After investigating social media from Mother’s Against Drunk
Driving (MADD) and associated organizations, I’ve found that overall they tend
to have pretty positive feedback from viewers. They present themselves well and
aren’t often faced with legitimate arguments against their organization,
probably because there isn’t a large demographic who promote drunk driving.
On both Facebook and Twitter MADD presents a lot of
statistics about drunk driving related deaths, to which the only rebuttal I
found was that a large portion of people die in car accidents that are not
alcohol-related. They handled any negative comments very well, and didn’t seem
to ignore any.
MADD aims their posts to parents as well as teens; they even
have a contest for teens to make a video about not drinking. They also post a
few times about insurance discounts available that are related to their
organization. They also post about DUI-related bills that are being written and
voted on in various states and encourage viewers to participate in getting them
passed. Overall, most viewers responded with support for MADD.
Another organization I looked at that is similar to MADD is
the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. They used a lot of crowd sourcing and
surveying in order to get users involved and to see how they can improve their
organization. They also include stories about celebrities who have beaten drug
abuse and offer information to people looking for recovery from drug abuse as
well as support.
The Partnership for a Drug-Free America received more
negative feedback from people than MADD did, and some of them were valid. One
girl posted on their Facebook wall, complaining that a recent ad they put out
depicts all parents of drug addicts to be horrible. They responded to this by
explaining that was not what they meant, and that they do not think that. Some
other supporters even further explained the message and supported the
Partnership for a Drug-Free America.
Another organization I looked at was Above the Influence.
They were much different than the other two but still presented themselves well
overall. They had a lot of questions for users posted that were not related to their
aim, which is to promote being above the influence of drugs and alcohol. They
posted an article comparing love and drugs and how love is actually like a
drug, which received a lot of negative feedback. They said they weren’t saying
love is bad, that it was just an interesting article. They seemed to confuse
viewers with the article. There was also an overwhelming amount of feedback promoting
use of marijuana, but none used legitimate arguments. Above the Influence
seemed the least serious of the organizations, and their random posts seemed to
confuse the viewers.
