Activity Presentation

Objectives:

  • Take ownership of information and communication tools
  • Use social media for social campaigns
  • Develop critical thinking

This exercise aims at the creation of a social campaign online by the participants. After choosing the themes to be addressed (for example: local themes concerning the neighborhood), as well as a social network through which to share the content of their social campaign, the youth must promote a cause by selecting the most appropriate images and phrases. They will then need to share the media content on the chosen social network.

Definition:

An online social campaign can be defined as the use of communication and marketing tools on social networks in order to focus on a socially significant issue (environment, feminism, racism, poverty, etc.). The goal is to promote certain values, to mobilize or alert individuals, especially internet users, on important social issues, or even to create a movement (e.g.: MeToo, Black Lives Matter, Serbian movement #1of5million, etc.).

Activity Steps

1 – Preparation: The facilitators, together with the participants, select topics to address in their social media campaigns.

2 – Division: Once the topics are chosen, the facilitators form several groups (depending on the number of participants). Each group works on one topic and chooses the most suitable social network to run their campaign.

3 – Information Research: To create an effective social campaign, the participants must gather information on the chosen themes in order to understand the issues and to produce/disseminate a relevant message to support the cause in question.

4 – Communication Strategy: The participants must think about the best online strategy to implement to convey their message:

  • Identify the target audience (youth, adults, men, women, etc.)
  • Choose the appropriate social network (e.g.: Instagram for images and Twitter/Facebook for video and text)
  • Type of message (testimonial, humor, statistics, mini-report, etc.)
  • Message format (photograph, text, infographic, video, etc.)
  • Use the right keywords or “hashtags” so the post is widely shared

5 – Campaign Launch: The participants may choose to start their campaign by posting their content on their personal accounts or by creating a specific account dedicated to the campaign.