Drew - Final Project

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For my activist media project I chose to focus on two mainstream pop
culture issues that have become prevalent in the recent weeks. The first being the
social media response to the terrorist attacks in Paris, France through the 1-click
profile picture change that allows users to place a French flag over their profile
picture in “support” of the victims of the French massacre. Through Facebook’s use
of rhetoric and national lens they focused their users attention on France and in
turn promoted the “support” of a situation many did not have connections to. This
act created a situation in which a response was asked for by Facebook as they want
their users to do this. I decided to make a statement about this campaign as there
have been tens of attacks with similar if not great death tolls in recent months that
have not received any recognition whether via social media or the news media in
general that I believe is a disgrace to the people and families who have been effected
by these acts of terror. By essentially doing the work for the users, Facebook made a
way for people to falsely show support of a terrible situation in order to reap likes
on the photos for their half hearted support. They used this specific situation over
the other countries shown in my picture as France is much more relatable to the
western world and many citizens are desensitized to the atrocities happening far
more often in the Middle East.

My second picture is an activist peace on the negative response that
Starbuck received upon their release of the Red Holiday cups. The cups in the past
have born symbols related to the holiday season such as snowflakes, snowmen,
ornaments, etc. This marketing strategy is a great way for Starbucks to gain
attention as it is easily recognizable, but effort in the attention economy sky-
rocketed after the mass coverage of the redesign that some people think came
straight from hell gained popularity. In 2015 the company went with a simple all red
cup with their logo design that infuriated a former minister Joshua Feuerstein to
create a social media campaign against the design that he says “removes Christ and
Christmas away from the cups”. (Feuerstein) My activist movement was to
completely remove everything politically correct from this cup and add “Hail Satan”
and a pentagram, the satanic symbol, to the cup as a representation that what is
printed on a cup shouldn’t really matter as long as the contents of the cup is what
you want.

These two activist projects combined show how both through a meaningful
photo and simple design a statement can be made that supports the remembrances
of those whom many chose not to pay attention to, as well as make a statement
against the passion one group has about the simple design of a cup.

Work Cited
Feuerstein, J. (Director). (2015). Starbucks REMOVED
CHRISTMAS [Motion picture]. Facebook. Facebook Video
Flags Of The World. (n.d.). Retrieved November 17, 2015, from
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/ docs/flagsoftheworld.html
Starbucks Red Cups. (2015, November 1). Retrieved November
17, 2015, from https://news.starbucks.com/news/red-
cups-and-starbucks-2015-holiday-beverages