Vaheguru Ji Ka Khalsa Vaheguru Ji Ki Fateh,
As we all already know, Bapu Surat Singh Ji has been on a hunger strike for more than 200 days, yet there has been literally no coverage of this by western media sources and mostly negative coverage by the Indian media. Sikhs have been constantly using social media to raise awareness with some positive results but still the awareness should be greater than it is currently and therefore an idea for a campaign strategy has been formed.
It may be time to target alternative media sources, such as:
The Young Turks Network: Based in the United States, The Young Turks (TYT) is one of, if not the biggest online news channel with over 2 billion views and more than 2.2 million subscribers. In their own words, they “break down news, politics, entertainment, and current events without scripts or teleprompters and without any corporate bias”
The Real News: Described in their own words “The Real News Network is a global online video news network that listens to and is dependent on its audience. NO ADVERTISING. NO GOVERNMENT FUNDING.NO CORPORATE FUNDING.” The channel has over 114,000 subscribers and more than 45 million views. It is based in the USA.
Social media users have been tweeting the organisations that are mentioned above, but these organisations are tweeted so many times in a day that many tweets go unnoticed. What we thought, is that instead of asking twitter users to simply tweet about Bapu Surat Singh during twitter hours, they could direct their tweets to the media outlets that are mentioned above. Instead of tweets being directed to several mainstream individuals and organisations, social media users can tweet at those two in order to increase the likelihood of being noticed. If we think about effectiveness and getting noticed, which would be most effective? 3,000 tweets aimed at 500 high profile organisations/individuals? (6 tweets to each of the 500 on average) or 3,000 tweets aimed at 2 high profile twitter handles? This way, we can literally flood the twitter feeds of these organisations and get noticed which may even lead them into covering Bapu Surat Singh on their websites/channels. These channels claim to expose true stories, agendas and cover stories that the people want covered, if they see that there is a demand for this story, then there may be a chance for some media coverage for Bapu Ji. If this campaign does go ahead and if thousands of tweets get sent and we still get ignored, then maybe these alternative media channels don’t truly stand for what they say they do.
The steps for the campaign would be as follows:
1. On Saturday 29th August 2015 Using the hashtag, #BroadcastBapu, repeatedly send tweets to the following two twitter handles only: @TheYoungTurks and @TheRealNews
*Tweeters could use 1 twitter handle per tweet to make tweets more direct and targeted*
3. Attach the fact poster (can be found on @NaamTV twitter page) to tweets. The poster contains key points about Bapu Surat Singh and his hunger strike.
4. Can a tweet the link for the video “Who is Bapu Surat Singh?” which was made by Basics of Sikhi:http://bit.ly/1WjNZT8
5. Urge the two media establishments to cover this story and live up to their ethos.
*Aim to Flood the timelines of these 2 media organisations*
This is simply one campaign. We simply want to help and thought how we could help Bapu Ji’s protest to enter the wider domain.
Please forgive us for any mistakes or anything that may have caused offence in the text above, this was not our intention.
Vaheguru Ji Ka Khalsa Vaheguru Ji Ki Fateh