Selfie For Social Change

I recently received an email from a sorority member regarding a campaign she is working for.  She is collaborating with med students at the University of Michigan to work on a non-profit called Mankon Forum Scholarship Initiative.  This is a group that is designed to raise funds to give full scholarships to hard-working, dedicated students in rural Cameroon so that they can attend the required five years of high school.  Many of the students in this area are often forced to drop out of school and work in the fields to supply for themselves.  They are launching this campaign with an “educational selfie” video, which they hope to go viral in order to raise awareness and boost their social media presence.   The “educational selfie” video requirements ask one simple question: “what does education mean to you?”

This email of course reminded me of our guest speaker regarding the selfie phenomenon and the reading, How selfies became a global phenomenon.  In our class discussion, we focused a lot on the issue of what taking and posting selfies to social media says about an individual.  In this arena, we talked about those who take and post selfies are more likely to have greater levels of self-confidence and security.  In our class discussion, it was briefly touched upon that those who take and post selfies are sometimes seen as vain or conceded.

This campaign, however, got me thinking about some of the other potential implications of posting selfies.  In this campaign, the purpose is to raise awareness about an issue through the use of selfies.  The implications of taking and posting selfies are now changing, in my opinion, and potentially for the better.  If one were to post a video to his or her Facebook or Instagram about the importance of education, it seems unlikely that someone would title this person as “vain.”  Also, this sparked an idea that perhaps selifes have become so embedded in today’s social media use that those who don’t post selfies are becoming the minority.  If these campaigners are confident in their “educational selfie” idea, they must be fairly confident that this idea is going to work and go viral.  They must believe that the majority of people will feel comfortable and excited about posting a selfie video.

This idea is obviously reminiscent of the “Ice Bucket Challenge” videos that went viral months ago.  Millions of people did not mind posting videos soaking wet, so the selfie video seems like a logical next step.  

In my opinion, this campaign idea is a brilliant one, in the sense that because selfies have become so widely accepted and normalized, people will be excited about raising awareness about important issues in this new way.  This campaign also speaks to the stigmas surrounding selfies diminishing, and that those who take selfies could potentially now be viewed as empowered and socially active.

Works Cited:

Day, E. (2013). How selfies became a global phenomenon. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/14/how-selfies-became-a-global-phenomenon