Creating Technology for Social Change

Interview Highlights: Nancy Meza from Dream Team LA Part 1

The following is a summary of an interview with Nancy Meza regarding a project with the Center for Civic Media at MIT on the role of Media and Technology in Social Movements.

Nancy Meza is a graduate of University of California, Los Angeles and an immigrants’ rights activist. She received her training from Inner City Struggle in 2003, where she learned campaign strategy, political education, and organizing. At Inner City Struggle, Nancy was part of the Media Collective, an intensive after school workshop series that lasted for 6 months and involved analyzing and deconstructing the media. “I think it’s important to understand [that] the media plays a huge role in our society, not just in terms of…projecting a message, but…creating our own messaging for campaigns.” At this media collective, Nancy learned the background on media, media ownership, and how the media functions. “I was able to learn…how to create your own media and how to …really create a message, how to frame a message…and how to get your ways across in an effective way in terms of a campaign.”

Nancy’s training with media strategy would eventually grow even further at UCLA. During her first year, Nancy became involved with IDEAS at UCLA, where she was able to apply her experience organizing in the community to the 2010 Federal Dream Act campaign. 2010 was a pivotal year for the Federal Dream Act because it came to a senate vote, but was defeated by filibuster. While much attention was placed on undocumented immigration, the debate was not being framed by undocumented youth themselves. “The people who came in the debate either pro or against were not undocumented immigrant youth.” This tendency to speak on behalf of undocumented immigrants led organizers like Nancy to create their own media campaigns. These campaigns involved combating the common misconception of “the model immigrant” used by alleged undocumented immigrant supporters. The model immigrant argument states that immigrant youth “came to the U.S. at no fault of their own.” This argument places blame on parents for immigrating children against their will, deeming children as “innocent” and parents as “guilty.” Nancy and other undocumented youth disagree, stating, “We were brought here by our courageous parents who are responsible parents and wanted their children to have a better life. We don’t have to criminalize our parents.”

Nancy has many skills at her disposal, including the ability to write press releases, create relationships with media, and form media teams. These skills are especially important within focus groups that address messaging and framing. “How do we want to frame our message? What are some of the key values we’re gonna use to frame our message?” These are the types of questions that drive media campaigns. Currently, Nancy works with Dream Team L.A., a volunteer-based organization led by undocumented students. Moving away from the previous media climate where others framed the issue, undocumented students in Los Angeles are taking matters into their own hands. “We’re the ones that are carrying the force.” As the media and communications chair for Dream Team L.A., Nancy works throughout the southern California region helping train other organizations with their media approach. “My role is really to develop and to train other people in developing effective media strategies…and really ensuring that people are more comfortable in having their voices heard in a very strategic way…to humanize the whole immigrant community.”

Through Dream Team L.A., Nancy is connected to several networks. “We’re part of the California Dream Team Alliance, which is a coalition of different groups…and then we’re part of the United We Dream Network, which is the national organization of undocumented student groups.” Within these networks, the two main intentional strategies involve traditional media and online media. The traditional media strategy involves outreaching to print media, news media, and other sources such as web journals and magazines. The online media strategy focuses largely on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Again, these strategies largely depend on a framing component. “We really focus a lot on developing our messaging, and really framing our messaging, and developing our members to be able to project that message.” For example, the ability to effectively talk to reporters is part of the training Nancy offers.

Linking both traditional media and new media is very important to Dream Team L.A. because of generational media usage. “Young people do not watch the news, and will not pick up a newspaper, but we know that our parents will.” Younger generations are well tuned-in to social media but traditional media such as newspapers, television, and radio play a larger role for older generations. In immigrant communities, ethnic media such as Univision and Telemundo are primary sources of information. That is not to say that traditional media coverage does not reach younger audiences. Part of Dream Team LA’s online strategy involves re-posting traditional media coverage onto social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. “We always post those news stories on our Twitter and our Facebook, because we know that’s the way…that younger folks…I would say 80% of people get their news from, so we are very intentional about connecting the two,” says Nancy.

Social media has also served to augment and amplify conventional media outreaching practices. For example, Nancy spoke about the practice of disseminating press release statements: “Instead of just sending a press release, what has been extremely helpful is sending your press release through Facebook and Twitter…and having Twitter relationships with different news sources.” These Twitter relationships with various news sources have helped Dream Team LA coordinate media coverage of their actions and events. Collaboration through Twitter often involves direct communication to individuals working in traditional media. “I could send a Twitter message to a reporter and that reporter will respond ten times faster that if I send a press release, and it’s ten times less work,” comments Nancy. These changes in outreach practice underscore a shift in the news coverage media ecology: traditional and mainstream media outlets are using (new) social media to find information deemed worthy of coverage. As Nancy puts it: “Even mainstream news sources are using Twitter and Facebook as a way to pick up stories, [to] pick up what’s popular [and] pick up what’s trending.” The 140 character limit on Twitter posts seems like an unlikely medium to transmit thorough press releases, which is why Dream Team LA uses twitter to amplify their blogs instead. These blogs are sent out to different news sources and reposted and “re-tweeted” on social media sites. Nancy notes that this social media amplified strategy has had a greater impact than would have been possible if news sources were contacted individually and one at a time, not to mention the costly effects of the latter. The resourceful alternative that Twitter provides is greatly welcomed among organizers who operate on constrained budgets: “All of the organizing we do is on our time and we have zero budget.”

This concludes Part 1 of this interview summary blog. Part 2 coming soon!

I would like to thank Nancy Meza once more for agreeing to collaborate with the Center for Civic Media: Thank you Nancy!

I would also like to thank the artist of the picture provided, Julio Salgado: Thanks Julio!