Kommunikatsiooni roll kodanikualgatuste elluviimisel: "Teeme Ära! 2008" ja "Teeme Ära Minu Eesti"

Date

2009

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Tartu Ülikool

Abstract

Description

The present master thesis “The Role of Communication in Implementing Civic Initiative: “Let’s Do It! 2008” and “My Estonia”” analyses the communication during the period 2007-2009. “Let’s Do It! 2008” was a civic initiative for cleaning Estonia from illegal waste. In one day 50 000 volunteers collected about 10 000 tons of waste. It all took place on 3rd of May 2008. „My Estonia“ is organised by the same people who started the “Lets Do It! 2008” campaign with the goal of finding new ideas to make Estonia a better place to live in. On the 1st of May 2009 there were over 400 think tanks with 11 000 thinkers all over Estonia and also in some other countries as well: Belgium, The Netherlands, Great Britain, Canada, Latvia, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Czech Republic, Russia and USA. After the 1st May started second part of “My Estonia” with the aim of finding out the most realistic ideas and to support their implementation. The deadline of the project is at the end of December 2009, but the ideas possibly have a much longer life-span. The topic of the present thesis was chosen due to the personal experience with the fore-mentioned waste-campaign as the author was the Head of Public Relations Department at Ministry of Environment at that time. Due to that I became involved with “Let’s Do It! 2008”. People, who gave their free time and knowledge to the project, were very enthusiastic, cheerful and filled with desire to make Estonia clean from illegal waste. For me it was a great experience to be part of that team. Therefore, when the topic was chosen for the master thesis, it was decided to analyse the role of the communication of the “Let’s Do It! 2008”. As the next step the coordinator of “My Estonia” Eva Truuverk suggested to analyse also the team’s new project “My Estonia” as well. The tutor of the master theses Kristina Reinsalu gave the same recommendation. Thus, the thesis analyses the extensive communication campaigns of the two civic initiatives. In order to understand the similarities and the differences of the projects´ communications, a media-analyses was made of both civic initiatives and nine were people interviewed. They all were or are connected with the projects. The media-analysis were done during the periods of 15.02.2009-15.02.2008 (Let’s Do It! 2008) and 10.03-07.05.2009 (My Estonia). Both projects used an exemplary amount of different media channels: television, newspapers, online-portals, banners in different internet sites, etc. Several well-known people from different fields of life (culture, economy, journalism etc.) became the faces of the media campaigns. Almost all media cannels gave time and space for free and thus, it can be claimed that these campaigns were also the cheapest media campaigns in comparison to other extensive ones. In spite of this effort the result of the participation in the projects was very different. In the waste campaign 40 000 people were expected to participate and in My Estonia 100 000 people. As a result, garbage was collected by 50 000 people and the idea collecting activity was participated by 11 000 people. Thus a question was raised – what was the cause of such difference? The author of the present theses concluded that mainly the difference resulted from two things: the focus of the messages and the problems with the system of registering. The message of “Let’s Do It! 2008” was easy to understand: we have to go and collect the garbage to make our forests clean. The message of “My Estonia” was more abstract: let’s think together and make Estonia better. According to the author’s opinion the message was too discursive. It was difficult to understand, what the exact thing was that people had to do for making Estonia better. As mentioned earlier, the other problem was with the system of registration. At the time of the waste campaign it was understandable, why it is necessary to register people in groups (there had to be at least three members in one group). The team needed to know where and how many people they can send to collect different amounts of waste. On the other hand, it was not clear, why people had to register to the thinking campaign with a group and why people have to do it via authentication of the ID-card. Hearing the complaints about the difficult and unnecessary conditions of the system, the team of the campaign made it easier. According to the opinion of the author, it was already too late: many potential entrants decided not to participate. Nonetheless, the 11 000 participants were very pleased as the think tanks were organized very professionally. As a conclusion the author of the present thesis gives some successions on how to improve the image of “My Estonia”. As mentioned, the project continues until the end of December 2009. Thus, it is very important that with the time that is left to keep the topic of “My Estonia” is visible in the media by introducing the next steps of the project and reminding of the already implemented ideas. To sum up, the author believes that both projects have left a deep and a significant mark in the history of Estonian civil society and opened doors for the next wide processes organized by people themselves.

Keywords

H Social Sciences (General), magistritööd, kodanikuühiskond, kodanikualgatus, kommunikatsioon, turunduskommunikatsioon, meedia

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