Social Media Campaign
Social media has a way with effectively spreading information and news. It has especially been useful in my campaign for elephant conservation and speaking out against poaching and the ivory trade. Not only has it allowed me to spread awareness about important situations going on in the animal science community, but it has also supplied me with various resources to conduct my research on elephant cognition, intelligence, and population. It has also encouraged me to interact with my peers and communicate with their tweets and posts. Especially with the pandemic going on and everything being online, the Twitter platform gave several students a platform to learn virtually and relate to each other through this difficult period. The only thing I'd note as ineffective in Twitter was their lack of an option to edit our tweets after we had posted them and how we were unable to see how many people have viewed our tweets. Here on the right are my most popular tweets that I had posted throughout this Writing 39C course! I had specifically chosen the tweet about the geese because I thought it would be relatable and I thought it would give people a good laugh. I also chose to showcase the one about my BIG3 sources because it was a vital article that i used within my Literary Essay that gave a lot of insight into the cognition of elephants.
The Campaign
This Social Media Campaign project has been a week's worth of content. The class began the campaign on a Tuesday and ended it on the Monday of the following week. Although the assigned days of posting content has ended, there have been many students who continue to advocate for their animal and issue, showing their dedication and passion. The intent of this project has been to speak out about issues concerning the animal we had chosen for our Literary Review Essay. We would spend 2 days tweeting about the problem, 2 days about organizations that help alleviate the issue or are working towards it, 2 days about solutions, and 1 day tweeting about an infographic that we made and interacting with our peers' tweets. Below, I will display my most prized tweets throughout the campaign and I will also include my infographic that I made. Click here to see my Day-by-Day plan which includes all of my tweets and why I chose to talk about certain topics.
Problems
The issue that I chose to research for this campaign was how the African elephant population has been impacted by poaching for their ivory tusks. This issue has gotten so severe to the point where these species are endangered and their population has dropped by 80% in certain areas. I also chose to tweet about the potential dangers if the species were to become extinct and how it is a danger to the ecosystem. Despite the international ban on ivory sales, there have still been substantial amounts of elephants being illegally poached and hunted for profit. It was important for me to speak out about this issue because I personally find it wrong to be killing innocent animals for trophies or profit.
Organizations
For the two days on organizations, I chose World Wildlife Fund and ElephantVoices. I specifically chose these two organizations out of several other ones because I felt like they were the most active out of the all the others that I saw. World Wildlife Fund (WWF) organization not only focuses on African elephants and poaching, but a list of other animals as well (ex: rhinos, pandas, tigers, whales, etc.). The ElephantVoices organization mainly spends their funds on elephant conservation and educating the public on all things elephants as well as monitoring to make sure that their population is safe and steady. On the right, I have included tweets about each organization. For WWF, I chose to tweet about how they are actively trying to stop poaching and the methods they have implemented. With ElephantVoices, I spoke up about how everyone can contribute to ending poaching or to help the elephants.
Solutions
Towards the end of the week, I spent 2 days tweeting about potential solutions to the elephant poaching issue. One of the tweets on the left mentions how seismology (study of earthquakes and their waves) can help detect when elephants are in danger. The researchers have been using seismology technology to observe elephant vibrations and correlate them to certain behaviors. If the elephants exhibit vibrations that correspond to distress, the authorities can get to the scene quickly. The second tweet was about how geotags on posts of elephants can lead poachers to that location, therefore, resulting in their danger. This tweet was vital to mention because some people can be unaware of the small impacts social media can have on these animals.
Here is my Infographic that I made for one of the days in the Social Media Campaign. I primarily wrote about information that encapsulates the whole problem of elephant poaching. My idea behind this was to educate the public on the basics of elephant poaching and from there, the audience can spread the information with others. I hope that, as you explore my page and come across this image, you will share it with your community to raise awareness on the current issue.
