The purpose of Social Action and Community Media is to address the audience of current issues either around the world, in your country, such as the UK, or issues within a community of people. Another purpose is to convince to the people of the world, a country or a community, that a particular issue would get worse if no action was taken at all. There are different types of Social Action and Community Media documentaries that affected different people, sometimes on a smaller scale and some of the time on a larger scale.
One type of Social Action and Community Media would be issues involving a LOCAL change. Local change are current issues in a community that members of the public feel like the issue is concerning them, e.g. closing certain buildings down that have history, littering, drugs etc. An example of a Social Action and Community Media topic involving a LOCAL change would be the cancellation of Sanderstead's Fireworks in 2014. The fireworks and bonfire display at Sanderstead's Recreation Ground, known in the community as 'The Rec', has been cancelled after 40 years and will never return. The reason behind the cancellation was because The Rotary Club of Croydon (who organises the event), couldn't afford the costs of the events. In 2013 (the last display), the event populated more than 3,000 people at the event and 6,000 people who was in the area at the time of the display (figures according to Croydon Advertiser). Since the cancellation 2 years ago, there has been a public outcry and a lot of comments, talking about the memories these people had in the past 40 years at this event. Here are an example of comments to the article:
According to this source, we get two very contrasting comments on the issue. One states that this move of cancellation is 'great news', which shows it has 13 dislikes, so a lot of people don't agree with this comment, whilst on the other comment it gives us a perspective of what looks like a parent having 'fond memories' of taking their children up every year, which is a more positive comment and, obviously, everyone agreed more to this comment than the other. Here is the full story in the Croydon Advertiser:
http://www.croydonadvertiser.co.uk/Sanderstead-Receation-Ground-fireworks-cancelled/story-23433789-detail/story.html
THE fireworks and bonfire display at Sanderstead Recreation Ground has been cancelled after more than 40 years and may never return.
The Rotary Club of Croydon Jubilee has called time on the event due to the escalating costs of staging it.
More than 3,000 people attended last year and in its heyday there were more than 6,000 packed in to the Limpsfield Road recreation ground.
However, Dhiraj Shah, of the Rotary Club of Croydon Jubilee, said the bonfire night tradition had become too costly after Croydon Council indicated it could not provide it with the same level of funding.
The cancellation leaves Croydon with only one major fireworks display at Crystal Palace Park, which is technically in the borough of Bromley.
Mr Shah said: “It’s a real shame, we would have liked to keep doing it but unfortunately for one reason or another the council cannot offer the same level of support.
“We would like it to come back in the future but we would need more help. Last year, we did it as a community service and there was no fundraising side to it for us.
“The numbers have gone down a bit as well, we thought a lot of people would come to us once the fireworks were cancelled at Royal Russell School but it didn’t really happen that way.”
Another type of Social Action and Community Media would be issues involving a NATIONAL change. National change is change within a country where issues are addressed to the public of a country, so they can change into a positive outcome. An example of a Social Action and Community Media documentary wanting a NATIONAL change would be Children in Need's documentary named 'Looking after Mum'. Here is an analysis of the documentary:
At the beginning of this documentary, we get told that we are going to follow three young children/teenagers for six months and we are going to see what life is like looking after a family member when you're only a teenager. We first of all get introduced to Tom and his brother Joe from Stockport who looks after her mum who has liver disease. The first thing that made me feel a bit saddened for Tom was that when he's older, he wants to be a doctor and said he wants to give his money to his mum to maker her better. At first hearing that, I felt quite emotional at the time because beyond the caring side, there is a very important relationship that needs to be recognised between a mother and daughter and we see what the relationship is like as the relationship went on in the documentary. We then get introduced to Antonia-Rae who is 11 from Worsley. From the first image of her, we already see her working, waiting outside the bathroom, and then having to wash her mum's back. Her mum, Leslie, had a stroke when she was younger and since then, she's been forced to do jobs such as washing pots, vacuuming the floors, do the bedding, dressing her up in the morning and a very important thing, making sure her mum takes her tablets. When the mum had an interview, she talked about after her stroke, she was very down for many years, she didn't know what to do but the most important thing that came from the interview was the appreciation she gave to her daughter, Antonia-Rae. She called her 'my pride and joy', which almost warmed my heart because she appreciates what she does all around the house and without her, she would have been in a very worst state. We then get shown back to Tom and his mum as they go into Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham where we see his mum being checked to see if she can survive a liver transplant. Tom gets interviewed during the check and he tells us he likes to come with his mum to the hospital because this is where he wants to work when he is older and he has a chance to see what everything is going on and also he cares for his mum. We then get showed to a new young carer, Kashanna who is 18 from Slough. She has to look after her mum who is blind. Kashanna talks about what she has been gong through since the age of 4, she talks about having to help her mum pay the bills, take her to the corner shop, she also talks about when she goes out with friends, she has to, first of all, do a load of jobs before she goes out because her mum is not capable to do it. We then hear the emotional story of how her mother went blind after having an operation that without it, she would have died so she had to have the operation to save her life. There was only one thing - the operation would have made her blind. This made me quite emotional because this is the real reason why Kashanna has had to look after her mum for this long and it was a very emotional story that might stick in the audience's minds.
This particular documentary, on YouTube, has been seen 40,850 times (Sunday 20th September 2015 figure) and was presented on BBC One leading up to Children In Need in November of last year. I believe that this documentary is extremely effective as a social action documentary in the way it is trying to reach into people's hearts and to think of other people and to help other people, whether it's just total strangers or even family or friends.
From my own opinion, this is a very effective social action documentary because it allows teenagers aged between 12-18 to look at their life and see how lucky it is compared to the 700,000 children who don't have those kind of luxuries that we do because they are normally spent inside looking after a family member, in this documentary it showed their mum's being looked after. I chose this particular documentary because I also have a granddad that needs looking after every day by my grandma and the stories told by these amazing teens really hit my heart because this is what my grandma goes through on a daily basis and I always want to do my bit to help her so whenever she wants to go out, I always sit with my granddad because she deserves the chance to go out after all the things she has to do inside, so this social action documentary is really effective to me.
Another type of Social Action and Community Media would be issues involving a GLOBAL change. Global change are issues that affect the world and targets to change issues people feel strongly about. An example of a Social Action and Community Media documentary wanting a GLOBAL change would be 'Kony 2012', which is a documentary raising awareness about the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army) and its army, Joseph Kony, who takes in children and makes them slaves of war. Here is an analysis of the documentary:
At the beginning of the documentary, made by Invisible Children, we get introduced to the narrator, Jason Russell's story about the birth of his son, Gavin. We get introduced to what he likes, for example being in movies and jumping on the trampoline. Then we get told about about the narrator visiting Uganda, Africa to see his friend, Jacob and we see a flashback to see children, including Jacob being forced to sleep on floors and starving. We see an interview between the narrator and Jacob and Jacob tells him he would rather die than live in the future in his country. This particular bit of the documentary made me feel very saddened and upset because nobody should ever live in a world where they would rather die than live, I feel that it's not right. Then we get shown photos of the narrator's journey to keep a promise made by him to Jacob that he was 'going to stop them'. He then gives a message to the audience saying that he needs our help to fulfil the promise he made not to just Jacob, but to the whole of Uganda. We then see almost like an interview between the narrator and his son, Gavin, who knows nothing about Kony or the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army). At first impressions, I believe that children shouldn't hear about war or destruction happening in other countries because they are extremely young and should not get told about current affairs. Gavin's answer is exactly the same as mine: sad. I glad the narrator didn't go on to tell his son how much destruction there is because it wouldn't be right at all. We then get some very distressing images of Kony making children mutilate their own skin which was extremely distressing from an audience's point of view. We got introduced to the International Criminal Court, which deals with finding and executing the world's biggest criminals, Joseph Kony being number 1 on the wanted list. His crimes include murder, sexual slavery, rape etc which, I think, are inhuman crimes. We then see politicians of Uganda, wanting their children back and we see they are willing to contribute with 'any friend of Uganda' to stop the mindless killings caused by Joseph Kony. After, we see Invisible Children being set up, talks being taken, more and more members joining all around the world. The Invisible Children Facebook group and we see a rising figure of how many members joining the group, which, I think, is extremely positive and I felt happy and supportive by what they had done that would benefit thousands of people in Uganda. At the end of the video, the documentary gave us 3 things we need to do. 1= Sign The Pledge To Show Your Support, 2= Get The Bracelet And The Action Kit and 3= Sign Up For Tri To Donate A Few Dollars A Month And Join Our Army For Peace. If you was older enough, aged between 17-18, I would have definitely signed up to join the Invisible Children group and I would have done all 3 pledges. Unfortunately, I was too young to understand what was going on and I saw a lot of Joseph Kony photos but did not know what it was about at all. At the end of the documentary, we get shared a message: SHARE THIS MOVIE ONLINE, which shows that we live in a world where messages need to be shared online which was a rousing success.
I believe that this documentary is extremely effective in the way it coveys its message to capture Joseph Kony. On YouTube, it has reached 100,676,517 views (Friday 18th September 2015) and has had over 1 million likes. I think Invisible Children's social action documentary is extremely effective in the way it conveys its message to share this documentary on sites and social networking services. It is also effective because the documentary shows many countries coming together to fight a cause to capture an evil war lord. It shows what they have been doing around the world, like putting posters up around the world at night time and giving action kits around the world so that they can do something about what they believe in. However, out of 7 billion people, only 7% of the earth's population took part which is very, very little but I think that figure will rise if more people watched this documentary
In my personal opinion, I believe that this social action documentary about 'Kony 2012' is extremely effective and makes me want to do something about the cause. I think this particular documentary will stick in the audience's minds and make them want to do more about the cause, like meeting people in Uganda and joining rallies or marches to get into politician's minds that this needs to be a number 1 priority.
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