Power In Numbers

Power In Numbers

There is power in numbers.  Through twitter, Facebook, blogs and word of mouth, myself as well as the entire Comm 30 class made our social networks count.  Our job was to create, inform, and smother these social networks with all things “Comm 30 Sandy” to raise $5,000 for victims. We did not stop there.

As the final hours of our project come to a close, I am proud to say we have surpassed $6,000 to donate to the American Red Cross.  In analyzing the project’s various realms, one aspect stood alone.  Our initial goal was $5,000, and how we were able to hit that mark is a true testament the power social networks hold today.

A $65 dollar grant to hit our goal of $5,0000 was donated by a patron with no affiliation to Lehigh – he was an old college friend of our professor, Jeremy Littau.  The fact that through Professor Littau’s Facebook and twitter pages this stranger to Lehigh was able to learn about our project is remarkable.  Professor Littau lured him to the cause, but we as a class helped him to decide to donate with our additional blogs and videos.

It is this overlapping of social networks that drove this campaign.  A simple retweet can double, or even triple your viewership of a particular tweet.  By working together as a cohesive unit, our class made our mark on the Internet one tweet and post at a time.  With over $6,000 dollars raised in less than 30 days, this project attests to the effect of social networking, and even more importantly, the power in numbers. 

#COMM30Sandy is an online class project for the Media & Society class at Lehigh University, taught by professor Jeremy Littau. You can donate to our campaign at this link, and for more infomation you can email Prof. Littau at jeremy.littau(at)lehigh.edu.