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March 29, 2005
SMS Text Messaging in the Gulf
Today's Wasthington Post includes a story by Steve Coll entitled In the Gulf, Dissidence Goes Digital. The article takes a look at the rise of SMS text messaging in Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and how texting is allowing people to spread their political opinions. Here's a snippet:
In this roiling political spring of protest and debate about democracy in repressive Arab countries, cell phone text messaging has become a powerful underground channel of free and often impolite speech, especially in the oil-rich Persian Gulf monarchies, where mobile phones are common but candid public talk about politics is not.Demonstrators use text messaging to mobilize followers, dodge authorities and swarm quickly to protest sites. Candidates organizing for the region's limited elections use text services to call supporters to the polls or slyly circulate candidate slates in countries that supposedly ban political groupings. And through it all, anonymous activists blast their adversaries with thousands of jokes, insults and political limericks.
I'm planning to head to Bahrain and Dubai in May; perhaps I'll be able to meet up with some local SMS gurus during my stay.... -andy
Posted by acarvin at March 29, 2005 11:49 AM
Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article
