m-advocacy
Posted by KatrinVerclas on Jan 27, 2009
Allyson Kapin from Women Who Tech asked me to respond to some excellent questions about mobile campaigns for advocating for specific social issues. As I just received two text messages from NARAL and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America promoting two campaigns they are running, I thought I take the opportunity to answer Allyson's questions publicly, drawing on my experience and observations of the last few years of mobiles in advocacy, illustrating what works and what is better avoided in using mobiles in advocacy campaigns. This is, by nature of the question, somewhat US-centric. A follow-up article will focus on mobile campaigning in the Global South to differentiate some of the key issues.
How can integrating mobile technology benefit online advocacy campaigns?
Posted by CorinneRamey on Jun 25, 2008
Note: This primer was written for the NTEN newsletter, targeted at a US audience and thus focuses on America. For more on mobile advocacy in many other parts of the world, see here.
Mobile phones are more prevalent in the U.S. than ever before. Today, over 86% of the US population ages 13 and up owns a mobile phone. Although Americans say that the mobile phone is the device that they hate the most (it even beats the alarm clock and the television!), the cell phone is here to stay. In the past decade, mobile users have grown from about 34 million to more than 203 million, and growth is expected to continue to increase exponentially.
Posted by CorinneRamey on May 13, 2008
Mobile phones are nothing new for Greenpeace Argentina. The organization has used mobile phones multiple times to mobilize its now 350,000 person-strong mobile list to successfully lobby for important environmental legislation. One of Greenpeace's significant accomplishments was the passage of the Ley de Bosques, or Forest Law.
According to a recently UN/Vodaphone report, Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in NGO Mobile Use, before the law was passed forests in Argentina were being quickly destroyed. From the report:
Every hour, trees covering an area the size of forty soccer fields are cleared from the old growth forests of Argentina, home to indigenous tribes and numerous endangered species. According to Greenpeace, 300,000 hectares (3,000 square kilometers or 1,150 square miles) of native forest are cleared in Argentina each year.
