Mothers Against Drunk Driving

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.