SMS within Politics (ii)

For years, SMS has been a robust and effective tool in both local and national politics (referenced in a previous blog post). This struck me again last weekend. Listening to one of the US 2016 US Presidential Democrat candidates, Hillary Clinton, campaign rally speech in Roosevelt Island live on CNN last Saturday 13th June, I noticed that she encouraged volunteers to participate by using SMS, more specifically: texting a keyword JOIN to a dedicated 5 code number.

Politicians have used SMS to facilitate donations, send out vote reminders and build up their volunteer base to name just a few ways in which they have adapted text messaging to their own advantage- for example President Obama used text messaging to garner donations via a keyword “Give” in the 2012 US Presidential election, a Republican candidate for the 2016 US Presidential election, Senator Ted Cruz, has used SMS to gain volunteers via keyword “Constitution”. In the recent Marriage Equality Referendum, here in Ireland, the Yes Campaign mobilised SMS as a reminder tool to vote (http://www.yesequality.ie/getmetothevoteontime/). These brief examples, from a vast pool that could have been chosen, demonstrate just how ubiquitous (and beneficial) SMS has become to increase political participation. As an aside, you’ll notice how these are also promoted via social media; blending the inherent advantages of both.

Why is SMS so useful for politics, either for pushing out updates, reminding people to vote, etc? Some of the reasons could be encapsulated from the following:

  • Supporters: Gathering and inexpensively interacting with a list of the candidate’s supporters (or those interested in a Referendum for/against) and those who wish to vote for the candidate (or those interested in a Referendum for/against).
  • Mass-Appeal: SMS can be read on any phone without special software. It has a broad network coverage reach. Text messaging spans all demographics and age groups. And critically, it is a push technology, so the message is forced onto the screen display, where recipients cannot but read it.
  • Slogan: Gain an instant way of re-enforcing core themes, as well as branding the SenderID with either the candidate’s surname or the Referendum outcome (YesForRef for eg.), instead of a generic number.