Using new media technology for advocacy campaign is suggested.
The information in this first blog on media advocacy is solely created according to my personal understanding and interpretation toward issues described. So, readers may encounter with different points of views from what you actually have. Here, suggestion and different opinions are allowed to be expressed without hazardous and insulting comments
Currently, many people have said and experienced that a player of new technologies is using them differently from what technological procrastinators have predicted. For instance, technology — such as, computer — is predicted to be used to increase levels of knowledge or academic performance of users, but instead, it is used by children for playing game, which possibly causes them to have poor level of academic performance. This similar circumstance of unintended uses is also occurred in the realm of new media technology as well. To briefly illustrate, as we notice that new media can be used to raise awareness, or gather group of people to do certain actions, media players have consistently used it for many inappropriate purposes, including cheating, lying, tricking and sexual abuses. However, among those inappropriate uses, there is still group of people, who is using media technology to benefit other people’s lives through the concept of advocacy. Using new media technology for advocacy might not be what technological procrastinators have predicted, but generating good impacts for society can be what they have expected to occurs from uses of technology, and its development. From this point, using new media technology — such as, Facebook and Twitter — to support other people’s lives through advocacy campaign is thus suggested since such doing can advocate the possibility of good change in society. In the following paragraphs, two advocacy campaigns in new media technologies will be investigated to practically understand why new media technology is a suggested choice to use along with advocacy campaign. Also, before the end of this blog, I will touch on the concept of technological determinism with the intention to explain how such concept might occur in people’s thought after experiencing the use of new media technology to support advocacy campaign.

In order to ensure the advancement of projects, Barcia L. has described that a project, built with the intention to improve a life quality of marginalized people, and development needs to be supported by advocacy campaign since the campaign can help build a relationship with stakeholders, and make people acknowledge the existence of those benevolent intentions and projects. Later, the writer highlights that to develop good advocacy campaign, we not only need to be creative, but also to use new media technology because this kind of communication channel is cheap, which can help reduce difficulties that are emerged from limited budget. In the article, Barcia L. gives many examples of successful raising awareness campaign to readers, but the most notable advocacy campaign is Climate Change Awareness Campaign because after going viral in online media, that campaign goes beyond what many people had anticipated. To elaborate, it had changed environmental policies and legislation in six countries. (2015) From this example, we can easily realize that new media technology is beneficial to advocacy campaign in the sense that it can help prevent you from overusing the budget, and it can drive your campaign to exceed expected goals. Apart from that, another successful advocacy campaign is named “CallBulls….”. Specifically, Pearson R. wrote that CallBulls… campaign was launched with six-week digital media campaign along with the intention to support abotion right by having men as the target group. In general, the campaign had engaged their target groups through many advertisement, and videos on social media — such as, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Consequently, the organizer mentions that more than $100,000 has been invested in the program. (2017) From this information, readers may notice that if advocacy campaign is launched through those new media technologies, we can receive financial supports from many donors, which help ensure the accomplishment of advocacy campaign. Those two examples have thus emphasized the idea that we now should use new media technology to moblize advocacy campaign, if we expect it to be successful. Nevertheless, many readers may be curious about the effectiveness in promoting advocacy campaign through traditional media. Here, I would say that traditional media is still applicable for using, but new media technology is more effective in driving your campaign to reach expected goals. With such promised outcome, many campaign organizers are thus forced to use new media technology because it is where their target audiences are hanging around. For this, some readers may discover the relation between such coercion, and the concept of technological determinism. Thus, the next paragraph will elucidate the information of technological determinism, based on advocacy campaign.

Technological determinism is described that everything that people currently do is constantly influenced by surrounding people. This means that people actually do things that they might not truly want to do. With this definition, and the notion that currently, media and technology are merging, we can see that presently, people who have the intention to support change in society may be forced, or influenced to immerse into social media in order to reach large numbers of target groups, and to spread certain information to them. By considering this information together with successful cases in previous paragraphs, a coercing situation is highly potential to occur because advocacy campaign organizers might acknowledge that if they do not use new media technology for their campaigns, they may encounter with various obstacles as such technologies can determine many issues, including successes and failures of advocacy campaigns. For example, when you compare actual outcomes with campaign expectation, you might see that the advocacy campaign receive less supports from publics and donors, and not reach expected goals ultimately. Thus, although advocacy campaign organizers demand to engage publics through traditional media to gain support for advocacy campaign, because of those risk possibilities and promised benefits that new media technology can provide, the organizers will eventually immerse into social media to mobilize their advocacy campaign. Hence, I would like to suggest people who have good intention to develop the quality of people’s lives through advocacy campaign that even though you feel being forced to immerse into social media, you must use those new media technologies in order to at least assure positive progresses to your campaign because as mentioned, such new media technologies are potential to determine your campaign.
Before leaving this blog, I would like to present other benefits from using new media technology to drive advocacy campaign, which is not explicitly explained in above examples. To elaborate, using new media technology to promote your advocacy campaign will help clarify supporters about the real intention of what you are going to deliver through advocacy campaign because you can continuously upload relevant information or picture, indicating the progress of campaign. Additionally, doing so will also help other people to practically realize the future condition that you are going to bring from advocacy campaign because by regularly exposing to updated information of advocacy campaign, people can basically conceptualize, and imagine what ultimate result will be generated, and can predict whether advocacy campaign will be successful or not. Therefore, by considering information presented in this blog, using new media technology — such as, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram — for advocacy campaign is thus suggested.
References:
- Barcia, L. (2017). 4 great development advocacy campaigns. [online] Devex. Available at: https://www.devex.com/news/4-great-development-advocacy-campaigns-87380 [Accessed 25 Aug. 2017].
- Mediafactory.org.au. (2017). Media Factory — making media that thinks. [online] Available at: http://www.mediafactory.org.au/ [Accessed 25 Aug. 2017].
- Pearson, R. (2017). Abortion rights group starts advocacy campaign aimed at men. [online] chicagotribune.com. Available at: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-illinois-abortion-rights-campaign-met-0810-20170809-story.html [Accessed 25 Aug. 2017].
- Wwf.ca. (2017). [online] Available at: http://www.wwf.ca/events/earthhour/ [Accessed 25 Aug. 2017].
