"Ice Bucket Challenge" or how to use New Medias

Nowadays our world is in constant changing trying to adapt to the new technologies and to all the possibilities that they contribute. Things have changed; now it is not necessary go to a kiosk to buy the newspaper, all the information is in Internet; buy whatever thing from the desk of your house it's possible; even you can prepare a trip without going to a agency travel. Within this possibilities contributed by Internet it's necessary speak about the viralization capacity of the contents. With a simple click you can share some content with your community in the social networks. This quality of the Internet is being used by ONGs to spread their contents and to reach more audience.

It is very easy find a lot of solidarity campaigns in Internet. All the time people is sharing some texts, videos, photos or asking for a firm in a petition. The web site https://www.change.org/is one of the most popular sites in the World Wide Web thank to all the people who enter to sign a petition or to create a petition. There you can find requests for a government, request to save some animal which is in danger or to collect money for an illness. However, the most successful solidarity campaigns are those that involve citizens. Here we have the case of "Ice Bucket Challenge", a campaign that started in 2014 and circled the world.

"Ice Bucket Challenge" campaign was started the 7th august 2014 by Pete Frates family, that meet two hundred people in Copley square of Boston. The objective was collect money to investigate ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) an illness that affects Pete Frates (https://petefrates.com ). This progressive degenerative disease is very strange and only affects one person out of ten thousand. Campaign was presented as a challenge; people had to throw a bucket of cold water over them. The objective was to fell stiffening of muscles like the patients of ALS. People had to rec the challenge and to posted in Facebook or Instagram. Then they had to mention other people to do it and donate money to the ONG.

People of all parts of the World contributed to the cause recording their videos and donating money. Only in 2014, the ALS Association (http://www.alsa.org/) collected $115 million. Why this campaign has so success? All people who recorded a video and posted it in Facebook donated money? People really wanted to help to collect money or simply they wanted to create their own virtual identity? These are some of the questions with which we find when we study this case.

There are several factors that can help us to understand the success of "Ice Bucket Challenge". The main explication alludes to the viral character of Internet. The creators of the campaign saw that viral marketing could function very well with their objective. Viral marketing allows the message to be transmitted to a group of people who, because of certain factors, will be in charge of disseminating the information that has been offered to them. This is very far away from mass marketing, where an advertiser throws a message to the whole audience. In the viral marketing, the advertiser, in this case the ONG, achieve that people internalize the message and transmit it as your own. That is why people put more effort in communication with other people. Also, it is known as "Word of Mouth Marketing", because it works when one person tell to another something about the campaign and so on.

Once we speak about WOM and viralness communication, it is the moment to mention the "Sneezers". This term, coined by Godin, refers to all the people who "sneeze" all information they have above other people, infecting them with the message. But how these "sneezer" have knowledge about campaign? The answer to this question is another of factors that helped to success of campaign. Lazarsfeld, one of the most important researchers in the communication world, talked in 1995 about the "opinion leadership"; this is when one person has authority in a media and a lot of people want to know his opinion about different topics to build your own opinion. "Ice Bucket Challenge" used famous actors, politicians, youtubers or instagramers to reach to the people. All of them are opinion leaders and when its followers saw that they did the "Ice Bucket Challenge", they decide to do the same. 

It is possible to find one more factor that influenced the campaign. Characteristics of the message are very important for their transmission. People not share all content that find in Internet, but it has to have some attributes. Within the different viral messages that it is possible to find in the net, stand out those who entertain and are original, those who invite the interaction of the audience and those who transmit a positive message. "Ice Bucket Challenge" campaign shared all of this attributes.

It is true that lot of people contributed to collect money for ALS, but not all was good in this campaign. "Ice Bucket Challenge" served to show, one more time, the existence of "click activism". That type of activism, if we can call it that, consist in think that someone help to some cause only sharing information with a click. People want to appear altruistic, worried about the world and willful to combat injustices; but they only share some post in Facebook or sign in an electronic petition. This is related with the objective of build a digital personality, different from what they are actually. These people did not donate money, they just wanted the rest of the world seen how altruistic they are.

Solidarity campaigns are triumphing nowadays in Internet, and every single week we heard about a new challenge or a new original and surprising video to protest or to reclaim more rights, money for investigation or more equality. With all the tools that we have to share them is our duty to extend message against injustice and help people. But we have to remember that make a click to post something in Facebook is not the only thing that we can do or we'll be fooling ourselves.

Nice thing if you keep following... EP and ACTA

I face many general questions once I need to mention I did a traineeship in the European Parliament but I find it difficult to express so much experience, agenda and emotions within the one minute people keep their interest before they need to rush through their minds or corridors elsewhere. Therefore, in the paragraphs below I will just try to witness a tiny fragment of January 27 this year when I was volunteering in the office of Ms. Zuzana Roithova, Member of the European Parliament (EPP-ED/ KDU-ČSL).
 

Spoiling the ACTA?

On the day, EP emails were under fire. The usually full mailbox the MEP's office was more than ever overwhelmed with ACTA related emails, some in English, some in other languages (not only the understandable Czech and Slovak), some mentioning the treaty, some avoiding spam and scam filters by using their own words, some knowing their interest, some not understanding the case at all. (It is a good practice the office to write in response as it cannot afford an expensive campaign or treat journalists with bribes and uses the assistants for hard work on real issues rather than strategic licking power with their silver tongues on political chessboards). Below is a common example of messages received, which I used to formulate a generalized answer to be sent back:

Dear member of EU Parliament,

As an EU citizen, I would like to press you to vote against ACTA for the following reasons:

ACTA turns Internet companies (ISPs, service providers) into a private copyright police by forcing to take legal responsibility for what their users do online.

ACTA brings broad and dangerous criminal sanctions in loosely defined way.

ACTA bypasses democracy and opens the door to a parallel legislative process, which the European MPs should be particularly angry about.

Please let me know what you voting behavior will be.

Regards,

Well, I found it a real pleasure answering, as this was supporting a case Ms. Roithová had been publicly pointing out already in February 2010 as one of so called 4 ACTA Musketeers (the others were Françoise Castex, France, S&D; Alexandr Alvar, Germany, ALDE and Stavros Lambrinidis, Greece, S&D. (First written declaration pushed through by an MEP from the Czech Republic;).

The political prelude to ACTA and the position of the European Parliament

As many treaties before, ACTA has been initiated in hidden backgrounds and never attracted enough support to progress through talks on the grounds of the UN or other international forums, as many countries (China and India named as the largest ones) avoid any bindings on this issues as it could hit large parts of their industry. The first mentions appeared apparently on Wikileaks in 2007 (Wikipedia) and different versions of the treaty have been monitored since (IP Justice has done a great job).
The European Parliament was empowered to get involved no sooner than after the entry of the Lisbon Treaty into force in December 2009. The written declaration mentioned above entered into force in September 2010 when more than half of the 754 MEPs from the EU-27 signed. The European Parliament also interpellated the European Commission asking to be fully informed about international agreement under discussion and providing the text of ACTA, a precedent case based on article 218 of the Lisbon Treaty.
The European Commission provided them with a version of the agreement in April 2011 for MEPs only, offered discussions and the finally published signed version of the treaty from October 2011. Given criticisms of the outcomes, the Commission has turned to the European Court of Justice to preliminary specify any cases the implementation of ACTA could cause. At the moment, the situation is being monitored and will be further communicated by the institutions when the time comes.

Criticisms and reactions to ACTA

 I agree with the position of Zuzana Roithova, which appreciates better standarts taken in by some signatories (eg.Morroco), harmonisation of some technical definitions and above all weaking the commerce privacy in large amount. (Naturally, the problem China, India and Brasil, who are not likely to adopt the treaty, persists and systemically weakens force of the treaty). The cooperation of the Commission proved useful as the Commission managed to negotiate guarantees to protect users and right of fair trial.
Unlike well lobbied through interests of entertainment industry, the special interests of original food (regional products), so typical in Europe, could maybe even worsen on the global markets. The position of Zuzana Roithova also does not play down options of bullying EU citizens through controls of little personal deliveries as there is no definition of commercial scales and a possibility of controls of digital materials on portable media on borders.
Some EU-27 countries have refused to sign ACTA (eg. Slovakia or the well-prepared diplomacy in Netherlands), and it is them who will have the last word if the Parliament approves. Some have used ACTA to gain political fame, such as French MEP Kader Arif (S&D), who dramatically resigned from the position of rapporteur at the peak of Anonymous protests on January 26th. I have heard criticisms about sending the case to the ECJ, as it can postpone the entry into force by almost two years and the legislation is badly needed by the industry. I heard false or not fully correct criticisms on YouTube and I heard public emotions. No matter where ACTA heads, and I truly believe the most sensible decision will be taken on it, I hope this has been an excellent school of democracy to the public.

Lessons to remember

The thought of European Union stands on building a block of freedom and democracy where our cooperation gives us strength to protect Europe from intrusion or previously so painfully experienced turf wars. The European Commission is a surprisingly effective administration body, which does not have a decisive power only a chance to listen to stakeholders and look after agenda. Power has until recently been held in the European Council, which are basically meetings of national prime ministers, ministers and their delegates as we vote for them in national elections. The Lisbon Treaty, which the Czech president Václav Klaus so stupidly opposed, gave finally more power to the European Parliament. This parliament is not based on strong majority vote to favor large parties and therefore reflects better views of European citizens. It is also little distant from skirmishes on national political scenes and more eager to listen to real problems. Hopefully, ACTA has been just a lesson to active citizens to push through their interests.
There is information published online by the European Commission, DG Communication of the European Parliament, the Council (the last two offer even online streaming), there are servers on European agenda, some countries follow very decently all EU agenda (eg UK - esp. House of Lords), Brussels serves as a hub for NGOs. Politics has never been this open for active citizens.
I just believe we all will become participants of our own future not to wear masks.

Lenka Soukupova