justice to victims..
What might be the best ways to respond to these demands and issues?
Nancy Pearson, New Tactics Program Manager