A mobile phone fast becoming an effective political campaign tool?

With the internet revolution almost at the door step of everyone, including the poor and jobless individuals,  easily available web and online space free for everyone to use, one of the internet gadgets, the mobile phone seems to fast becoming an effective political campaign tool.

For those who follow media reports, a high court judge has  today (04 April 2014) reportedly ruled that a message that one political party used again another seems to be fair comment although the complaint is probably to review the court outcome even though the particular political respects the ruling.

This post is not focusing on whether the high court ruling is fair or not, that is another matter which deserves a separate interrogation, but on the campaign message channel or medium or the conduit, the mobile phone in this case. The message was reportedly forwarded to over one point six million target recipients or electorates in this regard.

The traditional campaign media tools like in my country Namibia have always been radio which reaches over 90 percent of the 2.1 million people and conveys the message in almost all indigenous languages spoken by all diverse language groups. The next second traditional campaign platform is the TV which whose foot print is over 67 percent of the population. And of course print media and now the social media  as we now live in the world of multi-media platforms with online messages. While the campaign messages are disseminated via free airtime –news and current affairs, some political campaign messages are paid for as political parties reinforces their manifesto priorities and why the electorates must vote for their leaders.

While many communities and some parts of even Namibia are yet be connected to the rural electrification grid via the various energy sources including solar energy – and mobile networks, a significant number of the country’s population has access to mobile phones. A few years back, a local mobile telecommunication through its mixa-live event announced that its data base had over 1.5 million mobile phone owners and the country ‘s population is just over two million. What does that tell you, that more Namibians seem to have access to mobile phone. Others through the information talk say that every second person in the street seems to own a cell phone including those looking for jobs at street corners.

The good thing about mobile phones is that the holder, owner or user carries these in his or her hand or pocket or just with him or her, making it possible for the user to be reachable at any time. Unlike portable radios that do not have additional benefits, mobile phones have radio services, they have social media platforms  most of them which are freely available and at no cost. Nowadays people even talk about Whatsup, or Viper – other software that  have added value to such gadgets as users can send message at minimum or no cost compared to traditional short message service.

A political party using mobile phones as platforms to distribute its campaign messages therefore stands to gain so much in terms of having the message reaching the recipients in real time – on instantly – and could do so at a minimum cost compared to for instance a TV platform. Unlike radio and TV platforms that only refer to such a message once unless it is repeated, the mobile phone user who receives the message has a chance to read it over and over again and understand it, and has a chance to also get in touch with the sender of the message right away. Mobile phone platforms also have opportunities to convey messages in various languages although some phones or softwar are yet to be fully developed in order to cater for local languages especially those with clicks.

This post did however not look at the challenges of sending political campaign messages through mobile phone users. The question of who the dedicated political supports or potential suppers and members is another challenge.. But for political parties must develop their members’ data bases in order to ensure that their messages will reach the intended recipients.  However, the other question is, what about sending the messages to members of other political parties with the aim to convert them?

While the focus of this post is not on which electorates to target via mobile phones, the idea was to make us think about the new way of political campaigning and appropriate and available tools  to use. In America and Europe, we have heard how President Barack Obama’s political campaign was partly successful due to social media related platforms and the involvement of the creative minds – the youth.

Now that you scanned through this post, it is now up to you to judge as to a mobile phone is an effective political message campaign too l. I am sure you have been following the debate on the political campaign message disseminated to voters in one of the African countries – and hopefully that can be a spring board to think about this subject. Good luch.