San Fernando: Social Media Outreach Efforts
“I didn’t know what the census was before I saw a YouTube ad where a YouTuber was explaining how important the census is,” said Aileen Reyes, 22.
The quarantine has forced the census to change their outreach efforts to a digital platform. Because in-person events are canceled, the census has to be more creative on how they want to reach out to people, especially to Hispanics who are undercounted population.
Ivette Arriaga, a national census field coordinator, explained that her nonprofit organization NALEO educational fund has switched entirely to digital outreach efforts. NALEO focuses more on reach out to their audience through social media to engage with their audience about participating in the census. In a 2018 study, NALEO found out that Spanish speaking people, such as immigrants or the older generation, were more informed on the census than the younger generation, and this was because Spanish speakers relied on Spanish language media to be informed. So NALEO has also been partnering with Spanish language media such as Telemundo and Univision to make sure they can reach Hispanic homes.
Because the census can’t do their usual in-person events or send people out into the field to inform the public on why the census is so important, they were forced to find different ways to educate people about the census. Now you can see several YouTube ads featuring content creators, who have a huge platform, talk about why the census is important. There have also been other creative ways to inform about the census, such as the census being featured in popular television or Netflix shows. It’s still important to continue these outreach efforts even if it’s through digital platforms and it’s especially important to reach out to undercounted communities like San Fernando.
Back in February, there was a card from the census that was mailed out to San Fernando residents. The card contained information on why participating in the 2020 census is so important. However, the whole card was in English with a small section about the Spanish version that was available online. How are the Spanish speaking San Fernando residents supposed to get that message? This card was one of the few outreach efforts in San Fernando, a predominately Hispanic community. My mother doesn’t know English, so she threw the card away. This could’ve been the same case with other Spanish speaking households.
Hispanics are one of the populations that are undercounted during the census so it’s important to encourage Hispanic communities to fill out the census. San Fernando is a predominately Hispanic community and their response rates have been dropping since the coronavirus outbreak. The outreach efforts used before the outbreak didn’t seem they would be effective to get the Hispanic population in San Fernando informed about the census since all the efforts were in English. Now organizations such as NALEO are using social media and television programs as a way to reach out to the Hispanic community.
The Hispanic population in San Fernando is 93%, so it would make sense to have outreach efforts in Spanish, however, some of their outreach efforts were only in English. Their outreach efforts would have been more efficient if they had more outreach efforts in Spanish.
Now that many are quarantining, the outreach efforts had to change to a digital platform. However, based on the hard to count map, social media outreach is probably still not enough to get people to participate during this pandemic. In 2010, the self-response rate in San Fernando was 70%. Now, the rate has dropped to slightly less than half.
In San Fernando, the residents are staying inside their homes, passing time by scrolling through their Instagram feed or watching something on streaming apps and television. While they wait for their videos to play, they watch an advertisement about the census or scroll through posts about the census while looking through their social media feed.
After watching the advertisement or reading the post, they are now aware of what the census is if they didn’t already. Doing outreach efforts through media may be effective in informing people about the census, but, the pandemic is still making it hard for people to participate.
Joyce Martinez was one of many who still hasn’t filled out her 2020 census form because of the pandemic. Martinez was more worried about other things going on, such as work or rent, so she had completely forgotten about the census. There are many people who find themselves in the same situation as Martinez, which is why the census has extended the deadline to October.
The main purpose of the census is to get an accurate count of the population to distribute funding for education and medical programs, which could help improve San Fernando.
