31.1 Understand the purpose and impact of social action and community media production work

31.1 Understand the purpose and impact of social action and community media production work

What is Social action?

Social action media is used as a device to raise consciousness of a cause or a subject, often with the objective 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 assignment, I will describe into greater detail on the purpose and the importance

Social action media named in the sense that it is media produced with the purpose of provoking social action. Usually non-profit, this form of media often takes on controversial subjects as a way of influencing change. Common subjects portrayed in social action media include: smoking, drug addiction, alcoholism, politics, green peace, 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, but by showing the most tragic outcome the filmmaker manages to spark more interest. On the other hand, filmmaker's may decide upon taking a more confrontational approach, by challenging certain individuals who may be implicated in a particular issue. 

Purpose: The purpose of social action media is to inspire change. Now this change can take place on different levels such as local, nation or international 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 clear; large productions will need to reach people all over the country if they wish to have a valuable effect. To achieve this certain level of marketing is required, which wouldn't necessarily be the case if the production were 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. 

Examples: Kony 2012 is a short film produced by Invisible Children, Inc. (authors of Invisible Children). It was released on March 5, 2012. The film's purpose was to promote the charity's "Stop Kony" movement to make African cult and militia leader, indicted war criminal and the International Criminal Court fugitive Joseph Kony globally known in order to have him arrested by the end of 2012, when the campaign expired. The film spread virally