When the ALS Ice-Bucket challenge was taking the world by
storm, a different kind of bucket challenge drew the attention of Nepali youth:
#FillTheBucket, a campaign where you donate a bucket with essentials like food,
water purifier, sanitary napkins, etc for flood victims. Hot on the heels of
the global sensation ALS Ice Bucket Challenge which received support as well as
criticism for wastage of water, #FillTheBucket became quite popular in Nepal.
The use of social media for social campaigns is on the rise
these days, with one or the other request popping up in our newsfeed every day.
But only some of this content becomes viral while others are lost in the
ever-renewing stream of online contents. Certain common factors underlie most of
the campaigns that succeed.
The ALS Ice-Bucket challenge and #FillTheBucket challenge,
both conducted primarily on social media, share many similarities (apart from
the ‘bucket’). Writing for The Guardian, Jack Shepherd from Buzzfeed (a site
famous for viral content) claims that two kinds of content go viral: one where
users can post about themselves and one to which viewers have a strong positive
response. Speaking at a TED talk, YouTube Trends Manager Kevin Allocca added
three more qualities of viral content, particularly videos: tastemakers
(celebrities) who highlight the content, communities of sharers, and
unexpectedness.
The ALS Ice-Bucket challenge scores positive on all these
counts: users could post about themselves, the challenge’s association with a
cause brings up positive responses, celebrities helped make it more popular,
communities helped spread it, and it was definitely unexpected.
Smaller-scale media campaigns like #FillTheBucket also score
positive on most of these counts. There is an overwhelming positive feeling
associated with #FillTheBucket. Contributors reached out to help because they
believed they were doing something good for society through their step.
“Both of these campaigns are of human interest,” says Dharma
Adhikari, General Secretary of Media Foundation. As a longtime observer and
chronicler of media, Adhikari has noticed that content with human interest
generate a high response from viewers.
But there are also many things that set small-scale
humanitarian campaigns apart. Lacking the celebrity power that drives
large-scale campaigns, smaller campaigns rely heavily on little circles of
intimate acquaintances, or “community of sharers”, in the words of Allocca.
These campaigns are very personal.
Roshani Tamang, 28, is a recent graduate of Business
Administration, was moved by the plight of the flood victims in Sindhupalchok.
She started an individual drive through social media to collect money for the
victims. Her drive reached only her small circle of well-known individuals, and
yet she managed to collect Rs. 320,000 from them.
Even #FillTheBucket relied on personal contacts for
everything from bucket collection to transportation. While most of their
contributions came from personal contacts, one batch of their buckets was
transported for free by Yeti Travels.
Bibek Basnet, the Managing Director of Yeti Travel, was
involved in the campaign since the beginning.
Binit Shrestha, Director of the IT Company House of
Innovation and one of the organizers of #FillTheBucket, calls it a “purely
citizen initiative” operated by a loose network of likeminded individuals.
What is lost through absence of celebrities is made up
through trust, which is a crucial factor in these campaigns.
Pema Lama, 29, is a Nepali businessman currently in Delhi. He
had been hearing about the natural disasters that struck Nepal this year from
newspapers and social media, and had wanted to help in some way. As soon as he
learnt that Roshani was collecting money for flood victims, he sent her Rs.
32,000 through a money transfer service, no questions asked. “I’ve known
Roshani since school,” says Pema. “I know the kind of person she is, and I
trusted her to do the right thing with my money.”
#FillTheBucket campaign received far higher responses – more
than 2,000 buckets, each costing between Rs. 1,000-2,000 on average. But even
on this scale, respondents cited the credibility of the organizers as the
factor that motivated them.
“I’ve known them on social media for a long time,” says
Aakar Anil, 26, Internet Marketing Specialist at Cloud Factory. Anil and a few
friends had contributed buckets to the campaign with the belief that it would
get delivered to the right place.
“It may not be in the form we want,” says Aakar. “The relief
may not reach every needy family, or their needs may be greater than what we
expect, but I’m sure the organizers are doing their best.”
Organizers have taken pains to maintain that credibility.
Binit is up to date with the exact number of buckets they have received, and knows
where each bucket was delivered. #FillTheBucket is coordinating with the local
government at Bardiya to find out the neediest locations, and with Nepal
Medical College to hold health camps for the victims.
Meanwhile, Roshani has listed, photographed and preserved the
accounts of each donation she has received. She visited the Sunkoshi disaster
site to find out whom she could help, and came back with a list of 32 victims.
These were the persons given a “red card”: persons who had lost their families
as well as property. She decided to help them over other victims who had only
lost property. In the end, she gave Rs. 9,500 to each of the 32 victims at a public
program, and has detailed records of miscellaneous expenses made with the
collected money – some of it was spent on the transportation of the victims,
and a small amount given to a fund created by the victims themselves.
Thus, transparency has become the hallmark of such
campaigns. Aakar reported that he is keeping up with the updates of #FillTheBucket
through social media, which assures him of the safe delivery of his
contribution.
As an organizer, Binit feels that immediacy was an important
plus point of #FillTheBucket campaign. “When we were out there delivering our
relief materials, some NGOs were still having meetings about what to do,” says
Binit.
Last but not least, unexpectedness is an important part of
such campaigns, and that raises a question mark on their sustainability.
“It’s nothing new for something novel to go viral, even in
the days of oral media,” says Dharma. “But today, their speed is much increased
due to Internet.”
Every new form of media has gone viral in its time, Dharma
lists among them email, facebook, twitter. Specific applications on all these
media have also gone viral, because they too need to be updated to be always on
the edge.
“#FillTheBucket was able to garner so much attention also
partly because it piggybacked on the virality of the Ice-Bucket challenge right
on time,” says Aakar.
But once the novelty factor fades, users get tired and are
ready to hop on to the next bandwagon.
At the moment, individuals involved in one social campaign
have done so with the intention of seeing it through. Binit updates that they
are now revising the list of essentials in the bucket, because their original
assumptions were not informed by the ground reality. For example, most flood
victims did not know how to use sanitary pads or canned foods, and since health
camps are being organized, medicines are redundant. Binit and his friends
intend to work with the revised list and continue helping as long as they can.
But whether or not future campaigns initiated through social
media can succeed is a matter of speculation. While Aakar believes that he will
be ready to join campaigns for the right causes, Dharma opines that with social
media, there is no telling what will happen next. Indeed, when you are
wondering what the next viral campaign will be, expect the unexpected, which is
the most important identifier of viral content.
Published in Republica on September 12
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