2021 and #MediaThatMatters: an important year for the media industry We all know how powerful media can be. ROXANNE BOYES contemplates what we could achieve if we used that power for good.
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his article is not about media trends or forecasts for the coming year, as I’m sure there will be countless prediction pieces written on that. It’s about something of far greater importance: our position and our purpose as people within the media industry. It’s a topic rarely discussed in annual reports, but a critical component of our next steps into 2021. Last year was undoubtedly different, we are all well aware of that, but what made it profound was the silence that submerged society. Billboards projected to empty highways, newspapers were left untouched shelf upon shelf, coffee machines in once-crowded cafés collected dust, and shopping centres had not one pair of feet amble through their aisles to pop a product in a trolley.
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Habitual nature stopped. And for the first time in years, we were present, as the silence awakened loud thoughts and reflections. You might think that people – or as we like to call them, consumers – have thoughts all the time, but this was different. Consumption was replaced by contemplation, which became a catalyst. It was this collective awareness and the mindfulness of these thoughts that shook the world harder than any pandemic ever could. These thoughts traversed the globe through media, and then became actions – actions that shape-shifted social structures and will be recorded in history books for generations to come. Our world was in clear need of mass change on multiple fronts and this is where the media industry stepped up, in full force. This is what blew me away last year!
One example, which affected all African nations, was the #BlackLivesMatter movement. It questioned and reset social conversations, opinions and behaviour surrounding deeply embedded social constructs. This affected hundreds of millions of people today, as well as their futures and the futures of the next generations to come. The movement reflected a similar pattern to that of the #MeToo movement, which collectively empowered women, their bodies and their rights. The same applies to the various micro-movements that developed during Covid-19 promoting care for all, especially the vulnerable and the weak with #StaySafeStayHome and #FlattenTheCurve, which encouraged love for thy neighbour, shifting from a local to national and then international scale. These movements developed in a matter of days and created ripples that will last lifetimes. That is the power of media!
themediaonline.co.za
08.04.21 11:25
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SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
