text messaging

Text messaging works to get out the youth vote. Researchers from Princeton and Michigan Universities, together with the US Student Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) New Voter Project and Working Assets finally released a study of their text message mobilization efforts in the United States elections in November 2006. The fact sheet is here, the full study with the different forms of text reminders and outine of the methodology is attached.

The study found that text message reminders to new voters increased an individual’s likelihood of voting by 4.2 percentage points. This is an increase similar to "quality phone call" reminders but at a fraction of the cost, indicating that partisan and nonpartisan voter mobilization efforts need to urgently get on the mobile bandwagon.

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"SMS lowers the cost of operations for UNICEF - to help feed the children of Africa"SMS messaging has become an important communication tool for many of the most successful businesses in the world. Thanks to collaboration between the United Nations' UNICEF and Australian software company Red Oxygen, SMS has also become an essential tool for helping some of the poorest people in Africa.Tauhidur Rashid, the director of UNICEF's operation in the African nation of Tanzania, says that Red Oxygen's two-way email to SMS software has become an indispensable part of UNICEF's operations. "We've found that SMS is the best way for us to reach the wide variety of people all over the country that we need to keep in contact with. Red Oxygen's software has made that SMS communication easy and practical".UNICEF is a worldwide agency of the United Nations specializing in human rights, education, public health and development issues, primarily for children and women.

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MobileActive is reaching out globally seeking examples and case studies of activist campaigns that make use of mobile phones.  We're trying to track down campaigns using mobile phones for awareness building, voter registration, civic participation, event mobilization, fundraising and more.  We are interested in learning about campaigns in any part of the world. As many of you know, we are currently tracking already many campaigns here and on our list. 

Our goal is to compile an up-to-date set of "strategy memos" that showcase past successes and encourage new campaigns to use mobile phones as part of their civil society efforts. 

If you are involved in or are aware of any campaigns using mobile phones, please send us a note to info [at] mobileactive [dot] org and we will be in touch with you to learn more. 

The MobileActive Strategy Memos are supported by the Surdna Foundation. MobileActive thanks Surdna and Vince Stehle for their support of this project.