SMS, mobile phones and government power, ie Smart Mobs

This week's Economist (Oct 28) has two interesting stories about the mobile phone. One is in the business section and discussed banking and payments via mobile phone. Alan and I often discuss the most advanced technological markets, like South Korea, Japan, Scandinavia in our best examples. What I liked particularly in the Economist story is the example from Africa. In Soweto there is a barber shop who already gets more than half of his customers paying by mobile phone. What a nice story! But that is not the point of my blog. Lets look at the other article, in the new International section of the Economist, entitled "Mobiles, protests and pundits"

This story is subtitled "Mobile phones are changing poltitics faster than academics can follow." The typically very thorough Economist article mentions the origins of using the mobile in politics and protests. It mentions our friend Howard Rheingold as coining the phrase (and writing the excellent book of the same name, that we quote in our book) "Smart Mobs". Howard obviously also runs the blogsite also of the same name, that Alan and I both follow. The Economist mentions early protests like those in Philippines in 2001, and the role of mobiles in the South Korean elections last year.

But the article also shows that in areas like Burundi, with horrible violence, mobile phones are now being used to gather evidence, by de-facto first-time "citizen journalists" or "cameraphone witnesses" if you will. If you remember the Rodney King beatings in America, where the brutal policemen were caught on video. Today with the spread of cameraphones to literally the whole world, many brutalities get caught on amateur video.

Another example is not well explained but sounds very fascinating (maybe some of our readers know more about this). Apparently in Belarus (former Soviet state) there is particularly bad government, and peaceful youth revolution is now via smart mobbing to... eat ice cream in large mass protest? Cool. The article has much more, well worth the read.

So yes, the mobile phone in general, and the text messaging function in particular are reshaping government power and citizen participation. And if an election is ultimately about ultimate power - who gets to be in government of a given nation, then that event of deciding on ultimate power, is also now discovering the enormous power of the most potent communication tool - the mobile phone - and its most powerful communication method - SMS text messaging. Right now, in America, which prepares for its mid-term elections next year, several campaigns for the senate, congress and state governor, are experimenting with SMS texting to get out the message and boost the vote. I'm sure we'll find several "SMS is a surprisingly powerful tool for elections" stories after the election.

But readers of our site knew that already. However, as this is a series of several hundred local elections in a multi-billion dollar media cost election, in the USA the home of marketing, we can expect also a lot of cool innovations in this space. I am very interested in what they can invent..

Comments

[alan moore]

Fascinating post tomi! :-)

Our first book really dealt with media, and business and insights into the phenomonen of social networking and digital communities.

I have become increasingly aware that - this sea change - has many other ramifications, for good and bad. Like Howard Rheingold - I am an optimist - seeking those examples - that point us in a direction that could be beneficial for business and society.

Politics needs a big rethink and its time that governments did become representative of the people.

Like companies from our industrial past, politics seems out of synch in a world where perhaps greater participation is now possible.

I know in the UK we have an e-gov tzar (nice title).

I suppose for the question is how quickly can we transform our poltical frameworks to engage more people.

The body politic is the people

Alan

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