Beyond the Mobile Hype In Election '08

After a long hiatus abroad and working on a new project, I came home this August to a barrage of inquires regarding the usage of mobile phones in this year's election. While I had been following all of the news enthusiastically, I had very limited access to my US text messaging abilities and thus could not take part in what has been going on first hand.

This does not mean that I do not have my thoughts which, as someone removed from the process for a while, I hope may be somewhat refreshing.

Despite all of the hype surrounding the text message party planning at the DNC , or Obama's text to screen or VP text announcement, it is important to realize that mobile phones have been used politically before with a far greater viral reach and, in the end, impact.

I am sure many of you have already heard about the People Power II demonstration that occurred in the Philippines in 2001. Moments after officials higher up in the government halted the impeachment trial of then President Joseph Ejercito Estrada, the simple text message "Go 2 Edsa. Wer blk" started getting sent around. Hours later, perhaps 50,000 people dressed in black, jammed the intersection of Edsa and Ortigas Avenue calling for the Presidents resignation.

Leaders of the anti-Estrada movement also coordinated via text message to set up a a meeting place near the Edsa shrine thus creating an immediate on-the-spot unity. At this point, the event went from organic to organically organized as hundreds of thousands of text messages and thousands of email messages came out from the group with this simple text: PEOPLE POWER 2 HAS BEGUN. From there coverage into the mainstream media was easy and before long a bottom up completely self running revolutionary machine was created.

Texting, emails, and phone calls helped leaders organize the day to day rally activities as well as keep the hundreds of thousands of supporters informed. Within two days President Estrada resigned and a government was overthrown.

And all this was done organically, without 1,000 dollar a month short codes or signing up for text message alerts. It was not a magical spontaneous occurrence either. There was a political ground swell and friends and family simply texted friends and family, as text messages are normally sent.

This is what text messaging and the power of the mobile medium is all about.

There are a lot more examples from around the world, similar in concept, size, or scope to the Philippine's People Power II demonstration. In the US the protesters at the last RNC and DNC conventions successfully armed themselves with mobile devices for mass organic orchestration (using tools that were not officially set up for that purpose). Even regarding elections there is the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine and the 2004 Spanish general elections to name a few.

The difference between mobile's original political roots and what we are seeing in this years election comes down to one word: "organic." While the Clinton, Edwards and Obama mobile campaigns have had their savvy moments, they are all generally the same thing, that is, "campaign orchestrated." And, as David All points out, the text messages smell like it.

Delivery Fiasco aside, even if the campaigns VP nominee text message had gotten to me before the main stream media it would only have been just that, what we in the mobile world call a "text message alert." After that the interaction dies until the next alert. The Obama text message has already become a commoditized ritual of campaign sound bites.

According McKenzie Wark, Professor of New Media at Eugene Lang College, "This process of commoditization ends up polluting the very channels of communication it relies on in the first place to make the market efficient." And these are all things that we, apparently, signed up for or thought we wanted. Junk mail, Spam email... mobile will be next. We may get excited about political campaigns going mobile in the beginning but as the interaction and messages remain stale so will our excitement eventualy become.

"When that happens," Wark points out, "people tend to refuse communications that do not come from a reliable source. So if you want to get out an email or a text send it to a friend, ask her to pass it on to a friend and so on." To its credit the Obama text campaign does ask you to "Forward to a friend" but if I understand what Wark is saying correctly there is a difference between being asked to do that by an automated Barak text message robot instead of your brother, or best buddy or cute boy or girl.

Do not get me wrong. I think what that the Obama campaign has been doing is great. If I worked for the campaign I would probably be in line with what they are doing. And it certainly has been beneficial in the sense that they have harnessed thousands if not millions of cell phone numbers (a coveted thing in this age of privacy). But is that the main goal? What, beyond text alerts, is the campaign going to do with those text messages now they the have them? But more importantly, is getting cell phone numbers really what it is all about? Or is it, as past mobile examples have shown, really about making change. How much of what the Obama campaign is doing is just the same old thing only this time with a mobile phone? It seems like they are filling new channels with content they already have.

If the examples from around the world have taught us anything, it is that their success is not based around anything "planned" in the campaign sense of the word. Of course, these are countries with a strong public space where people use cell phones to organize a social life that takes place in public spaces. The news, alerts and marching orders do not come from any higher political machine. It comes from the people, who already care. As the extra features beyond SMS such as video and picture taking become more network reliable, the mobile phone as a personal broadcasting tool will become even more powerful. See all the stuff happening around Qik for example. As I have said time and time again, when it comes to politics mobile technology is not a persuasion tool, rather it is a mobilizer of the already persuaded.

I think a good question to think about is whether or not Obama supporters would start using the mobile medium to support Obama on their own accord, sans any campaign initiative. Isn't this what we learned regarding Howard Dean's Meet Up phenomena? Isn't this how the Republican's very effectively (and under the radar) used email in the 2004 election? Isn't this what all the hype regarding New Media tools like mobile is all about? Wasn't it me and you that where Time Person of the year?

I guess what I am saying is that the true power of mobile technology and politics has not hit the US yet. When it does it wont be anything that anyone planned. It will be a result of passionate people doing what they normally do, talking to each other.
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