Blog Post Week 8

These past two weeks we have been viewing and discussing various public service announcements (PSAs). The common theme in all of these PSAs is a call to action. These call to actions are meant to inspire their audience to get up and do something about an issues. This can range from stopping littering or something pertaining to social justice. My group #blacklivesmatter relates to the latter. They have many call to actions on social media on a consistent basis. One such example was SocialJusticeAmerica’s tweet that said we must end white supremacy and white privilege. Their tweet came in response to a video of the same cop who shot an unarmed teenager, tazing a cooperative suspect. Both of these incidents involved a POC and the same cop. Although SocialJusticeAmerica’s PSA may not come in the form of a video, they still have a call to action with the hopes that change can be made. This post gave the audience another reason to continue pressing the #blacklivesmatter agenda. Another perfect example of a PSA on social media is Jenny Lundt’s Facebook post. This post featured a picture of her proudly wielding a sword. She then told a personal anecdote of how not one person questioned her when she had the sword in public. In contrast, her entire campus was shut down because people thought a black was carrying a gun when it was actually a glue gun. Her call to action is for white Colgate students, or white students in general, to do better in terms of their perspectives on African-Americans. This post went viral and has hopefully inspired white students in America to think about their perspectives on African-Americans differently. These two previous PSA were simple yet effective. They had a call to action and allowed the audience to understand their perspective with the hopes that progress will be made.