March 19, 2003
Swiss students coordinate anti war rally by SMS
Yesterday, nearly 3000 students from the Valais, a french speaking canton of Switzerland, demonstrated in the streets of Sion against the war in Irak. The time and place was sent out by the student organizers to their peers by SMS.
It's not surprising that text messaging has become the younger generation's first choice for organizing such events and on a much larger scale, similar demonstrations were organized by SMS in France last April, to protest against extreme right-winged candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, following the first round of the presidentiel elections.
Demonstrations were organized both on the fly and spontaneously through members of mobile community Freever, and a student association, the FIDL used Freever as an information platform to coordinate organized demonstrations with the students. According to Pierre Laurent, VP of Communication for Freever interviewed last April, over 60'000 SMS were exchanged at that time.
The most famous example of a political rally by SMS took place in the Philippines in January 2001, where hundreds of thousands took to the streets and litterally brought down an entire governement, leading to Estrada's ouster and the rise to power of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. To look back at that time, read an important piece, «Technology changing Philippine political dynamics», Helen S. Andrade-Jimenez' prize winning article, for which she was awarded the 2001 Citi Journalistic Excellence Award (CJEA).
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