Assignment 1

What is social action and community media?

Social action is a creative tool used within media to present knowledge and awareness of a public or global issue that should be presented and taken care of. Community media would be a group of people who would have a similar beliefs and interests but also, sharing experiences which would allow them to come together in an issue they strongly believe in.

The main purpose of community media would be to give the people a voice and empowering the people instead of just seeing them as just passive consumers, this is to apply information to the people's ears, which is for lack of resources to allow their voice to be heard. Community media also balances out the sense of inequality which is due to thing such as government reconstructing cultural buildings which have been there throughout people's lives to be constructed just for higher income and tourist attraction.

The types of social action would be local change where the current issues within a community which people within the community would be concerned with which destroy the view and comfort within their area such as littering, drugs and gangs, the different ways the local communities can take action and change a negative issue would be for example survey's, community parties and workshops. A example of local change would be the Purley swimming pool campaign where the community of Purley contested and campaigned to keep the swimming pool which was one of the key features of the area which through use of community media and social action prevailed through gaining the councils approval of keeping the swimming pool but also improve the facilities but also work together to strengthen the community and what everyone would like within the community. The main impact is within seeking to the tradition of the community by showing how long the swimming pool and how we've built our community around it which appeals to the audiences past and children's future of loving the swimming pool like you used to or still do.

Another type would be National change, which would consider change within a country, which certain issues are placed onto the public so they can produce a positive outcome. An example of this would be the British heart foundation, which aim to keep hearts healthy and fight against heart disease. This gave awareness of heart disease and how to keep your heart in shape. This documentary for heart disease appeals to people emotional fears such as losing a love one or a friend who just left all of a sudden through heart disease and how it could impact people who suffer from the lose. The use of camera shows how even within a classroom situation they make sure that the child we are focusing on is noticed through use of panning and zooming into a long to mid shot, which then presents a figure through a side mid shot so that you can see both the child and what seems to be his dad talking to him but then when his dad kneels down we have a focus mid shot towards the dad to have the audience take the child's views of the situation. My personal opinion of this documentary would be how the scene where his dad leaves him after saying that he's leaving him which then leads up to the principle asking him to outside due to his mum telling him the bad news however, we already knew through the boy being given a farewell from his dad which gives a impactful scene of how sudden the death of someone suffering from heart disease.

Global change would be within worldwide scale of change, which would mean a situation that is affecting everyone to get noticed and attract attention so people could come together globally to make a difference within a major scale. An example of this would be an organisation called Green Peace, which aims to protect the earth by finding responsible solutions to lead up to peace. This impacted companies such as Adidas, Puma and Nike to go toxic free within their production to help the environment. This would also lead up to KONY since it suddenly became a very impactful campaign due to it showing awareness about children in Africa being kidnapped to be forced to train as a child soldier and kill their family as passage to show loyalty. This spread fast throughout the world about finding the leader Joseph Kony and learning more about what he has done within Africa which lead up to the documentary which gained more than 98,000 views.

In the video this presented to me that people believe deeply about what they want to change and if people are aware of the situation they could either stay silent or speak out. What I liked about this

was the step by step through cycling life from the American side gradually going towards the experience his friend Jacob went through and allow people to be dragged back into the video to watch it end, he also used professional aid within the video so that he could show how to stop this but also how people could contribute to stop Kony and the struggle of the children who been taken by the society. The key factors I saw used within the videos were using scenes within the area and repetition on the face of Kony so that the audience would remember the face to link in with poster and other campaigns, also through showing examples of how much work they been applying into the issue such as making so much work on social networks like Facebook but also going to the upper department and asking for assistance with military aid not go to combat with the army of youth but to get closer and closer into finding and arresting Kony. Overall I have learned that with hope and strong beliefs to make action towards your community within a matter that is drastic it would be possible to make a change.