Document Type
Article
First Advisor
Thalyta Swanepoel
Second Advisor
Pam Greenlee
Peer Reviewed
1
Publication Date
Spring 2015
Scholarship Domain(s)
Scholarship of Community Application
Abstract
Advocacy journalism takes the basic principles of journalism — factual integrity, clear concise writing, storytelling, and educating the public — and uses them to tell the story of a particular cause or organization. Advocacy journalism moves one step past the traditional confines of journalism to reach an audience with a particular message. As Reader (2011) said, "Objectivity is about presenting what is, but advocacy is about changing what will be" (p. 2).
The goal of this project was to use advocacy journalism within a blog platform to raise awareness of the work for the not-for-profit organization, Casa Elizabeth, a home for pregnant teenagers in crisis situations in Quito, Ecuador. The project represents a creative project begun during the summer of 2014 (when the researcher served as an intern living in Casa Elizabeth for two months with five teen moms and their children) and continued through the 2014-2015 school year.
The project was accomplished through a blog that told the stories of the home — the participants', the workers', and mine (as participant-observer journalist) — to gain support for Casa Elizabeth. The blog posts were both in Spanish and English, incorporating media such as photography, audio and info graphics. To measure effectiveness, a record was kept of followers, hits, shares, and the likes of particular posts. This record was used to create a best practices methodology. Conclusions show that consistent posting increases blog participation over time, builds a social media network surrounding the blog and creates a greater reader-investment in the cause.
Recommended Citation
Hall, Mary, "Promoting Awareness of Teen Pregnancy Through Multimedia Storytelling: The Case of Elizabeth House in Ecuador" (2015). Honors Program Projects. 77.
https://digitalcommons.olivet.edu/honr_proj/77
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Included in
Journalism Studies Commons, Modern Languages Commons, Social Influence and Political Communication Commons, Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons
Comments
Honors Cohort 5