Adam - Final Project

For my final activist media project I have decided to take a stand on why college athletes
should be paid for playing their respected sports. To show my stance I have decided to make a
slogan saying, “We Play, You Pay”. I will place this on shirts and as well as a hashtag for all
media platforms. This idea came to me from the warmup shirts that NBA players were wearing
last year. Seeing how these high profile athletes wearing these shirts trying to get their message
through, a way I thought this could be a good idea for me as well to get my message across as
effectively. So I plan on creating this slogan as hashtag for all social media platforms in hopes
that it will get my message to a wider crowd. The primary social media platform I plan on using
is twitter. I plan on sending a tweet to professional athletes in the world with explaining what the
meaning behind the hashtag and how I believe college athletes should be paid. Doing this I hope
the athletes will retweet my tweet and therefor spreading my hashtag and stance across the
country.
The vision of my final topic in creating this hashtag or slogan, #WEPLAYOUPAY, was
to argue that college athletes deserves to be paid a sum of money. I think they should because a
college athletes schedule there is little time for them to have jobs to earn money for things that
they may need. Some may argue that being on a scholarship is enough, but in my opinion is not.
I would like to see a regular student to have one semester or quarter of a college athletes
schedule and see how much extra time they have to have a job to earn a little extra money. They
will find out quickly that it is almost impossible with practice, traveling and keeping up with
your school work to have a job.
The first concept that comes to mind from what we have covered in class this fall is
participatory culture. Participatory culture is another way of framing the read and write culture.
It is the applied production of a form of published media. Since twitter is a source of the read and
write culture and a place for people to publish their own media, I figured my media activist
project fits with this term because having others retweet it and therefor spreading the message of
college athletes being paid. There for is see this being the most beneficial way for me to get my
point across.
The second term that my project correlates with is remediation. Remediation as defined
in class is a source of visual media that achieves cultural significances by refashioning earlier
media ideas. This term correlates with my final project because I’m taking an idea that got a very
sad message to their intended audience effectively as shown by the NBA players. Therefore
seeing the effectiveness of the NBA player’s shirts, I thought having this slogan on a shirt and on
all types of media platforms will help my cause. As well who doesn’t love shirts that have a
purposeful message on it?!
The last term that best associates with my project is Cult Media. This is because Cult
Media is devoted to all media platforms as a source for sharing important ideas and as well
producing new culture. I feel my activist media project fits this term because once it is out in the
world, people are free to add to my case of why college athletes deserve to be paid. As well with
my activist media project it adds to the little coverage regarding this issue and hopefully will add
more to the reason why college athletes deserve to be paid.