Entry 5: Digital Media as a Force for Good?
Rally for Our Future: campaign protesting Ford’s education cuts.
This campaign aims to spread awareness about the details and impact of Ford’s education cuts, and increase political engagement and activism among youth. It will explain the negative effect the cuts will have on students, including:
Increased class sizes
Reduced course selection, including the sciences and arts
Cuts to special education programs
Increased barriers to education caused by mandatory online classes
Massive layoffs of teachers and education assistants
Rally for Our Future targets students and parents, inspiring them to take political action with the knowledge that the cuts will directly affect students’ futures. It will encourage the public to attend rallies and walkouts, sign petitions, and contact their political representatives through letters, emails, and phone calls. Rally for Our Future’s digital presence will include a website, email, and social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Website:
This is where the public can find in depth information explaining the legislation and its impact. The website will encourage readers to take action, containing links to a petition (which can also be shared on social media), chances to subscribe for email updates, listed dates of various rallies and walkouts, and the contact information for MPPs, the Minister of Education, and the Premier’s Office. The campaign’s graphics will be available for download on the website, so that the public can print their own posters and make use of the logo digitally.
Email:
The public can subscribe for regular email updates, and will automatically be added to the campaign’s email list upon signing our petition. Email updates will go out once every few days, always containing links to our website, petition, and a “share on social media” option. These regular and seemingly personalized updates increase awareness and are statistically proven to encourage activism.
Social Media:
Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter will be used primarily to spread awareness to massive numbers of people, and as such the main goal of all our accounts is trending. We will encourage the public to share our posts and use hashtags such as #nocutstooureducation, #cutshurtkids, and #rallyforourfuture. In depth information will not be shared on social media, instead our posts will contain little writing and many links to relevant news articles, our website, and the petition.
Digital media platforms like these are good at spreading information to a wide audience (allowing us to get a large number of signatures on our petition), and are especially effective at engaging youth (hence why so many student led movements spread on social media recently). They are also easily accessible for most people. Disadvantages include the tendency towards click activism — only sharing posts and not engaging in meaningful political protest, difficulty getting a deeper dialogue on social media, and the inability to control conversations once you’ve initiated them. Since it is so easy to stay anonymous on the Internet trolls can become a serious problem, and misleading or false information can be spread, both in support of and against you.
