Ethan Zuckerman writes an amazing article on cell phones and social activism that I wanted to share with you. We are all familiar with a handhelds increasing ability to post thoughts and images from anywhere and the development of the so called "mobile web" but have we really looked in depth at its ability to foster activism especially in countries where there is lack of personal freedoms and media censorship?

Some of the main points from the article:

• There are estimated to be over 3.3 billion cell phones by 2010
• Cell phone usage (over 350 million in China alone)  outstrips television and internet usage in many parts of the world save radio
• The ability to have multiple SMS cards for a single unit goes a long way in protecting the identity of people afraid of arrest or other crackdown by the authorities
• "Smart Mobs" or groups of activists using SMS for rapid spread of information and organization of rallies et cetera have already made their presence felt such as in the Phillipines and the Ukraine in 2001 resulting in a shift of traditional political power
• Goverments may shutdown SMS and phone networks prior to or during an emergency but may limit their own communication options by doing so
• Mobiles are powerful because they are capable of authoring content and virtually impossible to stop
• "Sousveillance" or the monitoring of authorities by grassroots is real and not going away anytime soon

What this leads to is social empowering on a scale not seen before. True, it's not mobile content in the strictest sense and most of this revolves around SMS but all that is changing as more parts of the world get the ability to post rich phone based content. Sites such as MobileActive.org and others have sprung up to facilitate just this sort of activity.  The cat is out of the bag like never before. 

Source: Mobile Social Activism

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