The document discusses several social campaigns: 1) An anti-smoking campaign by the NHS uses shocking imagery to discourage smoking and lower smoking rates. 2) Accessible Arts allows people with disabilities to participate in media projects, helping them build confidence and challenge stereotypes. 3) A 1978 Conservative poster criticized the Labour government's handling of unemployment to influence voting and change attitudes. 4) A decades-long drink driving campaign by THINK! has significantly reduced related deaths through shocking ads and awareness efforts.

1. Social Action Campaigns
Tom Brett

3. • This is a poster made by the NHS to try and stop people from smoking, simply by using gross
imagery which has been used to shock the viewers. The image has a dark and dim saturation to it to
make it look like the image does not have any life to it, in the same way the poster is trying to tell
you that smoking takes your life away. The NHS are using these techniques to try and change
peoples attitudes when it comes to smoking because its still a common problem, even though the
amount of people that have stopped smoking is getting greater every year.
• Because of the high number of smokers that are around the world, this poster is also set out to
bring local, national and global change, with the NHS bringing out shock posters like this and even
smoke free courses they are managing to lower the number of smokers by thousands upon
thousands each year. This advert, along with many other smoke free adverts have managed to
provide information and raise awareness by using text, for example in this poster the text states
“Every time you smoke your blood gets thick and dirty with toxins” not many people know the
severity of how bad smoking can be so by using this text that describes what the image is, informs
the viewer that smoking is bad for your health. However one thing this poster does not do is that it
does not tell people to stop smoking, instead it tries to shock people enough that they will decide
themselves to stop smoking.
• The final thing this poster has done (and like many posters and adverts from campaigners) has been
to campaign, the main purpose for adverts like this is to reach and end goal and to tackle issues
that are known around the world and in this case the main aim, the reason why the NHS are
campaigning for this, is to get people to stop smoking, and so far they have been successful as years
have gone by, not everyone has stopped but the number keeps getting smaller.

4. Accessible Arts -
http://www.aarts.net.au/about-us/

5. • Accessible Arts is an organisation which allows people with disabilities and health issues to reach
their dreams of being part of media production. Its main purpose is to create access to media
production for non-traditional groups, they are based in multiple locations so their main intention
is to bring change around the world in the locations that they are based in, and to let people build
up confidence and to represent themselves.
• Another purpose that Accessible Arts reaches is that it builds relationships with its subjects,
because of course they are working closely with people who have disabilities and helping them to
represent themselves and to work in their favourite parts of the media industry, whether that is
acting or making music. Their trained staff help to the best of their ability to make the people
taking part confident, happy, and able to give the media industry a try.
• Because Accessible Arts works with disabled people they are challenging dominant representations
and agendas, this is because in todays society disabled people are put in a bad light because they
get no independence and people are always under the impression that they cant do things by
themselves. So instead Accessible Arts give those who are disabled a chance to be independent,
whilst still having other people who are in the same position as them to talk to.
• Accessible arts also helps to strengthen community ties, because the organisation is finally giving
more people equal chances and chances to do more things which they have never done before
because society casts them out.
• Finally Accessible Arts are looking to campaign, they want to see change in the community and to
help make people notice disabled people in a positive way and to accept them more in todays
society knowing that they can be independent. Accessible Arts campaign by hosting and helping
out at events, they run courses for people to take part in, and they train art workers so they can
work with people who are disabled.

7. • This is a poster created by the conservative political party in 1978, the image shows a long queue of
people waiting to enter an unemployment office and above the image there is large bold text
saying “Labour isn’t working” then below the image it says in smaller writing “Britain’s better off
with the conservatives”. This obviously shows that Labour made it hard for the people of Britain to
find a job whilst they were in power, so by making this poster the Conservative party were
obviously looking to change voting behaviour by stating what the people of Britain were thinking,
therefore getting them more votes and winning the election for that year. The Conservative party
was also looking to change peoples attitudes towards the Labour Party and how the government
was running in general. They managed to make the people think this by the use of simplicity in their
poster, the bold text and the simple image of a queue of people waiting to enter an unemployment
office portrays a powerful message as unemployment was a big problem that people wanted
changing.
• This ad also gives a little bit of brief information saying that people are still unemployed because
Labour can’t fix the problem but the Conservatives can, this lets people know what the situation is
like in the UK and how severe the scenario actually is. Mainly the conservative party were looking
to campaign against Labour being in power and to campaign for themselves being in power, most
campaigns are made to reach an end goal, and in this case the end goal was the Conservatives
winning the election and running the UK. Because of this poster and many other ways of
campaigning the Conservatives won the election with a 43 seat majority.

9. • For 50 years ‘THINK!’ have been battling drink driving by creating advertisements and warnings to
try and stop people from driving under the influence. Most of ‘THINK!s’ posters and adverts tend to
use shocking imagery and text to get to the audience, the previous image is a perfect example of
this. However due to these shocking and chilling adverts the number of people who die every year
has dropped from 1,640 to 230 in the space of 50 years but ‘THINK!’ still want to lower the number,
this is why they raise more awareness about how severe drink driving is, so they can bring about
national change across the UK.
• Another purpose this advert is trying to fulfill is that it is trying to change peoples attitudes towards
drink driving because they do not know how much alcohol is too much, and some don’t even know
the severity and the consequences of drink driving. They do this by the use of powerful imagery
and text because of the language the text uses sounds quite threatening and challenging, this
shows how serious they are about drink driving.
• The reason why people campaign against drink driving is so that there are less deaths involving
people driving under the influence and pedestrians being hit by people driving under the influence.
Over 50 years the number of deaths per year has gone down by 1,640 people to 230 people, this is
evidence that the adverts are working but 230 is still too much every year so ‘THINK!’ will campaign
until that number reaches 0.

11. • This is an example of a campaign that infiltrated mainstream media, in march a photo of a man
dancing at a party was put up on social media shaming the subject in the photo, the photo was
shared across Facebook and other forms of social media with responses campaigning for the man
to get another party, the story became so popular that most people who go on social networks will
have seen the story, even celebrities saw it and supported the man. It got to a point where he was
flown out to California and was met by celebrities, he threw the symbolic first pitch for the LA
dodgers baseball team, the man also starred on American Television. Sean O’Brien (The Dancing
Man) had a party thrown for him, organised by multiple supporters including writer Cassandra
Fairbanks, the party was hosted in a night club in California and had around 1,000 people attending
including campaigner Monica Lewinsky, even A-List celebrity Pharrell Williams recorded a
supporting video to be played at the party. Due to this massive example of social media taking
action, a lot of money was raised for anti-bullying charity because this campaign was used to raise
awareness about cyber bullying and bullying in general plus it informs people about how bad
bullying and shaming people is and that those who shame others don’t get rewarded.
• This story also builds relationships with the subject because it gives an encouraging message to
everyone who gets bullied or gets put into tough situations. The main subject in this particular
situation is Sean O’Brien, who built a lot of relationships with those supporting him on social media
and those supporting him in person, many charities and celebrities have supported him and helped
him. When this photo first made it onto social media the main goal, the reason people campaigned
for this, was to raise awareness against bullying and to find the subject and support him, but as
time progressed and more people started to support the dancing man and raised more awareness
and money, he managed to make it to America to have is own party with celebrity guests, but not
many people would've thought that was possible at first.

13. • This is another example of a campaign looking for local change, recently in York the council have placed these bars
on the benches at a bus stop to prevent homeless people from sleeping on them because there was “anti-social”
behaviour. Since these bars have been placed many students, members of the public and anti-homeless charities
have campaigned to get the bars removed. Many people have complained saying that it is “disgusting” and “how
the council should focus on spending money on providing shelters for the people who need them so they don’t
even need to be thinking about sleeping on benches.”
• This campaign will also help create and strengthen community ties because York as a community has come
together to sign petitions and to campaign against these bars, it will also strengthen the relationships between the
homeless charities and the homeless themselves because everyone will be campaigning for the same thing. Like
the previous campaign this is an example of a campaign that is trying to infiltrate mainstream media because
originally it was a member on the public protesting against the bars on social media and now it has slowly become
a campaign in which over 5,400 people have signed a petition to get the bars removed, the story has made it onto
the local websites and the local BBC news on the internet.
• The campaign also provides information and it raises awareness, not only does it let people know how members
of the public handle scenarios like this in York, but there is a decent amount of information about the story as well
on Facebook and the BBC news website as well as the York Press and the York Mix, this informs the reader on why
the bars were placed and how there was a lot of backlash to this move, there was lots of anger and petitions
signed by the public, plus many anti-homeless organisations had their say on the matter too.
• The campaign has gathered a large amount of awareness on a local scale however the council have not made a
move to remove the bars so far. The council may decide to remove the bars later as people start campaigning to
get the bars removed, because since the move started around 5,400 people have petitioned against it, and the
number will only go up.

14. • Both the previous campaigns are examples of stories
that have or are trying to infiltrate mainstream media,
they both started out as social media posts and both
had people from the public reacting to them quickly.
They have both managed to reach past the depths of
social media and have been on news websites,
however the York story does not go any further than
this where as the dancing man story carries on because
that campaign managed to go global and reach the U.S
where in the end the target goal was reached and that
certain campaign in particular stopped, where as the
York story is still campaigning until a change is made.