Australian Red Cross takes aim at nuclear weapons
The Australian Red Cross today sparked a social media campaign to stop nuclear weapons.
The Red Cross asked supporters of the Make Nuclear Weapons the Target campaign to post a message on their Facebook and Twitter accounts at 9am today.
The campaign was realised with the help of ad agency BWM and digital agency Pollen.
Supporters of the campaign have a social reach of more than 300,000 through followers and friends. The aim was to have all supporters message their followers at 9am, to create a ‘social media explosion’.
Dr Helen Durham, of the Australian Red Cross told Mumbrella: “The initial explosion had a social reach of 340,00 and got noticed on Sydney trends. It’s the first explosion and there will be others. Interestingly 75% were posted by Facebook rather than Twitter.”
Australians who initially offered their profiles included presenter Ruby Rose, surfer Mick Fanning, artist/musician Reg Mombassa and TV personality/comedian Dan Ilic.
At www.targetnuclearweapons.org.au people can also see the stories of survivors, such as Junko Morimoto, a Hiroshima survivor now living in Australia and Yami Lester, a survivor of the UK government’s nuclear weapons testing in South Australia in the 1950s as well as vote to show support for the ban.
Durham said: “About 6,000 people have voted on our website and the large majority, 96% of the public want to see nuclear weapons banned.”
She added: “I’m used to speaking with government officials and humanitarians and you generally know where they stand. But it’s interesting to put it to the general public.”
Some very tight work there…
Fallout = social reach.
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I wonder what exactly anyone hopes to achieve with this… Most countries have had nuclear arms reduction initiatives in place for some time now – START etc are old news – and I’d bet the bulk of the 3000 weapons quoted as being launch-ready are in countries where social media activity like this means little to nothing.
It shouldn’t take a campaign like this to prove the general public frowns on use of nukes but they are and have always been more about deterrence than anything else.
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Have to agree with Cameron – no-one wants nukes to be used, but they do seem to have worked very well as a deterrent to world wars for about 66 years.
That said, I don’t think every country can be trusted with them – I’m looking at you Iran…
Iran has stated they want to wipe Israel off the face of the earth – I’d take them at their word and if I was Israel, I would do what they did to Iraq and destroy any nuke making facilities.
Better to fight the town bully before he goes and gets a gun…
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I’m not entirely sure about the Red Cross being involved in this politicised campaigning to be honest. Notably since the premise of nuclear proliferation is likely to be the reason the US starts a war with Iran.
I’ll try and form my views more, but it doesn’t sit well with what is normally perceived to be neutral, apolitical and non-demonitational humanitarian organisation.
Maybe it’s more in the “prevention of the horrors of war” as with land mines, but as Cameron noted, the nukes issue is much bigger, uglier, and quite frankly a little 20th century…
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