Text Messaging and Activism

Texting uses in campaigning have been hyped for years, and yet few organisations are using it successfully.

This group will explore what people are doing, have tried, are planning and how and where texting can be a successful tool for campaigning (and where it cannot).

Event Notes

Mobile activism

Example of Fahamu.org / Pambazuka News

• AU to ratify women's rights
• Petition to be signed via sms
• Every country ratified
• People were informed when a country signed up & ratified it
• Promoted by offline (radio, leaflets, posters, click ads, screensavers, partners promoted it, etc)
• Could subscribe to sms updates paid internet cafes to use screensavers
• Information brokers: 1 person has access, prints out and distributes (info is multiplied, people know their way around the 2digital divide")
• African service providers fwd sms as emails
• Mobile number advertised on GCAP SMS.ORG (Make Poverty History)
• Download produced by "Creative Storm" in Ghana
• Open Source Tool encouraged Southern Partners (try to remove cost barrier)
• Druple (??) - text to website and published instantly
• Maybe other handheld devices can also be considered
• Offline presentation: presented petition, football cards (red, green) in front of TV at airport

YES's

• Sign petitions via sms
• Use sms as one tool amongst many channels of communication (may be difficult to build a whole campaign's messaging via mobile technology)
• Useful tool for sending updates to activists, supporters, etc (urgent alerts; rally people at short notice - could also be used for Urgent Actions?)
• Easy way for people to express themselves (writing, sending in picture or video, etc)
• Mobile phones are used as community tool in Africa (1 phone may be used by a large family, a whole school, etc)
• Targets youth and new audiences (useful for fundraising in India - 8.4 million pple text, sending out info in China, also taking off in USA, etc)
• Used in Buenos Aires Zero Waste campaign
• Cheap way of communicating
• Enables you to write in a personal style
• International dialling code give useful info about demographic
• Easy to test on small groups
• Flickr can be used to upload from phone
• Live streaming of sms messages (often used in concerts)
• Voice messages can be converted into MP3 files (that can be emailed?)
• Google sms?
• Filing text messages
• Sending a text message to a landline (BT converts into scary voice!:-)
• Meeting pals (e.g. connecting a western activist to an activist in India)
• Ringtones have value: get a lot of PR (used around Hurricane Katrina campaign & Philippine electoral fraud)
• In China, proxy servers are being set-up all the time (a computer can be used as a proxy server?)

NO's

• Take care not to make the mobile phone owner feel spammed
• 160 character messages can be limiting - mobile journalism
• Always give option to unsubscribe to sms list (if user replies with "STOP" message)

Ideas

• As for permission to contact people who send in an sms (donor conversion campaign)
• Interactive sms competition (with every question you answer correctly, you get another chance to enter by being asked another question)

Useful websites

• Mobileactive.org (aspiration?) - have wiki with case studies, security guide, etc
• Fahamu.org (send to Shiromi)
• Pambazuka News (www.pambazuka.org) - mainly stories; plain-text &website newsletter; RSS feeds; uses different ways to package and communicate same content; will have French & Arabic issues
• Balancingactafrica (internet use stats in Africa)

Interested Participants