Power to the People: An example of how one campaign challenges power dynamics

      

             Through the use of posters, the #NoMore campaign which was launched by the Lincolnshire County Council exemplifies how an organization aiming to affect social change can do so effectively by factoring the dynamics of power into its strategy. In the article, Finding Spaces for Change: A Power Analysis  the author John Gaventa says, “Transformative, fundamental change happens, I suggest, in those rare moments when social movements or social actors are able to work effectively across each of the dimensions simultaneously, i.e. when they are able to link the demands for opening previously closed spaces with people’s action in their own spaces; to span across local and global action, and to challenge visible, hidden and invisible power simultaneously” (Gaventa, 2006, p30). There have been many campaigns to fight sexual assault by raising awareness of the issue, circulating phone numbers of helplines, and even sharing narrative accounts of victims’ experiences, but #NoMoreCampaign veers from that path, leading to a response that other sexual violence campaigns fail to garner due to their shortsighted approaches and fear of innovation. When organizations stick to something that has proved effective in the past and never change they lose momentum. Only time will prove how effective the Lincolnshire’s #NoMoreCampaign is beyond media coverage and whether its impact has lasting effects. 

            The posters for the campaign, which include the hashtag #NoMore, tell its readers to “Ask for Angela” at the bar, where the bartenders will come to the person’s aid and find them a safe exit from their date (The Independent 2016). In this era of social media, a lot of organizations might rely on a digital campaign to get their message across. When an organization can catch attention through multiple mediums without losing focus or its message being diluted it shows it has a clear strategy.

            If an organization can find away to counter a social problem on different levels instead of a linear approach then it prevents itself from missing out on an opportunity to spark change. As much as organizations and the people within it strategize and makes plan to target a problem and control the outcome of their efforts, it’s impossible to predict what will happen. Even organizations with the best intentions can have failed campaigns.

            The Strategy Coordinator told The Independent that the aim of the #NoMore campaign is to encourage society to change its attitude about sexual violence and abuse, as well as raise awareness of the services available in Lincolnshire and empower the victims to report what happened to them (The Independent 2016).

            In this campaign, you can see the idea of visible power and invisible power (Gaventa 2016). The visible power is evident when bartenders and bar goers help each other out instead of being passive bystanders to potential sexual assaults. The invisible power is evident by the Lincolnshire County Council’s ability to affect a change in attitudes of bystanders and potential victims to take action to stop this violence from continuing. By speaking out, these bystanders and potential victims tap into their strength in turn executing power.

            The Lincolnshire County Council has found a way to turn the bars from closed spaces where people don’t feel accountable to help strangers into open spaces where the people within it can fight sexual violence. As a result of Lincolnshire County Councils strategy, perpetrators or those who condone sexual assault lose their power. It is also important to highlight that this campaign has the potential to affect change beyond the immediate community where it started. Just the fact that The Independent, a national newspaper in England, wrote an article about it proves that the campaign has wide reaching effects. In The Independent’s article, the writer pointed out that a woman saw the poster for the campaign in a bar and posted its image online, where it was retweeted 20,000 times on Twitter. The prominent visibility of the campaign could give other organizations an idea of how to engage people while inciting change. Evaluating power on different levels and spaces is a great starting point for organizations.

Gaventa J. (2006). Finding the Spaces for Change: A Power Analysis. IDS Bulletin, 37 (6), 23-33. Available from blackboard [Accessed 23 October 2016].

Fenton S. (2016). Code word campaign helps people escape bad dates by alerting bar staff discreetly. The Independent, 20 October. Available from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/code-word-campaign-bad-dates-alert-bar-staff-a7371171.html [Accessed 23 October 2016].

Innovation or Mistake: The UN’s newest ambassador finds herself in the middle of a battle

            

             Since the UN announced Wonder Woman as its  ambassador for its social media campaign to raise awareness about  women’s empowerment and gender inequality, the conversation it hoped to spark about the challenges women face professionally has shifted to a debate over whether or not using this fictional character to represent a gender inequality movement is appropriate. In regards to the choice UN official, Maher Nasser said, "The focus [of the UN] was on her feminist background, being the first female superhero in a world of male superheroes and that basically she always fought for fairness, justice, and peace" (BBC 2016). Though the UN’s may have been well intentioned in its appointment of Wonder Woman, it probably didn’t expect the backlash that it would receive. Although Wonder Woman is a superhero, she can also be viewed as a hyper sexualized character. The use of her as an ambassador for the UN’s campaign trivializes the women’s empowerment and gender equality movement. This appointment of Wonder Woman and the resulting controversy is a clear example of when organizations try to be innovative and fail.

            First it should be noted while the UN aims to dismantle systems of patriarchy and fight gender inequality, it struggles to tackle those issues within its own structure. A recent analysis reveled that at the UN 9 out of 10 senior leadership roles go to men (BBC 2016). In contrast to this, Un states on its webpage for the campaign that, “The campaign is about women and girls everywhere, who are wonder women in their own right, and the men and boys who support their struggle for gender inequality, bringing about positive change in their homes, workplace, communities, countries and the world together” (UN, date unknown). Based on the uproar from women against this ambassador appointment and the fact that 1,000 anonymous UN staff members signed a petition stating that Wonder Woman is an inappropriate choice, it can be said that the campaign isn’t delivering on its message of “positive change” in the world. The authors of the article called When Innovation Goes Wrong state, “Innovation may lead an organization in a direction that does not fit its culture or its sense of purpose—it’s sense of ‘who we are’” (Seelos and Mair, 2016, p29).  Although wonder woman is not the first fictional character to represent a United Nations campaign, the UN should probably evaluate whether Wonder Woman fits the criteria of their campaign. It is hard for organizations to view themselves objectively when they are wrapped up in their mission. If the public views the UN in a certain light and their actions are criticized by the masses, they should take this into consideration.

            This publicized backlash to Wonder Woman’s appointment presents a learning opportunity for the UN to address the gender inequality problems within in its structure and gives it insight on how to better serve the gender it aims empower. The authors of When Innovation Goes Wrong also assert, “Organizations that seek to establish the conditions for turning innovation into impact need to identify specific pathologies that hold them back, along with the factors that cause those pathologies” (Seelos and Mair, 2016, p32). In this case, the specific pathology holding the UN’s campaign back may be it’s institutional understanding of what women need rather than what they want.

            It’s hypocritical for an organization to proclaim to foster positive social change while rejecting it within its structure. The UN risks this backlash outlasting the yearlong social media campaign that Wonder Woman is supposed to represent. As the authors state in When Innovation Goes Wrong, “Once an organization identifies the pathologies that create barriers to successful innovation, it can begin to design interventions in a way that will prevent those pathologies from taking hold” (Seelos and Mair, 2016, p33). For the sake of the campaign, the UN should consider replacing Wonder Woman for the ambassador job.

C. Seelos and J. Mair. (2016). When Innovation Goes Wrong. Stanford Social Innovation Review. 27-33. Available from Blackboard. [Accessed 21 October 2016].

BBC. (2016). Is Wonder Woman qualified to be a UN ambassador?. BBC. 21 October. Available from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-37734623 [Accessed 22 October 2016].

Date unknown. UN. Stand up for the empowerment of Women and Girls Everywhere. UN. Available from http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/wonderwoman/ [Accessed 23 October 2016].

Is this a missed opportunity for a campaign?

The First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, wrote a special article for CNN on October 13th to raise awareness about the U.S. government’s Let Girls Learn initiative and a movie related to it, "We Will Rise: Michelle Obama's Mission to Educate Girls Around the World",  which aired on October 11^th and 12^th on CNN. On the surface the article addresses the challenges girls face globally to access education. In Contentious Citizens by Paul Hilder, the author, Hilder addresses the idea of civil society campaigning, which one could categorize Obama’s Let Girl’s Learn initiative as an example of.

However, looking through a critical lens at Obama’s article, which ties in to her social campaign, one might question how is this any different from a movie press release or White House press release. Irrespective of the first-person narrative, the text feels like very contrived. With boasts about how much money the United States has invested in the initiative and mentions of appearances by celebrities like Meryl Streep and Freida Pinto, the article makes good cases for someone to watch the film and believe that the United States is at the forefront of tackling this issue of gender inequality in regards to education. In Political Campaigning in Changing Media Cultures by Sigrid Baringhorst, Barinhorst says, “…campaigners develop campaigning strategies on the basis of event marketing and entertainment product placement, providing media gate keepers with sensationalist messages, exceptional visuals, celebrities as testimonies and dramatized courses of event" (Baringhorst, 2009, p18). These tactics to garner attention appear to be present in Obama’s article as well.

It is this perception that invokes questions like, how much of a platform should a news organization give the government or what media strategy should the government use when promoting one of its social campaigns? If the aim of this article was to promote the issue of millions of girls not easily having access to education, then CNN and Obama should have let one of the girls that has been touched by the Let Girls Initiative write about her experience. Furthermore if CNN did that, then it could have had an editor’s note that said the Let Girl’s Initiative is a campaign run by the U.S. government and backed by Michelle Obama, and included links to Michelle Obama’s Twitter and the initiative’s website. 

Instead, CNN included an editor’s note before the article starts that said that the opinions in it are that of Michelle Obama. From a journalistic standpoint, this warning is appropriate so the media outlet, CNN, doesn’t lose the public’s trust or risk being accused of serving propaganda, but I still question the idea of letting a political figure who is currently in office write an article for a news agency.

  

It is clear that CNN has a vested interest to have this film promoted since it debuts on the CNN International channel, but such close work with a political figure on a social issue can blur lines of political agenda and media agenda, which it be argued is to remain objective and serve public interest. In the book, Cyberprotest: New Media, citizens and social movements, one of the authors, Dieter Rucht asserts, “The media, in turn, have different ways of dealing with social movements" (Rucht, 2004, p25), and “…because of the fact that neither social movements nor the media represent a coherent entity, we can expect complex patterns of relationships (Rucht, 2004, p25).”

Presumably, editors at CNN didn’t have question before publishing this article whether or not it would garner attention and receive a multitude of clicks. If it was CNN’s intention to publicize this social movement by any means necessary, then it could be argued that having Michelle Obama write the article is a good move. According to Hilder, “Social Campaigning is about the gathering and use of influence in order to shape power- whether that influence is based on popular voice…"(Hilder, 2007, p12).

  

Though the actions of the White House can easily command the public’s attention, campaigners for social change, like Michelle Obama or even CNN in this instance, should not overlook the fact that the focus on elite members of society can overshadow the people they serve, which are girls that the issue directly affects. This point is highlighted by Hilder, who says, “There is also a serious risk that the tools of social campaigning are becoming captured by the relatively powerful…"(Hilder, 2007, p14) and “The best ways to achieve social progress are not always advocated by the most charismatic and popular voices" (Hilder, 2007, p55).

It would be hard to exclude Michelle Obama from any conversation about the movie when her name is in the film’s title and she is the one leading the charge on the campaign. My examination of her role in the social campaign and her alliance with CNN to raise awareness is not to assert that we should ignore political figures or exclude them from social movements. According to Hilder, “From its inception, social campaigning has been entwined with politics (Hilder, 2007, p13).” With that said, I propose that Obama could have collaborated on this article with a girl affected by the initiative, not just reserve their stories for the film. In conclusion Michelle Obama’s article was a missed opportunity for the campaign as whole.

Baringhost, S. Introduction: Political Campaigning in Changing Media Cultures in Baringhorst et al (eds) (2009) Political Campaigning on the Web.

Holder, P. et al (2007). Contentious Citizens- Civil Society’s role in Campaigning for social change (2007) The Young Foundation.

Rucht, D. (2004). The Quadruple A: Media Strategies of protest movements since the 1960’s in W. van de Donk, B.D. Loader, P.G. Nixon and D. Rucht (eds) Cyberprotest: New Media, citizens and social movements, London and New York: Rouledge