Social action media is used as a tool to raise awareness of a specific subject or cause, often with the intention of prompting action or change amongst its intended audience. Community media is media produced and circulated within a particular community, which generally places less of an emphasis on profit and focuses more on providing a service to the people within that community. In this post, I will go into greater detail on the subjects of social action and community media, and talk about their relevance and importance.
Social Action Media
Description
Social action media: is named in the sense that it is media produced with the main aim of social action. Usually a company who dos not make profit uses this form of media to often take on controversial subjects as a way of trying to impact change. Common subjects talked about in social action media include: smoking, drug addiction,racism and many more. Such films can either be factual or dramatized. Factual films may depict the extremities of the topic in discussion, such as someone facing an impending death as a result of cigarette smoking; not all smokers die of their habit.Purpose:
Change
As I have mentioned above, the main purpose of social action media is to inspire change. Now this change can take place on a local, national or international level depending on the subject matter and scale of the production. The content of the production also changes with scale. Productions on a local level generally tackle causes relevant to the community. On the other hand, larger scale productions usually approach much more incendiary subjects with the knowing that they will attract more attention. Productions on a national scale will be subject to thorough planning, and much consideration will be put into the distribution. The reasons for this are obvious; large productions will need to reach people all over the country if they wish to have a worthwhile effect. To achieve this a certain level of marketing is required, which wouldn't necessarily be the case if the production was only to be circulated on a small scale. Social media is the modern way to target your audience. Some social media sites such as YouTube allow you to target your demographic more accurately.
Impact
The impact of social action media has been the subject of much discussion. An opinion held by many is that people are becoming de-sensitised to the media in front of them, therefore reducing the effect it has. For example: anti smoking films depicting extreme physical ailments would have shocked people in previous decades. But as people become more accustomed to Photoshop and other forms of image compositing software, people are more sceptical of how realistic such campaigns are. On the other hand, some social action campaigns have proved to be quite effective. Greenpeace social action media is a prime example. When a group of Greenpeace activists were arrested in Russia after protesting against Arctic drilling, an abundance of social action films hit YouTube calling for the release of the protesters. Though it was a long and difficult process, it was announced in December 2013 that the detainees would duly be released. One has to assume that social action media and the public response that followed played a part in this.
