The Effectiveness of Facebook Awareness Campaigns

Wear purple, change your picture to a cartoon, change it to a poppy, to a ribbon of whatever colour. Change your status to your bra colour.

There's all these little things that started on social networking sites, all of them are meant to create awareness to whatever cause they're doing it to far. So the question is? Are they effective? Are they actually making an impact? Well that's really hard to say, and incredibly hard to measure. How does one actually measure the impact that any awareness campaign makes?

There's ways, surveys, talking to people on the topics they are raising awareness for. I mean we're talking about human behaviour here, so doing typical qualitative methods would get me the information I'm asking about, however, since I don't have the time, energy, or an ethics board backing up any such research, I'm not going to waste my time doing these things. I'm just going to tell you what I think, what I've observed. Since this is a blog after all and not an academic journal.

I'm of two minds on this.

First of all, I think that awareness is an incredibly important tool in any campaign. You can not motivate people to take action for your fight unless you make them aware that it's going on. If people are ignorant on the issues you need to educate them. Also, awareness campaigns are also there for a reminder, to keep them thinking about the ideas.

For instance, I think we can all agree that child abuse is bad. We all know this, we all agree with this. But how many of us actually think about this? How many of us actually support local charities that help children that were targets of abuse? How many of us do work to end child abuse?

I know I have a few friends out there that identify themselves as child advocates, I have a couple of friends that work or have worked in the field to protect children. But not all of us do that, not all of us are champions to end child abuse. Would it be more effective if we all were? Sure, but everyone has their own fights, their own baggage and their own causes.

Personally, I don't do much to end child abuse. I don't donate to charities that protect and help victims of it, or volunteer my time. I really don't have the means to do either, but even if I did, to be honest my resources would go else where. It's not that I don't care, I will happily and willing participate in an awareness campaign, wear a ribbon or a button that might make people think or ask questions. Or have a discussion with people about it. This is what I can do, and more then happily do.

So it's on that belief that I took part in the "Change Your Picture to a childhood cartoon meme." I found the campaign to be fun and silly way to remind us of our own childhood, but to actually start dialogue on the issue as well. I've enjoyed seeing the pictures of cartoons from my childhood, reminding me of shows I used to watch but have long forgotten. Commenting on the pictures that people post, for example I had a friend who posted a picture of Pepperann, and I told her that she was much too cool for 7th grade.

I have participated in several discussion about child abuse as well on friends walls and in private messages. I have seen friends post that instead of using the time to search for pictures of their favourite childhood cartoon, were going to instead use the time to search for organizations in their area that helped to end child abuse, and posted the links.

Would this have happened if someone didn't start this campaign?

On the other side, we must ask ourselves. Is social media an effective tool fo awareness campaigns, a friend of mine brought up an interesting point.

"... awareness should help inspire action, but I just don't believe that each person who changes their profile picture and/or changes their status - however briefly - are aggressively offering action. Honestly, facebook makes "caring" so easy, a simple copy/paste, that I worry the awareness is lost in medium. Actually processing the information and deciding it's worth pursuing change in this issue is entirely different from copy/pasting and hoping someone else will do it."

Kevin V. - A facebook friend

I believe he really has a point there, it's easy to make a change to one's status or picture. We cut and paste the information, and give it little thought. Personally, I do give each thing I do a lot of thought, but does everyone?

Has everyone participated in the same dialogue that I have, have they actually talked about the issues and thought about what abuse really does, how it effects people, and what they can actually do to make change. Does the caring go beyond the picture change/status update? Is there any sort of critical analysis of why we're posting what we do? Do we question why if we agree or if it would be effective?

An example of this is a recent campaign I saw, it claimed to be another breast cancer awareness thing. One of the one's that men weren't allowed in on. We're going to keep it secret and have some fun, and show the power of women. Well I have some major issues with these campaigns.

First of all, breast cancer, although effects women a lot more then men, can still effect men. Not including them in an awareness campaign is not only silly, but detrimental to their cause. We, as cisgendered men, may have a lot less of a chance to develop breast cancer; but we have sisters, mothers, aunts, and friends who have a lot higher chance then we do.

Now I understand that women also need a space to speak about their own bodies with other women. I get and respect the need for women only spaces. So when the bra campaign happened, I thought it was cute. It made the attention of the media. Although, I thought it was ineffective, because from what I witnessed no one really talked about the issue. The fun was in the secret.

Then there was the purse thing, and to be honest this one irritated me. Because it was another women's only thing for breast cancer but it was also hypersexualized. Now, I'm not sex negative by any means, but again, there was no real discussion about breast cancer. But it was harmless, so I said one thing about my irritation about it, but left it at that.

Then there was the marital status one. I am so thankful that this one didn't make it far and I actually only saw one friend post it. If you are unaware of what I'm speaking of, here's a copy of the e-mail that was sent around.

My friends are playing this game. One of them has proposed that us, GIRLS, did something special in Facebook to help gain consiousness of Breast Cancer. Its so easy that I'd like you to join us to make it spread! Last year it was about writing the colour of the bra you were wearing in your FB status... and it left men wondering for days why did the girls have colours (aparently random) in our status. This year it has to do with our love relationships, in other words, for the moment you are going through with your relationships. What do you drink?

tequila: I'm a single woman
rum: I'm a touch and go woman
champagne: I'm an engaged woman
redbull: I'm a woman in a relationship
beer: I'm a married woman
vodka: I'm the "other one"
sprite: I'm a woman that can't find the right man
whisky: I'm a single woman but with friends that won't stop partying
liquor: I'm a woman that wishes she was single.
gin: I'm a woman that wants to get married

Now all you need to do is write down the answer for your situation in your FB status (don't reply this email, just put it in your status). Also, cut and paste this message and send it to all your girl-friends as a message. The Bra game reached the news. Lets make this one make it too and see how powerful women are

There are so many things wrong with this, it's sexist and homophobic, and glorifies alcohol use in a society where substance abuse is a problem. So here we are raising awareness for breast cancer, once again men aren't included, because raising their awareness isn't important.

To raise awareness in a manner such as this, it's absurd. This doesn't show how powerful women are, in fact, I think it shows the exact opposite. By using such a method to raise awareness you are stepping on not only the toes of women, for I feel this is very objectifying to women, but you're alienating queer women (I'm a woman who can't find the right man), as well as alienating women who are recovering from alcoholism or are very affected by it in other ways in their life.

I'm really glad that this one didn't catch on like the bra one did, at least not in the circles I socialize with. Because it gives me faith that people are actually thinking about what they're posting, and not just posting without a thought. Which I suppose was my concern in the first place, but my social circles aren't everyones. I know people that saw a lot of this, I know people who had never heard of it.

Actually, the woman that I saw post this is someone that I really respect and an incredibly intelligent, politically active woman, and when we talked about it she admitted that she really didn't give it much thought, and just posted it because it was easy. I won't name her because well, that's not nice, because I just went and criticized this whole thing and in turn, I don't want that to reflect badly on her. And she's really made of awesome, and kind of proves my point about the not thinkng thing.

So I think both sides are equally valid, in this discussion.

So in conclusion, I personally think that facebook awareness campaigns, although not as effective as campaigns in other places, are still valid. They can start discussions, get people thinking, and show the world that they care. However, I feel that we, as a community, concerned citizens, or whatever, need to be careful and actually think about what we're doing, and not just doing it blindly because everyone else is.