Oral Presentations - Session 3B: UC 327
Face-to-Face or Facebook? Rethinking Social Media
Presentation Type
Presentation
Faculty Mentor’s Full Name
Henriette Lowisch
Faculty Mentor’s Department
Journalism
Abstract / Artist's Statement
In modern, technologically advanced societies, social media have been credited with playing a pivotal role in bringing about activism and social change. Is this enthusiasm for sites like Facebook and Twitter justified, or do we give social media more credit than it deserves? We decided to test the efficacy of social media in actively promoting social change by creating our own localized activist campaign, hypothesizing that we needed some sort of offline activist component to our outreach to mobilize. We created a campaign to advocate for tap water on campus. To measure our success, we looked at the analytics provided on our Facebook page and Youtube channel, as well as surveys on Survey Monkey, and connected our likes, views, and results to the dates they occurred, often in concurrence with offline events. For our offline component, we staged a flashmob to both aid in spreading our message and to compare its efficacy to the success of the facebook page. Our research was also informed by a parallel campaign conducted by a group of students in Berlin, Germany, with which our test group—a seminar class of Global Leadership Initiative freshmen—collaborated.
Face-to-Face or Facebook? Rethinking Social Media
UC 327
In modern, technologically advanced societies, social media have been credited with playing a pivotal role in bringing about activism and social change. Is this enthusiasm for sites like Facebook and Twitter justified, or do we give social media more credit than it deserves? We decided to test the efficacy of social media in actively promoting social change by creating our own localized activist campaign, hypothesizing that we needed some sort of offline activist component to our outreach to mobilize. We created a campaign to advocate for tap water on campus. To measure our success, we looked at the analytics provided on our Facebook page and Youtube channel, as well as surveys on Survey Monkey, and connected our likes, views, and results to the dates they occurred, often in concurrence with offline events. For our offline component, we staged a flashmob to both aid in spreading our message and to compare its efficacy to the success of the facebook page. Our research was also informed by a parallel campaign conducted by a group of students in Berlin, Germany, with which our test group—a seminar class of Global Leadership Initiative freshmen—collaborated.