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