Mobile for Advocacy & Social Organizing

• Why Mobile? Always on, everywhere. As of June, 91% of US Adults carry a cell phone.

• 2/3 of which are smart phones, 1/3 of which are 'dumb' phones

• Phone communication can be broken down into Voice, Text, and Data (Apps and Web)

• Voice and text are available on even the most basic phone, the primary limitations lie in the service plan of the end-user, and whether or not they have a limited amount of, or opted out of entirely, sending and receiving calls and/or text messages

Voice

• Traditional phone communication, person-to-person conversation

Things to consider:

• network coverage (if signal is weak the call quality will suffer or the call will drop altogether),
• if outside of network coverage the call will not be received, service (i.e 'minutes', 'roaming') charges and distance,
• calls are live (no record of call unless it was recorded, or notes were taken) and can be easily missed,
• calls must be scheduled to when both people are available at the same time,
• only capable of one-to-one/party calls, but very resource intensive.

Benefits:

• More personal, and allows for natural feedback and tone.

Text - Short Message Service (SMS)

Things to consider:

• Must be opt-in and provide obvious way to opt-out at any time,
• limited to 160 characters (though if more is required, it can be broken into multiple messages [i.e. include 'Message 1/2'], but this should only be used if absolutely necessary),
• in the US, people are charged to both send and receive messages (but not the rest of the world),
• different carriers may have policies regarding international texting

Benefits:

• Inexpensive,
• people will always read a text message when received (Don't abuse it! Make it as concise and beneficial to their interests as possible),
• "Store-and-forward" (if a person is out of coverage, the message will be received as soon as it is possible),
• Does not require strong or consistent cellphone coverage,
• both people will have a record,
• highly scalable,
• allows one-to-many communication of important information,
• can be automated to auto-reply,
• use key words to collect or provide information,
• create user groups, and
• more advance web-interaction.

Automated services

• Many tools are available that do essentially the same thing with varying costs, scalability, requirements, setup, and maintenance
• FrontlineSMS
  • can use basic phone (and it's cell service) and laptop (no internet required) to send and receive messages and can be set up to automate services using keywords.
• Frontline SMS for Android
  • The same service ported to be Android-native, meaning all that is required is a phone running Android and cell service (However, this project is out of development and may develop bugs, but in experience it was fairly reliable)

• TeleRivet
  • Web and Mobile-web based, it can be set up on a computer (with internet) and run from a phone with both cellular coverage and a

Example:

• Jordan used an automated service to record and map event attendance as a way to demonstrate,
• also used at demonstration to measure commitment of attendees to easily include in future news and updates