The Do-Good Virus
Harnessing Social Media for Social Causes
Context:
Throughout this course we have spent our time examining media platforms that are relatively traditional: print, television, film, and traditional word-of-mouth marketing. Even the online media uses we have looked at have been relatively traditional. However, recent developments in social media, including how social networks are used to disseminate messages for both profit and activism, encourage us to consider where media makers and consumers will go next in order to interact with one another.
For this assignment, inspired by the recent success of the viral video Kony2012, you will choose a topic that has at its heart a call to action by your peers – a way to right a wrong or improve the world – and create a Public Service Announcement that is designed to be disseminated by social networks (i.e. a social-activism meme). Use what you have learned throughout this year and what we have observed and discussed about the ways in which social media campaigns work (and don’t work) to motivate people to become involved in causes.
FIRST: Select the subject of your campaign and make your proposal
Option 1: Base your campaign on a topic related to media literacy and media issues we have discussed over the course of the year, for example:
· the importance of voting or being involved in / informed about politics
· government control of media and media messages
· Facebook (or other social media) safety, responsible use
· changing the way we see a media construction (e.g. the tampon ad, stereotypes)
· how the news is constructed (overt or hidden bias, spin, sensationalizing, impact of editorials, etc.)
· impact / importance of being involved in reporting the news: student reporting, writing letters to the editor, citizen reporting, etc.
· concentration of media ownership (i.e. one company owning a variety of subsidiary companies that feed one another, as we saw in Merchants of Cool) and the hidden effects on consumers
· constructions in documentaries and/or “reality” TV (bias, ethical issues, etc.)
Option 2: Propose an issue or topic that you feel strongly about.
SECOND: Make your plan and design your campaign
The criteria for your campaign are:
· it must take on a media-literacy / non-profit / social justice / informational cause and ideally suggest some kind of approach to address it – you are “selling” an idea for change
· must be in a form that can be easily disseminated using Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, etc.)
· must be either an original idea or a completely new application of an existing social-media meme
· your creative process must be traceable through your Creative Brief and Marketing Plan
THIRD: Implement your plan
Following your plan, create and deploy your message!
FOURTH: Evaluate your plan and its implementation
You will discuss with me in an individual wrap-up conference what you learned from your planning, your successes and your failures, and how these reflect your understanding of how the media strategies you’ve employed worked (or didn’t). Incidentally, in implementing your plan, failure is an option in this case – the assessment of that failure may be some of the most valuable learning you do in this assignment.
The conferences will be approximately 20m each and will take place outside class time, by appointment.
Evaluation criteria:
Thinking (Marketing Plan):
· Develops a clear, well-considered Marketing Plan based on the Creative Brief and the idea-development process
Application (Campaign / meme):
· Creates a campaign that reflects the components of a successful PSA / social-networking marketing strategy
· Campaign content / language has been selected to suit projected audience and clearly addresses a media-literacy or social-justice issue
Communication (Campaign / meme):
· Composes a clear, visually effective / verbally effective campaign, using genre-specific media conventions
Knowledge and understanding (Wrap-up conference):
· Demonstrates knowledge and understanding of key media concepts in discussion of choices, successes, failures, and key learnings from the process
Resources (also see files attached below):
Planning outline (designed as a health PSA -- can be adapted)
Monroe's Motivated Sequence -- developing a persuasive/motivational piece
Making a PSA (video tutorial)
Examples of viral videos, memes and grass-roots campaigns with an activist intent: