Interaction for Social Change

Here is my response to the discussion about clickingcreateschange.com and the link to the blackboard discussion: Discussion Board


I agree with everything Harrison said about clickingcreateschange.com. The website is very well-desiged for a local organization and simple to navigate and use. I also like the comparison to Kickstarter. The website functions in a similar way to sites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and Pledgemusic, wherein users choose where they want their money to go to out of hundreds of projects vying for funding. Social media promotion and user interaction plays a large role in whether or not a project will get funded. It fits a few of the experiences of interactivity as defined by the book including: No. 8 - Taking part in polls, surveys, voting, tests, and contests; No. 10 - Learning about something; No. 13 - Socializing with other and participating in a virtual community (Media and the Creative Process 37). The polls are a defining aspect of the interactive experience of the website and voting determines how the money donated to the website will be spent. Voting gets viewers active because they want their organizations to win and ones they don't like to lose. That might be a cynical way to look at it, but people are competitive in nature and personally I would rather the money went to more deserving organizations rather than Young Life. I'm religious, I just don't like some of the specific teachings that the Young Life uses. The website gives the user the opportunity to learn about organizations and charities within the Athens area that they otherwise might not have known about. I learned about Live Healthy Appalachia which is a group that wants to improve the dietary habits of Appalachians. The website also functions as a virtual community where people socialize in order to bring votes to their organization. All in all, I think that the website is a very good example of local online interactivity.