5.+Strategy

 In advocating net neutrality we want to target university and postgraduate students. They are at a point in their lives where they are still getting educated and are forming their ideological frameworks. We want them to be our target audience because within a few years they will be working for the institutions that are currently battling for and against net neutrality. Ultimately the FCC listens to the experts and to other internet developing bodies (such as ICANN) before making a decision. The only way to influence the debate is to be part of the groups to which the FCC listens to.

Groups such as RIPE, IETF, and APNIC, are responsible for the development and allocation of technology that affects the internet's infrastructure. In true internet spirit they themselves are 'free' of institutional influence as they are composed solely of volunteers and operate on a non-profit basis. Graduate students entering the IT field have access to the discussions of these circles and can exert an ideological influence.

Our goal is to ensure that net-neutrality is on the minds of individuals, before they are faced with it through the influence exerted by their future employers. We want to introduce the term into their ideology before it can be manipulated, before a stance can be imposed by those who have control over the student's future income. The key is to give perspective. IT students are by default technologically minded, we thus need to show them that the internet is more than just technology. That it's identity is not limited to an interconnected network of computers. A good way to do this is to target social media sites, specifically reddit.com and digg.com. These websites are populated by a large majority of individuals in our target demographic. Also, these specific websites boast a more educated user base as compared to the rest of the internet. However, the main reason we are target them is because they are places where discussions happen. The topic of net neutrality can be brought up again and again each time a new development of idea occurs, and each time a discussion, of possibly hundreds of users, will follow. We believe that interactive discussions are significantly more effective in educating people about an issue, than simple advertising would ever be. -- Net-neutrality is an indispensible issue for our modern digital society; as such we want to provide opportunities for individuals to understand its implications, so that they might exert their influence if the opportunity arises.

-- Update

In light of the feedback given, our strategy has seen some changes. Firstly, we have started a UTM wide poster and flier campaign. In creating the posters we wanted to decisively interpel students and spark their curiosity. The poster directs the viewer both to our wikispace, and to the discussions that were mentioned in our initial strategy. We have also adapted our final presentation to a new format. Instead of simply using it as an example of what we have already done as part of the project, we have included a new, persuasive element to the presentation. The presentation-board, now, can stand on its own as an information vehicle. With this in mind, we have gotten permission to have it placed in one of the labs of the CCIT building, thus exposing it directly to IT students. Finally, we will be handing fliers on Sheridan campus on the final day of the project. (Unfortunately we were unable to get permission to put posters up) Our goal was to influence IT (and not only) student's ideology, so that they understand the issue of net neutrality before it is forced upon them by others. Our strategy reflects the belief that an informed multi-faceted discussion is better at shaping individual's ideology than simple expository messages. As such, our objective was to capture the attention and create conductive discussions in multiple communities. We have done this for UTM, Digg and Reddit. We were deliberately selective in the communities we chose, to maximize the returns on our effort. Nowadays every other website has a social network attached to it, but few have a user base that could carry a serious, ideological discussion. Such a discussion would never be possible on Youtube, or Twitter. In light of our strategy, and the nature of the issue we have chosen, measurement is problematic. How can you measure NOW, the effects that one has on FUTURE policy. We can measure only on a basic level. Number of posters put up, number of people within the online discussions, popularity rating of the discussions (which affects exposure, given the nature of social media sites).

-Feedback Clarification While reddit.com and digg.com are social media sites, they both have specific IT sections. Thus, even if the general audience is not IT, the audience of those subgroups, is. We have had several interesting and informed discussions on these sites, and will present examples as part of our presentation.