Thousands of protesters will use more than just placards, chants and giant puppets to gain attention at this week’s Republican National Convention. They’ll have specifically designed wireless communications too.
As many as 5,000 of the expected 250,000 demonstrators at the RNC, which opens today in New York, are expected to use TxtMob, a short message service targeted at political activists. The service was quietly launched at the Democratic National Convention last month in Boston, where 261 activists sent messages updating demonstration information and police locations.
“People were texting to announce where protest acts were going on, or saying, `We need water,”‘ said John Henry (an alias), who developed TxtMob. “There (also) was a lot of messaging about like, `The police are lowering their shields, and it looks like they’re about to rush the crowd. Everyone be ready.”‘
TxtMob members join messaging groups based around specific topics. While most groups are politically focused, any group can join. Several groups have sprung up simply to spread information about parties in certain cities, and a group of engineers at a Midwestern university uses TxtMob simply to stay in touch, Henry said. The service is free and available on most major carriers in North America.
Some groups are public-allowing anyone to receive a group message-while others are by invitation only. And Henry recently instituted “secret” groups that only group members know about.
The idea, said Henry, is to enable activists to better organize spontaneously or immediately respond to certain situations. According to one story, hundreds of protesters at the DNC in Boston responded to the scene of an activist’s arrest within minutes.
“(TxtMob) allows for a lot more fluid kind of activity,” said Henry. “If you can get information that much more quickly, it allows protesters to keep the element of surprise.”
About 1,500 users had signed on as of last week, and Henry expected that number to triple by the time the convention opens.
While TxtMob’s service was launched just last month, protesters in the United States have been using wireless communications for several years. And SMS has already been crucial to major demonstrations around the world, according to Harold Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution.
“In your bigger demonstrations, like the one I attended in San Francisco before the invasion of Iraq, most of the people in the crowd used voice and text on their mobile phones to coordinate with their friends,” Rheingold wrote in an e-mail to RCR Wireless News. “The U.S.A. is just catching on to what has been part of the fabric of everyday life in much of the world.”
Rheingold said smart mobs combine communication and computing technologies that “amplify human talents for cooperation.”
Text messaging is largely credited with fueling a protest in the Philippines that ousted President Joseph Estrada in 2001, as more than 1 million protesters took to the streets of Manila. Earlier this year, Spanish activists organized via SMS and e-mail messages-despite a moratorium on demonstrations-just before the election that swept Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero into the prime minister’s office.
With the publicity surrounding TxtMob following the Boston convention, Henry said he’s sure non-protesters have joined public groups, hoping to get messages meant specifically for demonstrators. Police are sure to be keeping tabs on public messages, and reporters are likely to try to get inside information from activists.
But, he said, that’s part of the idea.
Law enforcement personnel will be tuned in “if they’re doing their jobs well,” he said. “New York is already a big, confusing place, and a lot of (TxtMob) use will be for people to know what’s going on in the city at any given time … I think it’s going to be real exciting and real useful for protesters, as well as people in the city who may want to avoid getting caught up in the protest activity.”
With all the hype in the wireless industry surrounding futuristic, third-generation-related services such as streaming video and 3D games, Henry said applications like TxtMob can thrive because of their simplicity-not in spite of it.
“The technology itself is relatively accessible, and the pricing strategies are not unreasonable, particularly outside the United States,” he said. “It’s relatively easy to use and easy to understand … It’s so simple people have really flocked to it.”
