Next Sunday, June 18th Catalans in Spain are being asked to vote by referendum on the newly negotiated text of the Estatut which ultimately gives more autonomy to the Catalonia region. But the point of this post is not to be a lesson in current Spanish politics. What is rather interesting, however, are the ways in which the PSC, the Catalan part of Spanish President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero#039s PSOE, is using mobile technology as a viral tool to vote "Si" or "Yes" on the referendum.

And the way they are doing it is pretty damn clever if you ask me. At the four rallies / meetings being held before the referendum a Bluetooth booth has been set up in which party members can download videos, ringtones and images to their mobile phones and which they can then forward to their friends and family to thus help spread the “Sí” message on the street. [For more on other examples on how Bluetooth in being incorporated to mobile phones in this way read this]

Followers can also send their SMS message of support to a big screen and then receive someone else#039s message in return. That message can then easily be forwarded to friends and family via SMS.

What a great idea for Dean-style Meetups.

The last meeting / rally on this friday will be streamed live to people in Spain with 3G mobile phones on all three operators. There is a way to do something similar to that in the US as well... but I have my secrets.

Spain has had some pretty interesting case studies of using the mobile medium as a viral tool for politics. For one thing, their is the role played by SMS in the 2004 Spanish elections. And lets not forget about the spontaneous youth meet ups (called Macro-Botellóns) which are now organized by email and SMS.

[via M-Trends]

Technorati Tags: bluetooth, estatut, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, mobile, mobileactive, psc, psoe, sms, spain, zapatero

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