Using Social Media for Social Change: A case Study of a Digitally-based Awareness Campaign about the Israeli Prostitution Industry When He Pays/Me

Abstract: The rise of social media platforms have not only allowed new opportunities for more citizen-driven initiatives, but also social change promotion in a potentially more participatory-oriented way that offers engagement with the general public and the people the change is aimed at. This has led to an increased scholarly interest in the role of these technologies in strategically promoted social change activist initiatives. However, while the focus has been lying on their use by local groups and social movements for mobilisation, there has been little focus on their use for awareness raising and through participatory communication. Therefore, through a case study of an on-going, digitally-based When He Pays/Me campaign that raises awareness about the Israeli prostitution industry as part of a human rights context by an activist, this thesis investigates the potential role of social media platforms to enable participation, specifically Facebook, in Israeli human rights awareness campaigns. The data used to investigate this included one semi-structured, in-depth interview with the activist and 22 online media texts about the campaign. The analysis revealed that there has been an innovative use of tactics in the campaign through the extensive use of PC’s principles that are based on two-way (dialogic) communication in the form of free, open, transparent, inclusive dialogues with various groups of people, creativity, flexibility, learning, reflexivity, and critical thinking. Dialogues take place on Facebook’s various spaces, and additional communication mediums and channels are used. Moreover, a new kind of story-telling that reveals the complexities and nuances of the industry was used. It was then concluded that the potential of social media platforms, namely Facebook, as a tool to enable participation in Israeli awareness-raising human rights campaigns is the combination of the platform’s popularity and its unique combination of affordances in the form of cause-Pages provided to social campaigns that include a space for dialogue, complex messaging, and anonymity. However, to fulfil this potential, the use of PC’s principles must be applied.