There are undoubtedly many negative aspects of social media, such as cyber bullying, but there are also many positive possibilities.  The biggest positive effect social media has, in my opinion, is the ability to raise awareness and campaign.  What is unique about GRIN and its campaign is its unique way of campaigning.  Taking colourful photos that people make their social network profile pictures is a brilliant way of campaigning and raising awareness.  To see how popular the RESPECT photo-shoots are you only need to take a look at the GRIN photos page. 

If you ask any politician who has been involved with politics for a long time, what has changed the most since they first set out in politics they will say the rise of social media.  Take Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, he relies heavily on the use of Twitter, Facebook and Email to raise awareness and encourage people to come to rallies.  In the past campaigns would have to have vast budgets dedicated to sending out letters and buying advertising space, now all they need to do is simply log on to a device that has the Internet and send out a tweet, a status update, or even an email and instantly thousands of people will have received the message.  Barack Obama's 2008 election was the first election that involved social media to such a huge scale.  This is partly why he received such instant fame.  Now in school playgrounds not many people have heard of Mitt Romney whereas Obama had worldwide fame and hero status because of the advent of Social Media.  

The Arab Spring which featured ground shaking revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt etc. was mainly down to the rise of Social Media, so much so that Mubarek of Egypt banned the Internet in his country as people were using it to raise awareness and stir up the nation. The BlackBerry Messaging service was particularly popular in arranging meeting points and places to riot.  In the London Riots of 2011, which will definitely go down as a black point in the history of London, David Cameron had to consider taking extreme measures to close down BBM and Twitter due to the same methods used by the English rioters as the Arabs.

Just imagine how hard it would have been to campaign 30 years ago compared to now.  KONY 2012 is the campaign spearheaded by the Invisible Children group.  The centrepiece of the campaign, a video highlighting the evils of the African dictator Joseph Kony, went viral within days.  Some of the world’s most famous people were soon tweeting about it, even Bill Gates tweeted and emailed about it.  Soon every teen was BBMing or Facebooking about it.  This really shows you the power of the Internet and social media.  All a campaign needs to do these days to dramatically increase its fan base is to attract the attention of a world-famous superstar.  In my opinion, social media campaigns like GRIN's RESPECT photographic protest are definitely the way forward.

Ed Oldfield