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Text-messaging the revolution (Spanish elections) by Eric Pfanner 
Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune |
Text-messaging the revolution Eric Pfanner IHT Monday, March 22, 2004 Cellphones may have tipped the scales in Spanish election In the terrorist attacks in Madrid, mobile phones played a deadly role, detonating the bombs that killed 202 people. But the devices, along with other digital technology, may have served a more democratic purpose in the aftermath. On the eve of the March 14 elections that resulted in the defeat of the governing Popular Party, text messages and e-mails raced around Spain. Some urged supporters of the Socialists, the eventual victors, to vote. Others tried to rally supporters of the Popular Party, defending against it accusations that it had tried to cover up evidence of Al Qaeda's apparent responsibility for the bombings. The surprising outcome of the elections - until the terrorist attack, the Popular Party was widely expected to win - is the latest example of an emerging digital democracy that is revolutionizing how people engage in politics. "Whenever a technology enables people to organize at a pace that wasn't before possible, new kinds of politics emerge," said Howard Rheingold, a techno-sociologist and author of the book "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution." Rheingold served as an adviser to Howard Dean, who recently stopped seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in the United States. Dean's campaign featured the most prominent use yet seen in that country of the Internet as a political fund-raising tool. But elsewhere, the Internet and mobile phones have been used in impromptu ways to help rally mass movements for political change. A huge text-messaging campaign in the Philippines is said to have contributed to the wave of anger against President Joseph Estrada in 2001 that ultimately resulted in his removal. Similarly, hundreds of thousands of text messages and e-mails may have helped to rally supporters of Roh Moo Hyun in South Korea in December 2002. Roh won the presidential election then, but the National Assembly voted to strip him of his powers in an impeachment vote this month. Now, his cyber-supporters appear to be gearing up again. The new technologies are not always harnessed in the service of democracy. Neo-Nazis, for instance, have used mobile phones to organize. The speed and anonymity of mobile communications can eliminate the element of deliberation that sometimes moderates anti-democratic mob impulses. Even as the text-messaging campaigns got under way in Spain, a hoax e-mail was circulating, too, contending that the Popular Party, in a throwback to less democratic times in Spain, planned a coup to stay in power. In many places, the use of text messaging to assemble crowds has been most visible with the apolitical gatherings called flash mobs. These are often called for playful reasons. A group of strangers, for instance, summoned to an urban square by mobile phone, toasts an imaginary friend. In Spain, however, the objectives were more concrete. Political demonstrations are officially banned in the 24 hours preceding the voting. But this time, activists came together anyway, as millions of text messages and e-mails circulated. Though Spain has relatively few Internet users, its mobile phone penetration, at 94 percent, is among the highest in the world, according to the market researcher Gartner. On March 13, the day before the elections, text-messaging traffic was 20 percent above the normal rate, the Spanish daily El País reported, citing industry sources; on election day, it was 40 percent higher. Some of those messages urged support for the Popular Party, calling for counterdemonstrations against Socialist supporters gathered outside Popular Party headquarters. "Demonstration in order to thank our Government for eight years of employment, progress and economic growth," one message said, according to bloggers. "Bring as many as you can." But supporters of the Socialists apparently were more successful in getting out the vote. Turnout in the elections exceeded 77 percent, up from 69 percent in the previous elections, suggesting that the messaging campaigns had helped to tap into anger over the government's apparent effort to pin the blame for the bombing on Basque separatists rather than Al Qaeda. Francisco Ortega, a teacher in Madrid, said he had received a text message that said: "Demonstration in front of the headquarters of the PP against the lies of the government. Pass it on!" Ortega said he believed in the power of technology to change the world. "Even though politics and the economy have stayed basically the same for the last 40,000 years, technology has not," he said by e-mail. Still, technology has its limits. He said that he did not pass on the text message calling for a demonstration because his battery had run out. |