Media, which is the plural form of 'medium', are the forms of communication – television and radio; newspapers, magazines, and written materials (or "print media"), and, more often now, the Internet – used to spread or transmit information from a source (which can be a person, an organization, a business, an institution, a government agency, a policy maker, or another media outlet) to the general public.
Advocacy means openly supporting a certain viewpoint or group of people. If you are an advocate for a specific cause, you work to persuade local, state, or federal governments or other entities to grant specific rights, make policy changes, provide money, or create new laws for the good of your cause. For example, if you have a child with a disability, you might advocate for the increased availability of medical services for handicapped children in your city.
Media advocacy is the use of any form of media to help promote an organization's or a company's objectives or goals, which come from the group's vision and mission. For example, suppose you’re a media advocate for a non-profit agency working to reduce gang violence in your neighborhood. You would try to present neighborhood issues related to gang violence and the changes you want to make in such a way that you:
Change the way community members look at gang violence. You might want to make it clear who it affects and why, or why kids get involved in gangs in the first place.
Create a reliable, consistent stream of publicity for your agency's issues and activities, including articles and news items about the causes and results of gang violence and about what your agency’s work entails; personal interest stories; success stories; interviews with agency staff and current and former gang members, etc..
Motivate community members and policy makers to get involved. You probably have ideas about what could be done with public funding, or with government policies that addressed gang violence. You might have volunteer opportunities, or want to publicize a city- or state-sponsored initiative that needs public input and support. Or perhaps you’re trying to raise money for your work. The media can help with all of these...if you know how to work with them.
Media advocates, or the people who work to attract publicity for organizations and causes, know that the media can get a public or social policy message across to the largest audience possible in the least amount of time.
As a media advocate, you can use the media to:
Inform the public about what really causes or contributes to public health and development issues, and educate them about the concept of a healthy community.
Recast problems such as gang violence and drug abuse as public health concerns that affect everyone, not just individuals. If you asked most people whether they wanted to stop gang violence, they’d say yes. But they really don’t consider it their problem unless someone they know or are close to is involved. The media can help frame it as everyone’s problem, and gang members as everyone’s children.
Encourage other professionals and community members to find out more about public health and development issues in general, and to get involved.
A word needs to be said here about using the media in countries without a free press. In most Western democracies, the right of the media to publish or broadcast information (as long as it’s not libelous) is protected by law. In many countries, however, the media are owned, directly controlled, or regulated by the government. In others, outlaw groups – rebel armies, organized crime – may wield enormous power. When either of those is the case, media people who report unfavorably on government activities (revealing government sponsorship of death squads, for example, or government collusion in the control of a supposedly independent industry) may be fired or arrested. Those that criticize or expose the activities of powerful criminal or rebel groups may be threatened, and the threats carried out if they don’t stop. Every year, a number of editors and reporters around the world are jailed, kidnapped, tortured, assassinated, or executed for investigating suspicious incidents or publishing “treasonous” stories about official corruption. (The Committee to Protect Journalists documents both official and unofficial action against journalists on its website.)
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