Mobile Phones as a Tool for Civil Resistance – Case Studies from Serbia and Belarus

Author: Fabien Miard

The recent so-called “Twitter Revolutions” in Moldova and Iran have created a renewed interest in the role of new communication technologies in civil resistance and social protest activities. It is a new example in a growing list of events where such technologies played an important role in facilitating protests. Twitter and other microblogging platforms represent a new phenomenon because they easily work across different types of communication technologies such as instant messaging, blogging, and text messaging. This convergence also draws attention to the wide-spread use of mobile phones in civil resistance, a factor often overlooked by Internet enthusiasts. This R@D product summarizes some key insights from interviews with civil activists in both Serbia and Belarus that were part of a master thesis project on mobile phone usage in protest movements, and it links them to insights gained from the recent “Twitter Revolutions”. Although the cases of Serbia and Belarus might initially seem similar because of their geographic proximity, struggles with dictatorial leaders, and historical Communist dominance, mobile phone use by activists in these countries is markedly different. Mobile phones were a critical tactical tool in bringing down Milosevic in 2000. However, only 8 years later, mobiles are less useful to anti-Lukashenka Belarusian activists in the present day because of the state’s increasingly effective surveillance of mobile communication.

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