In a follow up to their forum last year on New Media and the Future of Public Service Advertising, the Kaiser Family Foundation convened a meeting today on Using New Media for Public Education Campaigns. The panelists included Dan Solomon, CEO, MindShare Interactive Campaigns; Tina Hoff, vice president and director, Entertainment Media Partnerships, Kaiser Family Foundation; Joyce Joseph, student and winner of the MTV/Kaiser thinkHIV Vlog contest; and Jeff Berman, general manager for MySpace video and senior vice president for Public Affairs, MySpace Inc.
This was one of the first events for public health professionals that focused exclusively on using digital media in public education programs in response to the changing communication patterns of the millennial generation. The session focused particularly on the use of consumer-generated content among teens to exploit the trend that has only gathered more momentum since we reported the results from the Pew Internet and American Life Project back in November 2005. Highlighted programs included:
- the thinkHIV campaign that was launched in June 2006 and resulted in a total of 647 submissions from students around the US to be video bloggers on HIV issues. Forty-seven state finalists were selected, and the winner was one of the panelists with excerpts from her vlog shown during the presentations.
- The Reckless Driving Public Education Program.
The other notable for me was Jeff Berman's recitation of stats for MySpace:
- 74 million blogs on MySpace
- 185+ million registered profiles
- 70.5 million visitors/month
- 35% of all internet users age 25+ are on MySpace
- 1/4 of all Americans have visited MySpace in the past month
And for the DC venue his slides were replete with examples of how MySpace has been/could be used for voter registration and turnout campaigns, soliciting contributions, and complimenting other campaign communication activities.
A webcast of the event is posted on the KFF site.
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