So my plan for this weeks “PR/Social Media” blog was to talk about Charlie Sheen, but since I procrastinated it’s been overdone, and I have no interest in talking about him anymore. So instead, I came up with a clever idea on how to tackle this topic over the next ten weeks. Every week I’m going to visit a social media site of some sort, and look at the top trending item, and talk about it.
Results for Pi Day? The hashtag #HelpJapan. That seems to be everything you are reading in the news over the past couple of days. The front page of The Lima News today said that the death toll just reached ten thousand people. So, what makes this topic otherwise so important that I want to blog about it?
I may be touching a very touchy, touchy, touchy (redundant?) topic. I’m wondering at what point does a disaster become so important that the world has to jump in and lend their hand? If you look at some of the top tweets with #HelpJapan in it, the Red Cross has a number you can text to donate ten bucks to the relief fund. People on Facebook who are advocates for pets are posting ways to help the animals who lost their homes. If you look on Apple’s home page you can donate through iTunes.
Now don’t get me wrong, but what makes this disaster so much more different than something like aids awareness and research? What makes this disaster so much more different than cancer research? What makes this disaster so much more different than a tornado in Kansas? What makes this disaster so much more different than wildfires in the west?
I guess my point is… what makes one disaster so much more important than another? And at what point do top name companies like the American Red Cross, Apple, Twitter, and others alike jump in when I can guarantee you we could collect donations for another hundred years and still have homeless people on the street.
That’s all I’ve got for today. I’d just like to end by saying please do not think in this rant of a post that I have no heart or feelings for those whose lives were devastated in Japan.
My best guess is that because the devastation is so widespread and on such a large scale that other countries decide to become involved. I guess that makes it more of an international interest because of the goods imported or exported through these areas. With New Zealand, not many products are exported, so the international interest will be lower than say Japan where a good portion of the worlds technology and other goods come from. Also because it was a natural disaster, many other countries jump in in a humanitarian effort. This reminded me of the 2004 tsunami in the pacific islands and hurricane katrina. Both of these natural disasters gathered millions of dollars in aid from other countries to help cope and rebuild after the devastation.
ReplyDeletewith the help of media exposure. (add that on to the last sentence)
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