Exegesis so far

Exegesis - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: Exegesis

Latest Abstract

The process of “extraordinary rendition”, which is practiced by the CIA, is being sanctioned and accepted by other Western nations around the world, despite the fact that it flies in the face of the Geneva Convention and the Declaration of Human Rights. However, the issue is not widely publicized and many Britons are unaware of the problem. Actors for Human Rights UK aims to tell the stories of men who have been victims of extraordinary rendition, to humanise them in the eyes of the general population, who may not know the human cost of this practice. How can AFHRUK use a viral marketing campaign to further spread its message about the wrongs being done in the name of the War on Terror and, in turn, promote their own programs?

Technology and evolution

Reading Danny Belkin's article about "The Internet Will Speed Up Human Evolution", I was reminded of a fact I read the other day (it might have been in The Good Weekend, the Number Crunch section). 10% of human life that has ever existed, exists now. At this moment in time, our world population makes up 10% of all the human beings who have ever lived. I find that phenomenal.

The reason Belkin's article brought this fact to mind for me was that it is a stark reminder of how quickly technology has changed us as a species just in the last 100 years. Advancements in medicine, education, transport, all of this has allowed us to live longer and procreate more. It's an extraordinary achievement, whether or not you believe it is actually a good thing or not.

At first reading, the suggestion that "The internet will speed up human evolution" seems preposterous. But Belkin's argument is compelling and comes from a theory about the very start of evolution, when single-celled organisms (or orgasms, as poor Liberal backbencher Jason Wood said the other day!) joined together, to create multi-celled organisms. He suggests that the internet is enabling a similar merger to occur, but on a far greater level. The merger of human and computer intelligence, the creation of "a human-computer meta-network". 

Improvements in communication have snowballed and accelerated developments in other scientific and cultural areas, the speed at which new technology is created can be seen as exponential, thus technology can be said to be adding to human's intelligence and therefore helping us to evolve. This much is easy to understand. But Belkin takes it one step further, saying "the merging of humans into an interconnected computer meta-network will eventually create a collective consciousness for all the individual participants."

Although I agree with the basis of his argument, Belkin's meta-network concept is hard for me to fathom. It sounds like an individual would have to sacrifice their own individuality and give themselves over to a new level of consciousness - like a Buddhist meditation but with computers. Perhaps my concerns can be seen as an extension of my concerns about existing technologies, such as Facebook, which, as previously discussed, I am uncomfortable using because I don't want to share that much of myself with this world. It could be suggested, therefore, that Belkin's idea is not ridiculous, because millions of people around the world are already prepared to give up some part of themselves and share it via the net.

Looking into the future, I also can't help but wonder whether some form of technology will beat us in the end. Not in the form of robots taking over the world, as Belkin mentions, but more in the form of some new aggressive mobile phone cancer, or all the radio waves pulsing around in the air shrinking our brains!

On that note, I would like to end on something more cheery. Please enjoy Flight of the Conchords with their Robot song...

Supervisor

I think I now have a supervisor for my project, Rachel Wilson. I met with Rachel yesterday and I think we're both on the same page about how to approach the project and what difficulties we might face. What's more, we've got friends in common! That's always a good sign! I think her background will be very helpful for me and she has already come up with some good ideas about who I can talk to and issues I should consider.

What question is my research project answering?

I hope to answer the question: "How can not-for-profit organisations use new media and the internet to raise the public's awareness about human rights issues?"

I mentioned the draft script, well here it is. Comments welcome.

Rendition Short Script - Upload a doc

Read this doc on Scribd: Rendition Short Script

The idea behind the script is that it is based on a section from the AFHR show "Rendition", which uses transcripts and real testimony from three guys who experienced the process of extraordinary rendition. I thought it would be best to make the campaign somehow in the style of AFHR, in order to raise awareness not only of the issue, but of how AFHR works as an organisation.

Dangers of Wikipedia

We were speaking in Comm Rev about Wikipedia and Google and the dangers involved in people taking what they're told for gospel without considering how and why the information is chosen. I mentioned a sketch by American satirist Stephen Colbert. See below:

http://spring.newsvine.com/_news/2006/08/01/307864-stephen-colbert-causes-chaos-on-wikipedia-gets-blocked-from-site

Unfortunately, the YouTube clip is being contested by Comedy Central for breach of copyright. Fair enough I suppose (but disappointing for this blog post!)

Potential challenges and problems

There are a number of challenges I can foresee with regards to my campaign for AFHR.

First of all, there's the target audience. Deciding on who the target audience is is bound up also with what we want to get out of the campaign. Do we want to convert people to the AFHR cause? Encourage donations? Or motivate existing supporters? Of course, if a campaign could do all three that would be ideal, but I'm not expecting to create the perfect awareness campaign, so we might have to be more specific! From my readings and research so far, I would expect that our best chance of success will be if we target people who are already sympathetic to the issues that AFHR engages in, but who either don't understand the Extraordinary Rendition issue or who don't know about AFHR's work. The aim of the campaign is therefore to direct people to the website where they can find out more about the issue and organisation (and even donate if they choose!)

It is here that we also start to discover the limitations of a viral campaign. Although cheap and with a potentially large audience, viral campaigns will target a younger market. There is nothing wrong with this per se, and it could be great for AFHR, but it has occurred to me previously that a potential audience for AFHR is the niche market known in political circles as "the doctors wives". This rather patronising term refers to middle aged, middle class women who are conservative politically but who are also kind and concerned with human rights. Their politics generally stems from their wealth and social circles, but they do not condone inhumane behaviour. This is a powerful group because, as the name suggests, they are connected to powerful people (or may be in positions of power themselves) and have previously been the turning point on issues such as the Vietnam War and refugees in Australia. AFHR should definitely consider targeting this group, but I don't think that viral marketing is the way to do it.

However, having said that, if we shoot our viral campaign on broadcast-quality high-definition video (I'll have to do some research into the best camera to use) then we can hope that, if the viral campaign achieves some success, we can then venture out into television. TV would be the best way to reach the middle aged women group, along with features in magazines and radio.

The other issue with viral marketing is that you have to give a reason for the receiver to pass it on. This will partly be helped by targeting already sympathetic viewers, who are more likely to want to share our campaign with their friends as a way of expressing their own views. However, if the 90 second ad engages people well enough, even those who were previously unsympathetic could be encouraged to pass it on. Engagement often comes down to an issue of emotion. Most virals are funny for this reason, engaging people's sense of humour. It would be a huge challenge to create a funny campaign around state-sanctioned torture, but I won't rule out the possibility just yet! We are more likely to engage with people with either shock value or a very moving piece.

These are the main challenges at the moment, in terms of creating the concept for our campaign. There will also be technical decisions to make (as touched upon above)... but those can wait for another month or so!