In order to experience this in some way, we had to form our own campaign idea within our workshops. This gave us the opportunity to work out how we would form a campaign and spread our word to the corners of the world. We chose to base our campaign around the proposed idea that would force students to do compulsory community service in order to help pay off some of their loans. This is an idea that I, along with the rest of my group, are strongly against - as it seems to treat us students like criminals, and does not allow for any choice in the matter.
Once we had an idea for a campaign, we needed to create a video in order to spread the word. After viewing different videos on the Battlefront website, it was decided that we did not want to do anything too serious - as this would not attract the attention of the majority of our target audience: students. This led to the following tongue-in-cheek production which we believed could be turned into a form of viral campaign which people would forward to their friends in order to spread the word.
As you will notice from watching the video, the ending provides links to places which further our campaign. As a group, we knew the power that social networking websites hold for campaigns - with good examples coming from the recent 'battles for Christmas Number 1' in recent years which have shown how the power of a simple social networking site can convince thousands of people to buy a song at once.
We also knew that these sites are extremely popular with young people, especially students, and so it would be silly of us not to include them within our plan. By using Facebook, a campaign can share video, news, information and events with its followers, whilst interacting with them and making them feel involved too. By using Twitter an even closer form of interaction is displayed through the '@reply' feature and allows the campaign to give shorter, snappier and more up-to-the-minute updates to how they are getting on.
Whilst we did not actually make a Facebook page for our campaign (though one does exist already), we did make a Twitter account: @dmusaccs. Although it is not exactly populated with many tweets, it shows an example of how the word can be spread to many people, very quickly.
I think the Internet is the perfect place for people to campaign, as it is so social and open. The boundaries are near enough limitless on the Internet, and this freedom is what makes 'net campaigns flourish so much. Even on a small scale like this one, I think my group proved quite well how campaigns can be thought about and set up in a small space of time - even if they are not produced and finished to the high-end and widespread standards of something more professional like Battlefront.
