MobileActive.org

Overview of some of the challenges and potential pitfalls to mobile advocacy that are good to keep in mind as you are planning a campaign.

This practical guidebook is a must-have for every nonprofit and political organization interested in reaching youth. The book clearly and concisely details the ways in which new media has been used successfully –and unsuccessfully– to recruit, organize, and engage young people. Importantly, it ties online efforts to offline action. Chapter 4 focuses on mobile phones, using sms text messaging, what it is, how it works, and how to get started.

This practical guidebook is a must-have for every nonprofit and political organization interested in reaching youth. The book clearly and concisely details the ways in which new media has been used successfully –and unsuccessfully– to recruit, organize, and engage young people. Importantly, it ties online efforts to offline action."

This report was written by the organization Fahamu in preparation for a workshop to form regional network of activists who use mobile technology in Africa in May 2007. The report looks into the use of mobile technology in Africa by human rights and social justice organizations. The report seeks to establish who is using or developing mobile phone technology in relation to human rights and social justice in Africa. It also provides a background synopsis of mobile phone technology and activism in Africa, an assessment of those who have used mobile phone technology for social activism and/or service delivery and an impression of groups who may be interested in or planning to use mobile phone technology in the future.

This 16-page policy briefing from the BBC World Trust Service analyses the role of the media in the Kenyan [January 2008] post-election violence. It is designed to enable an understanding of what has happened in Kenya in the belief that these issues have important policy implications and consequences in many countries. It situates its analysis within debates on democratic governance and poverty in order to contribute to a process of extracting lessons from the crisis. The briefing examines political polarity in the media and its function as a political tool. It discusses the inciting of violence and the role of the local language or vernacular media, as well as the media's role in calming the violence. "The role of the media in Kenya's violence has ...raised questions of whether media can be too free in fragile states such as Kenya....[The] briefing argues that the role of the local language media during the crisis was the product of a chaotic regulatory policy and the lack of training - especially of talk show hosts, whose programmes provided the platform for most of the hate speech....It argues that many local language radio [stations] played a role in calming tensions as well as inflaming them, and could be a powerful mechanism for reconciliation."

Collaboration supported by mobile devices has brought advantages for users and also challenges for software developers and mobile computing devices manufacturers. Every kind of device used to support mobile collaboration has strengths and weaknesses depending on the work context where it is used. The idea is to use a specific device when advantages are most relevant and disadvantages do not affect team work. This paper proposes an evaluation framework that helps developers to identify the type of device that can be used to support mobile collaboration in specific work contexts. In addition, three mobile collaborative applications are analyzed using the evaluation framework. The results of the analysis are then compared with the empirically observed suitability.

Cell phones introduce a range of new possibilities for social networking and communication, media use and production, political activism, as well as education. Young people in South Africa have adopted a range of innovative communicative practices, notably those which exploit low-cost mobile applications, as well as a growing host of rich-media and Internet-based applications. Until now, little quantitative data has been available to describe exactly to what extent and how young people access and use cell phones. This paper reports an extensive study, which surveyed 500 students from very low-income areas in Cape Town, South Africa. The students reported intensive use of cell phones, at a level which overshadows their use of less widely accessible technologies such as desktop computers. Notably, the extensive use of mobile Internet applications which students reported shows that many young urban South Africans first access the Internet via their phones, and that their concepts of the Internet and media in general are consequently strongly shaped by a distinct set of mobile applications.

In recent years mobile communication has emerged as a new channel for political discourse among close friends and family members. While some celebrate new possibilities for political life, others are concerned that intensive use of the technology can lead to small, insular networks of like-minded individuals with harmful effects on civil society. Drawing from a representative sample of adults in the U.S., this study examined how mobile-mediated discourse with close ties interacts with social network characteristics to predict levels of political participation and political openness. Findings revealed that use of the technology for discussing politics and public affairs with close network ties is positively associated with both political participation and openness, but that these relationships are moderated by the size and heterogeneity of one’s network. Notably, levels of participation and openness decline with increased use of the technology in small networks of like-minded individuals. However, these trends are reversed under certain network conditions, showing the role of mobile communication in civil society is highly dependent upon the social context of its use.

Is the dramatic increase in Internet use associated with a commensurate rise in democracy? Few previous studies have drawn on multiple perception-based measures of governance to assess the Internet’s effects on the process of democratization. This paper uses perception-based time series data on “Voice & Accountability,” “Political Stability,” and “Rule of Law” to pro- vide insights into democratic tendency. The results of regression analysis suggest that the level of “Voice & Accountability” in a country increases with Internet use, while the level of “Political Stability” decreases with increasing Internet use.

 

Additionally, Internet use was found to increase significantly for countries with increasing levels of “Voice & Accountability.” In contrast, “Rule of Law” was not significantly affected by a country’s level of Internet use. Increasing cell phone use did not seem to affect either “Voice & Accountability,” “Political Stability” or “Rule of Law.” In turn, cell phone use was not affected by any of these three measures of democratic tendency. When limiting our analysis to autocratic regimes, we noted a significant negative effect of Internet and cell phone use on “Political Stability” and found that the “Rule of Law” and “Political Stability” metrics drove ICT adoption.

This paper takes a look at the potential evolution of mobile technology and services over the next ten years and discusses an mServices framework for building and deploying diverse mobile services. The paper also looks at the challenges of such an endeavor and the steps needed to achieve the vision.

The report suggests how mobile devices will be used for much more than voice communications in the coming years in mHealth, mGovernance, mEnterprise, and mPublic Safety. Supporting the projections are: a mapping of mobile penetration, mobile ecosystem dynamics and deployment and adoption of mobile technology in the developing world. The report summarizes the building blocks of a mobile services platform and concludes with an emphasis on public-private partnership and the innovative business models that will accompany these changes.

There is global use of technology in medicine and health communication, leading to terms such as telemedicine, telehealth and e-health. A wide range of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has been used both in the provision of services, as well as in messaging and communication campaigns. In South Africa limited internet penetration has led to more experimentation with cellphones. This paper provides a discussion of these projects, focusing on: The Teen SMS Helpline of the South African Depression and Anxiety Group; SIMPill which assists with compliance to tuberculosis medication; and CellLife’s Cellphones for HIV programme. The projects are described, with reflection on the possibilities for the uses of cellphones in healthcare, weighing advantages and disadvantages, particularly in the local context.