Social Media Story Initial Blog

After changing my story idea last minute during class, I have decided to write an op-ed piece about the struggling volunteer fire service in the United States. I will be focusing on the reasons behind why the number of volunteer firefighters in the United States has significantly dropped in the past 20 years. I believe I will be focusing mostly on the health risks, as studies are coming out almost daily about the significant dangers facing all firefighters who operate in far from safe conditions. Since the September 11th attacks, many firefighters are coping with the harsh realities of inhaling uncontrollable toxins such as asbestos and other cancer-causing debris. Aside from the health risks, I also want to touch upon other reasons why people don’t want to volunteer, such as a lack of exciting calls and a lack of time to volunteer. Especially within my department at home, our annual call numbers have dropped due to factors such as safer home construction and safer automobile manufacturing. Furthermore, it is not appealing to many to be woken up 3am to a screaming pager telling us to drive to the fire station as soon as possible to assist our community. To create this story, I plan to utilize Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. I will use Facebook to try to generate an opinion of the general public about their views of the volunteer fire service, whether they see the statistical benefits and what negative consequences of it that they see that could contribute to the lack of desire for them to consider volunteering their time. I will use Twitter mainly to create polls and to link to the Facebook posts I create. I will be using Snapchat for my live element, where I will hopefully be going on ride alongs with a volunteer department detailing their lives on a daily basis. For my experimental platform, I plan to explore Periscope. I have seen it used by some of my fellow firefighter for broadcasting incidents as they are transpiring. I will hopefully be using it alongside Snapchat as part of my live element. Ideally, I would happen to be conducting a ride along when a structure fire call comes in so I could provide Periscope video on the incident as it transpires and explain what each volunteer’s duty is on the scene. This would help the audience understand potential reasons why volunteer staffing numbers dwindle so much.