Using Social Media as a Catalyst for Social Change
Organisations and companies address social issues and use social media for promoting campaigns and attracting audiences. Social media works as an effective and chief catalyst for change in society. In the contemporary world, media has the power to modify individual and social capital (Geber, et al., 2016). According to me, social media is an important tool in rooting and developing social change. This report includes ways an organisation uses social media effectively in the first section; the second section shares about the use of social media by Amazon for addressing and promoting the initiative of STEM Education in the US; the third section presents the agreement statements along with the contradictory statement regarding the same.
Social media works as a catalyst for promoting social change as it enables allies, advocates, and survivors to present their views on current events. It allows them to share the information and relevant resources that are not included in mainstream news. Organisations use social media as a catalyst for influencing customers and audiences to take action with the call of action and encourage them to contribute to the cause for a positive change. Social media allows any company to promote their work and attract customers and organisations use social media for the causes of social change they support along with that they can share current events and share news (NNEDV, 2016). Any company or individual associated with any social change causes can join the campaign or start it on social media platforms. It helps them connect with the donors, share stories regarding the social change, and other facts and figures.
Undeniably, social media is a powerful tool, and using a few methods can help an organisation in building a virtual bridge. Most effective ways and methods of using social media including blogging for the cause, using YouTube for promoting charities, raising funds online, social good networks, using Twitter for hosting an event, time for a change, and use of mobile phones for spreading updates and other activities (Bernstein, 2012).
Social media is an important tool for rooting a social change as it has become a platform for people for discussing issues in society, arrange meetings, exchange ideas, and organize causes. Effectively taking advantage of social media for social change requires the application of strategies as it can help in reaching a larger audience and motivates them. Digital media has become a catalyst aimed at calling for action and change in society. With the increasing digital platforms and use of the internet, it can potentially change the ways things used to happen in past. These social media platforms are Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tik Tok (Robinson, 2021).
Companies cover the social issues of plastics, modern-day slavery, human rights issues, clean water, and climate change. The audience of the company can transparently witness the progress and work completed by the company. The aim is to use platforms for reaching out to a larger audience to effectively change the conditions of society and discuss actively the issues of society at a broader level. Long-term contributions of companies towards the social causes they support effectively influence the audience and help in the change in society.
Effective Strategies for Utilizing Social Media for Social Change
According to Amazon, children and teenagers ought to have the skills and resources for building their future in the best way possible. They also believe that they must play a part in building technology leaders for the future of a home. Amazon supports the education community by launching new initiatives that provide opportunities to the students to learn about coding, robotics, and computer science, also amazon help educators with resources for developing remote classes and technical skills. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon sponsored coding training programs and virtual robotics across New Zealand and Australia. Teachers and students accessed the learning experience of computer science for free (Cummins, 2020).
STEM Education is the study of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (Xie, et al., 2015). Amazon has invested $50Million in the program for computer science and STEM education. Amazon started a program called Amazon Future Engineer that is designed to inspire, prepare and educate children and teenagers from underrepresented communities to adopt and pursue computer science (Amazon, 2022). The company donates overall 50,000 items on daily basis to people in need (Amazon, 2022). The company donated to Seattle-based Non-profits a total amount of $2 million to expand access to computer Science Education and STEM (In Investment Weekly News, 2020). Amazon and CoderZ (an online educational platform) teamed up for launching modules that provided the principles of programming, a program for teaching students virtual robots, and learning coding 101.
Amazon has not ignored any social media platform and has marked its presence on every leading site. Companies use interconnected ways to address the cause including blogs for the cause, raising funds online, telling stories, hosting an event, and using social media for supporting the causes. Amazon has taken several initiatives and started ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ programs for various social causes including Energy consumption by Amazon, Amazon supporting Local Communities, Amazon Educating and Empowering Workers, Carbon Emissions by Amazon, and a few others (Dudovskiy, 2022). Amazon’s three main areas of Philanthropic involvement involve STEM Education, Disaster relief, homelessness aid, hunger, and computer science.
In today’s world, media is the strapping tool used for communication and connectivity as media actively plays role in personal life and society. Social media is an important tool in creating social change by raising awareness, and voice, and also call for social change. Social platforms provide a different way to people to communicate that our older generation never had. In the contemporary world, people can easily call out injustices, and wrong practices and have the power to speak up and take a stand in different situations. Platforms of media have been an open forum for a long time to discuss their views with like-minded people.
Social media has the nature of a no-filter that allows people and companies to upload and share the content as it is happening. Companies and individuals can upload the social causes and updates of programs conducted by them for the same and share with the virtual community associated with them and their audience which helps in motivating people to participate in the social cause. A research article by Taylor & Francis Company explored that social media is a tool in activism and research as social media can be used to gather people to participate and plays role in campaigns of rights and according to researchers this method can be used further (Morris, 2013). Thus, it attracts the audience to take part in the campaigns and programs for social causes.
Amazon’s Initiatives in STEM Education to Promote Social Change
The media platforms are the easiest and quickest way to consume information about current events and happenings in the world. Organisations can keep their brand and social causes at the forefront of the minds of followers with regular and frequently updating and sharing information regarding their programs, which helps companies in creating social change. Initiatives by an organisation or company strengthen the trust of the audience in the brand. Also, it is used as a source of news for adults. According to a survey, among American adults in the age group 18-29, the most popular way to get news is through social media (Greenwood, et al., 2016). Thus, the platforms of social media handles are seamless and rapid access to information.
The use of social media to support the social cause unlocks the monitoring of the campaign. The community built by the company associated with any social cause on social digital platforms can easily access and monitor the progress and latest updates on happenings, the help provided by an organisation, and the use of funds collected by them, which helps them in engaging with the audience (Greenwood, et al., 2016). An organisation can showcase its service skills on social media to handle maintain relations and engage the future audience.
The use of social media can create some loopholes and might backfire on organisations for supporting social causes in some conditions. Fake news spread rapidly on social media. The promotion of false information and content on social media regarding any social cause can impact organisations severely with damaging consequences. The reputation loss of the organisation stays at risk due to uploading fake information. Sharing the information without contributing to the social cause and or joining the issue organisation can be used to mislead and manipulate the audience. Misinformation gets spread in the coverage of mainstream media with the disclosure of fake news in association with the negative role of social negative sites, which undermines the trust of the audience and followers of the organisation and social cause (Al-Rawi, 2019).
Organisations and companies conduct programs and campaigns for creating social change on social media, which might cause the loss of sensitive data and IP. Risks related to security might arise due to deploying social media as security is the main concern of executives and broad members of organisations. Sensitive data-related risks are addressed by the inappropriate leakage, release, or theft of strategic information of the company, and risk related to exposure of malware and viruses to networks of company and systems due to phishing scams, identity thieves, sophisticated attackers, and human errors (DeLoach, 2018).
Conclusion
Overall, using social media for supporting social causes is an effective way of attracting the audience and raising funds for helping the cause the company is associated with. Social media works as a catalyst for creating change in society as it helps in attracting more audiences and people, spreading the cause at a global level, and in call of action. Amazon Company is associated with many social causes and millions of people support and follow them on social media sites. Social media works as an important tool for creating social change in the modern world. However, it also increases the risk of loss of sensitive data.
References
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Amazon, 2022. STEM Education. [Online]Available at: https://www.aboutamazon.com/impact/community/stem-education[Accessed 12 April 2022].
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Cummins, L., 2020. Building tomorrow’s technology leaders at home. [Online]Available at: aboutamazon.com.au/news/aws/building-tomorrows-technology-leaders-at-home[Accessed 12 April 2022].
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Greenwood, S., Perrin, A. & Duggan, M., 2016. Social Media Update 2016. Social media update 2016. Pew Research Center, 11(2), pp. 1-18.
In Investment Weekly News, 2020. Amazon Donates $2 Million to Seattle-Based Nonprofits to Expand Access to STEM and Computer Science Education for Hundreds of Thousands of Students from Underserved and Underrepresented Communities Across Washington State.. In Investment Weekly News, p. 42.
Morris, R., 2013. ‘Unjust, inhumane and highly inaccurate’: the impact of changes to disability benefits and services – social media as a tool in research and activism. Disability and society, 28(5), pp. 724-728.
NNEDV, 2016. Social Media for Social Change: 5 Ways Social Media Can Create Social Change. [Online]
Available at: https://nnedv.org/latest_update/social-media-social-change/#:~:text=Social%20media%20enables%20survivors%2C%20allies,their%20actions%20through%20unbiased%20communication.[Accessed 12 April 2022].
Robinson, R., 2021. The 7 Top Social Media Sites You Need to Care About in 2022. [Online]Available at: https://www.adobe.com/express/learn/blog/top-social-media-sites[Accessed 12 April 2022].
Unilever, 2022. Our Company. [Online]Available at: https://www.unilever.com/our-company/
Xie, Y., Fang, M. & Shauman, K., 2015. STEM Education. Annual review of Sociology, 41(1), pp. 331-357.
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