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chieftawanda-blog · 6 years

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MDC

Final Assignment

1.I have chosen a Political organization called MDC. MDC stands for Movement for Democratic Change. It is a political organization in Zimbabwe. This is Zimbabwe’s main opposition party. This party is fighting for democratic change in Zimbabwe. The party was registered as a nonprofit organization in Zimbabwe. Most political parties around the world use social media to market their policies, their manifestos or to campaign for elections.

In this industry, yes, they is respect for one another. But because there will be a political contest, candidates always now use social media to smear each other and de- campaign one another. But in most cases very high standards are maintained through out the campaign. There is respect for one another. The MDC is no exception, it has just begun to use social media effectively only recently.

2. The Movement for Democratic Change doesn’t have a very long social media history. The party has just now begun using social media particularly facebook and the President is aware that Most Zimbabweans are in the diaspora. As a result the President of the opposition had to make sure of that. That realization made our youthful leader to campaign for a culture of using social media. And so far it’s working.

The MDC “s main objective is to ensure that there is a democratic dispensation in Zimbabwe. Its other objectives include but not limited to be the voice of the people who are under siege as we speak. It also seeks to ensure that the government complies with promises that it makes during the campaign. Promises however are easier to make than delivering. This organization uses mostly Facebook, YouTube, and of late twitter. The long-term goal is to remove the current President who is not only dictatorial but is also a murderer.

3. According to Social media marketing, Social commerce strategy is, “a set of marketing strategies, tools and programs that work together to monetize a social media following “ Indeed it takes a set of programs and strategies even for a political party to keep growing. The most successful social commerce campaigns should not aim for immediate led conversion. The strategies should help any organization grow. The same book and indeed other authorities as well like Socialmediatoday, they all do not consider social media as a direct sales platform. Instead they use it as a platform to attract engage, nurture, and then routing qualified leads to their landing pages.

This is the reason why I strongly feel that even political parties can take advantage of social media. Jennifer Abernethy says that while it is true that social media influences purchase decisions, a lot of those purchases do not actually take place on social media. In our party although we are marketing on social media platforms, we see the results in the numbers for our branches, districts and provincial committees swelling. Like I said before the supporters for the Movement for the democratic change grew steadily from a million supporters to a phenomenal 2,4million supporters since the new party President Nelson Chamisa took over. These numbers could easily be monetized as members are expected to pay monthly subscriptions.

4. The MDC Alliance first twitter handle was established in 2017. Currently only 827 are following, 12.8k are followers. Nelson Chamisa the party President himself has 432, 1k followers on twitter and double that 785, 2k on Facebook. The MDC has members like me in the USA. To help us recruit and market ourselves we opened the MDC USA Facebook page that has 12,8k members. All external assemblies of the MDC have taken to twitter and Facebook to market the party. The MDC UK Facebook page has 5,4k followers. MDC South Africa Facebook page has 1,8k members.

Besides twitter and Facebook, the party has been using a third platform to recruit and galvanize its membership. There is an application called WhatsApp. This app is provided for free. For Africa this has been a blockbuster in terms of social media marketing. According to techzim.co.zw 5,2 million Zimbabweans are on WhatsApp, at least 2,8 million of these users belong to the MDC. The MDC has established WhatsApp groups in each and every suburb or location. A WhatsApp group can have a maximum of 256 people. I belong to at least 15 WhatsApp MDC groups. That way I easily keep with what is going on in Zimbabwe and in MDC. When we recruit new members, we put them in WhatsApp groups so we can be giving them important updates. The WhatsApp is a very good social media marketing tool and it has helped us reach out to many members.

5. Assessment and Recommendation

When our former party leader Dr Richard Morgan Tsvangirayi, the late was at the helm of the party and did not open the party to social media as much, the party membership drive was done mostly by word of mouth. Asa result the party supporters remained roundly stagnant at slightly over a million supporters. The party official website listed numbers before Nelson Chamisa took over at 1, 2045 supporters. In 2013 which was the last general election the MDC took part in under the leadership of Mr. Tsvangirayi. According to the ZEC (Zimbabwe Electoral Commission) the MDC had only 1,172,349 supporters who voted for the party. In 2018 though the young Nelson Chamisa using the power of social media almost doubled party supporters and party votes, garnering a massive 2,147, 436 votes translating to 44,3% of the national vote.

I would strongly recommend a full Social media campaign team to be put in place for the MDC. The phenomenal results and growth the party experienced was not coordinated. It was sporadic. Party supporters buoyed by a young and youthful Nelson Chamisa took to social media with different hashtags like #chamisachetechete #ncmypresident, and many others. All these were not coordinated. With a well-coordinated marketing and mobilizing team, this party can double its numbers easily.

6. References:

1. Social Media Marketing, 2010, Jennifer Abernethy

2. Global Issues, 2012, Michael T, Snarr & D, Neil, Snarr

3. http://socialmediatoday.com/

4. www.techzim.co.zw

5. www.timeslives.co.za

6. MDC Alliance twitter handle

7. MDC facebook pages

8. www.ZEC.co.za

9. www.ZESN

10. www.mdc

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chieftawanda-blog · 6 years

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SOCIAL MEDIA AND POLITICS

Do you think Facebook and other social media platforms had a hand in the outcome of the presidential election?

My answer to the question is obviously a big yes, primarily because I am a democrat and I have strong misgivings over the way the 2016 elections went. A lot of things could have done better, and I am sure both parties have a lot of take aways from the election. The release of the weak leaks by the Russians was very timely and very strategic. The whole idea seemed to have been designed or targeted to benefit one candidate at the expense of the other. In the process I think that marked the turning point of Secretary Clinton's Campaign. At this point as is stated in key take away 4 cable news saw its viewership jump 8%, to an average of 3.1 million viewers in prime time. It was exciting times for Republicans and very sad times for the democrats. The republicans probably pushed up the numbers for viewership! This obviously helped fuel the fake news that were being peddled in relation to Hilary Clinton. Most of the weak leaks published, I believe were fake news created by Russia. I also believe this fake news was detrimental to Secretary Clinton's campaign.

All the weak leaks reports were published in main stream newspapers, but everything was also quickly reproduced on social media, mostly on Facebook and twitter. And as is the norm in twitter the information was retweeted and on face book the information was consistently shared among friends. Once something is on these social media platforms then it was instantly viral.

The link below was biased against Donald Trump. <https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dems-accused-of-religious-bigotry-for-questioning-trump-court-picks-knights-of-columbus-ties>

https://www.foxnews.com/.../dems-accused-of-religious-bigotry-for-questioning-trump-...<https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dems-accused-of-religious-bigotry-for-questioning-trump-court-picks-knights-of-columbus-ties>

1. The link below was biased against Trump as well:

<https://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12270880/donald-trump-racism-history>

https://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12270880/donald-trump-racism-history

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chieftawanda-blog · 6 years

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Stand up for cancer (SU2C) is a charitable program of the entertainment industry foundation. Its aim is to raise funds for the translational cancer research through online and televised efforts. This campaign began on 27 May 2008. Central to this campaign is a telethon that was first televised by four major broadcast networks, (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX). You can imagine the impact of such massive broadcasts. These networks are watched world wide in approximately 170 countries. By September 5 2008, over 100million dollars had been raised. These funds are used to fund multi institutional scientific research teams and investigators. Most of the support for this campaign comes from the rich and famous particularly in the entertainment industry. The fact that it was televised in all the major world channels made most of the videos made an instant hit and subsequently viral. One of the founders of the campaign Noreen Fraser was herself diagnosed in breast cancer. But essentially the campaign was not started by one woman. It was a product of a number of women disgruntled by the lack of progress in research in breast cancer. In 2007 the women decided to marshal the entertainment industry into working together to make more of an impactful jolt on the cause. And it worked magnificently.

The reason why this campaign became easily and so quickly viral was due to a numbers of things. Firstly, the subject being discussed was a subject most people don’t want to talk about. The issue of cancer is it is a well-known disease that easily triggers sympathy from the general public. This is the reason why more people easily took up the challenge. Most people have had a relative or friend or a very close relative who has died of this disease. This makes everyone suscsiptable or think that such a disease can easily affect anyone. The second reason why this campaign easily went viral is the choice of the people or individuals used to promote the campaign. By choosing celebrities like Kay Burley , Dom Joly, Vicky Pattison, Kem Cetinay and several others. These people have followers of over a couple hundred thousand. This helped make the campaign a very successful one because these people will in turn share the videos. Another major reason why the campaign was successful is the media which it was distributed via. The use of broadcasting stations whose viewership is millions in every country was the master stroke. Another reason is the word of this campaign was also sent through word of mouth. Those who had done the campaign spread the word. Those who had seen or heard about the campaign also spread the word to their friends who in turn spread it to their own friends as well. Last but not lease the involvement of the corporate in this campaign was key. Mastercard was doubling every effort made, for example anyone who donated a dollar it became $2 because of the promotion. The impact of this donation by Mastercard was phenomenal.

It is also important to talk about the young lady whose boyfriend was ill with testicular cancer. Her appeal was so appealing that just by reading her post. The poor girl did not even have money to help with the situation. Her only choice was to make an appeal to the general public. The appeal was well received by people who were simply sympathetic to the cause of the young man. And those who did not have money or for one reason or another were not able to donate, they were encouraged to simply share the post. Sharing was still equally essential.

Another case in point and even the cancer survivors who would not also appeal to get help but would just encourage people to share their post. Cailtan was a survivor and Caltan’ wanted to strengthen and give back through inspiring and encouraging others. Caltan was he himself the recipient of the money donated from the research. So he found it worth in his tweet to encourage others. Not only did he do tweets but he also did videos that encouraged others.

Several other videos were made by other people as well. The #Up2Us videos were telling people that people had a role to play. The hashtag was self-explanatory and very simple that it was up to the people to help stop cancer or help its spread. This hash tag was popularized by tweeter and Facebook. The encouragement was always to like, share and donate. In the videos young people were given a chance to talk about their experiences of cancer. In the same video’s celebrities were also interviewed. Again, in the videos positive stories were told of successful cancer treatment. Things that attract the young generation were also done on the same videos. Young man and women were being put tattoos on live video and all the name of highlighting the dangers of cancer and what you can actually done.

Personally, I enjoyed this video as it involved reality videos. The videos also carried a lot of awareness information. Not only that you could watch the young man and women giving people valuable dietary information. Prevention tips were offered. And as the video continued donations continued to keep flowing through the donate now video. All these videos were posted on social media. The beauty of that is the video kept being shared to other people. Women education was also given free advice in the video for cervical cancer. The core message though was standing up to cancer. Education on how to treat or live with people with cancer was being imparted. But as much as the videos were educative, they were also really fun.

In conclusion the videos which are of high quality were long and continuous but were still a joy to watch. The best part on one of the videos was on the eating competition but the food was healthy -just the kind of food you are supposed to eat, healthy and nutritious.

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chieftawanda-blog · 6 years

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This is a very thoughtful I had to do research at some point about veteran I must say this is beyond great

#22PushupChallenge

I am sure you all are wandering what the #22PushupChallenge is. The 22PushupChallenge, at times called the 22KillPushupChallenge, is an activity involving pressing out twenty-two push ups to promote awareness for veteran suicide prevention along with honoring military service members and veterans. In order to do the challenge a person would have to do 22 push ups a day for 22 straight days. The #22pushupchallenge was a viral echo of the 2014 ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, which had everyone from veterans to celebrities to regular folks hitting the deck, and challenging their friends to do the same on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. This challenge was inspires by a real dire concern. It was estimated that 22 U.S. veterans commit suicide everyday. To do the challenge you would have to post a video on social media of yourself doing 22 push ups, include the hashtag #22pushupchallenge, and tag a few friends to challenge them to join you. Former Men’s Fitness cover guy Chris Pratt posted a clip of himself and his wife, Anna Ferris, taking the challenge. Other celebrities joined in, such as, Chris Evens, John Krasinski, and fellow former Men’s Fitness guy Scott Eastwood. Many other celebrities joined in. They were Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Central Intelligence co-star Kevin Hart, Olympic gold medalist Simone Mauel, and Houston Texans superstar J.J Watt, gold medalist Simones Bites, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Justin Timberlake, just to name a few. The #22pushupchallenge was inspired by a veteran-created nonprofit called #22Kill. The challenge set out in 2013 to help raise awareness of suicide and mental health issues among veterans. #22Kill name derived from Marine slang. It was started by Honor Courage, Inc. One of #22Kill’s goals were to inspire people to do 22 million push ups as part of the broader awareness effort. Veteran suicides could be higher. The first reported cited statistic was in 2012. VA researches estimated veteran suicides by comparing the percentage of reported veteran deaths by suicide in 21 states from 1999 to 2011 with the number of suicides in America. Although the challenge was for veteran suicide awareness, its a great way to keep health. Doing 22 push ups everyday for 22 days is a great start to improve your overall chest, triceps, and core strength.

Operations Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Enduring Freedom (OEF): About 11-20 out of every 100 veterans (or between 11-20%) would serve in OIF or OEF have PTSD in a given year. Gulf War Veterans (or 12%) have PTSD in a given year. Although the challenge was for a good cause, some people don’t think it helped much. Awareness doesn’t do much. You can know a problem exists. That doesn’t mean you are any closer to the problem.

Veterans dying by suicide has been all over the news since the Department of Veterans Affairs scandal broke out in April 2014. A lot of people might say that awareness of veteran suicide might help to prevent more suicides, but how? How many hash tags and social media posts identify warning signs to look for in friends and co-workers? How many explain that the latest report found of the 20 veterans a day who died by suicide in 2014, 65% of them were 50 years of age or older. Some people even feel that the challenge may have actually hindered solving the problem of veteran suicide.

If people think they’ve done their part to help by just posting to social media and don’t follow up with actually doing something to help veterans, than an opportunity to achieve real change has been squandered.Awareness is nice, but action is essential. A lot of veterans die by suicide for a lot of different reasons. It could be from the lack of counseling, or the lack of veterans services, and the lack of money is what is killing these veterans. Not having the right people to turn to when you feel you are in trouble is one big reason.

Spreading the word that veteran suicide is not the answer is what veteran empowerment group, Honor Courage Commitment, Inc. wants people to understand. They started the 22Kill project in 2013 after learning of the shocking statistics of veteran suicide that plague this country. With the combined efforts of the organization and participants they hope that “bridging the gap between veterans and civilians “will” build a community of support “for those living with these mental health challenges. We need more concern for our veterans who become of risk for brain disorders because of the extreme stress they undergo day in and day out. 22Kill is spreading awareness and educating the public on the core cause of these challenges that arise after these heroes return home. Creating a smoother transition in and out of services is essential for veterans having difficulty finding their way after the military.

The challenge begin in 2014 when a representative from the Harsh Foundation, a private family foundation based in Irving, offered $10,000 if the nonprofit could encourage 100 people to post push-up videos to social media within a week. “Within a few hours, we have 300 videos, “Nguyen said with a smile. In response, the Harsh Foundation upped the anti. It offered $100,000 for 1,000 push-up videos in a week. Again, the results blew away expectations, with more than 3,000 push-up videos uploaded to social media within a matter of days.

A search of #22KillChallenge returns a seemingly unending supply of videos, some featuring familiar faces. In January, the Fort Worth Police Department posted a video showing dozens of officers doing push ups in a parking lot. Nguyen said, I quote, “I tell people, I’m not challenging you. I’m not trying to see how many push ups you can do. I’m not trying to see how strong you are, “he emphasized. “All it’s about is taking those few moments out of the day, humbling yourself down no matter who you are. It’s about humbling yourself down and saying ‘Think you to our veterans that served”. Unquote.

Many baseball players took part in the challenge because of what it was all about. Detroit Pistons center Andre Drummond sent out a challenge to his fans. He said that if they took part in the #22pushup challenge to honor military veterans, he would retweet their video. Drummond, several teammates, and even Pistons owner, Tom Gores, got into the act.

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chieftawanda-blog · 6 years

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This is so amazing you really did a good job with this and also letting us understand

Andrew Belliveau is from Lynn, Ma and the founder of the Gastraparesis Pie Face Challenge. He started this challenge because when he was ten years old he had to fight thru three medical conditions. He made this challenge for the medical condition that he considers to be the most debilitating of the three medical conditions that he had to fight they at such a young age. Gastraparesis caused him to have twenty-four seven nausea and vomiting episodes up to twenty times a day for three years. He hopes that starting Gastraparesis Pie Face Challenge campaign on July 27,2016 that it catches on like the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge Campaign did. He also hopes that one day a cure will be found for this condition. Pies have been thrown in faces all around the world. Notable participants include David Price, Andrew Benintendi, Brock Holt, Jackie Bradley Jr, Chris Young, Rick Porcello of the Boston Red Sox. Also Did I Gregorious of the New York Yankees and form MLB player David Ross. Several media personally as Barstool Sports, CBS Sports, NESN and multiple other Boston media personalities have participated in this challenge as well. As of January 2019 this challenge has raised an upwards of eight thousand dollars for G pact. The GP Pie Face Challenge has also been featured on ESPN, People, Inside Edition, Sports Illustrated and Bleachers report as well as several media outlets in Boston, Connecticut, New York, and Texas. In addition to all of that publicity the GO Pie Face Challenge has also been covered by Bleached Report and several newspapers such as the Boston Globe and New York Daily News. This challenge also has it’s own Facebook page and Twitter account that millions of people are following and posting to daily.

The rules are as follows:

1) Record yourself smashing a cream into your face

2) Challenge as many of your friends as you would like

3) Post your video on your personal social media accounts and on the official challenge page on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/gastroparesispiefacechallenge/

4)If you challenged does not take the challenge within twenty-four hours he or she must donate a call or to G pact a nonprofit organization that helps Gastroparesis patients and conducts research on the condition

5)If you see this video and are not personally challenged do not wait around to be named someone’s challenge. Take the challenge yourself!

6)Have fun and remember be creative!

Gastraparesis is a very serious condition that many people have and that we still have no cure for and not many people are aware of I Did not know what it was until I did this research on it. Could you imagine having any of these symptoms all the time feeling full soon after starting a meal, feeling full long after eating a meal, nausea, vomiting, too much bloating, too much belching, pain in your upper abdomen, heartburn, or poor appetite. Well the people who have this disorder have these symptoms constantly.

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