This video is about a high school group trying to raise awareness of students’ view on education funding. They are appearing on a local news segment to share how they are disseminating this information ("Pittsburgh Students Use Media to Advocate for Change," 2012). From this video, it seems like they developed only 2 media campaigns: a commercial and a billboard. The effectiveness of the billboard depends on many factors that were not addressed. The message, “Cutting our funding is cutting our future.” is quite memorable. People generally are not opposed to funding schools. Voters realize that education is an important public good that the government is supposed to provide. That is why the debate over charter schools and voucher programs are so loud and still ongoing. This billboard alone will not change many minds. In fact, it’s difficult to determine both what action it is trying to encourage and whether the intended audience is politicians or voters. They need a link to a website with more information on the billboard. Just one billboard in one part of town won’t reach very many people. This billboard leaves people with questions, rather than answers, leaving them unmotivated to advocate for the policy change.
One of the students said they went and met with Board of Education members. This is an excellent avenue for advocacy. Politicians can’t ignore you if you are in a private meeting with them. I couldn’t help but notice while watching how much these students need help developing their public speaking skills. Fortunately this is a skill that develops over time and they are clearly getting the practice they need. Despite being in a media advocacy club, they aren’t very verbose yet. Focusing on developing media advocacy skills without developing speaking skills is not effective.
In other context, media can be an excellent way to advocate for policy change. This avenue has been used since President Theodore Roosevelt used the media as a bully pulpit ("American President: A Reference Resource," n.d.). Media should start with a real life event and use the media coverage of that event. I have participated in public advocacy since college. After many many years of failure we successfully updated the New York State bottle bill ("NYPIRG ... Bottle Bill," n.d.) We combined actual events like clean-ups and meeting with representatives with media.
If media didn’t work alongside advocacy, the Koch brothers wouldn't spend so much money working to change public opinion about public lands, or the many other places they dip their hands ("State Efforts ... Koch-fueled ALEC," 2013). Media campaigns to change deeply entrenched public opinion must be larger than one where there is already general support, like we had for the bottle bill. Every big lobby uses the media to advocate for change. That is why there is an entire field of public opinion. People are the voters at the end of the day and they are necessary to see policy change.
Public opinion is heavily influenced by media. What we see in the news influences how we think. What stories they choose to run changes what we talk about with our peers. In order to get traction we need to get people to communicate. Lobbying groups use the media to share their topics. This is a departure from the old gatekeeper role of the media as they are now more of the exploited worker. Living in Washington DC, you can see how directly lobbyists use media. There are billboards for defense companies in the metro stations and the newspapers. You won’t see these ads in your local paper because they are directly targeting a specific audience.
Social media is also an important avenue that can be used to advocate for policy change. Since the audience is so large and so active, you aren't as ‘in control’ of the message as you are with traditional media. However, it can be much less expensive to get the exposure you need for your message. Social media can go viral and have a much larger impact. Using social media, you can get people to go do something that has an actual impact on policy change, like writing to their representatives. The actual link between creating public awareness and support and getting a policy change put into action is not always clear. A recent story from New Hampshire really illustrates this point. A group of 4th grade children worked on their civics lesson by having a bill introduced to name an official state raptor (Stern, 5014). They went to watch as it was voted on by the full House after successfully getting out of committee. There was more intense debate and opposition than the teacher had probably anticipated and the bill ending up failing.
In conclusion, there are many great reasons to use media to advocate for policy change. And there are many different approaches to using media for this end. But the students campaign in Pittsburgh isn’t focused on results enough that it will be very successful in doing anything beyond getting some people to think for a couple of seconds.
Pittsburgh students use media to advocate for change [Television series episode]. (2012). In Our regions business. Pittsburgh, PA: WPXI-TV. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1vyskFWjtI
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