From our How to Make Videos readings, the most recurring and valuable information I got was to 1) include only the necessary so as to make use of every second of attention from your audience and 2) to actually know who the audience is. In making a public service announcement of any sort, it’s important to do this because of how short the PSAs have to be. They are trying to catch the attention of someone who doesn’t know how this is relevant to him/her. These people revert to an inactive type of attention and so only the crucial information has to be included. When the PSA is trying to reach a target audience but that target audience doesn’t know to look for it, it makes it extremely important to have the right rhetoric and communication.
Recently, I’ve been scouring my Twitter for recent posts about women in tech, especially the current events with James Damore, a male Google employee who wrote a manifesto criticizing diversity initiatives with getting more women in tech because they simply aren’t biologically capable of coding. It’s simply ridiculous, and certain Twitter accounts have taken off with this topic. Twitter’s audience is definitely more widespread; it’s not targeted to any one group. People can scroll and come across a post that they have no context for. It’s interesting to see how different speakers on Twitter choose to approach the Google Manifesto. Most post articles to supplement their text because 140 characters is not enough to summarize the fiasco while expressing some sort of opinion on it. The consistent pattern seems to be some vague angry comment for those who don’t know much about the facts have no choice but to click on the article to understand the remark on it. It’s a pretty good way to get more people to be aware of the things that they might otherwise be ignorant about. I think Twitter accurately captures the essentials of the advice we’ve been reading about in making good PSAs. In a similar way, Twitter is also like a form of public service announcements in the way that they have to be short (140 characters to be exact) and have to be speak in a way that accommodates for the broad audience that Twitter hosts.