Mental Media Challenge
Role: Communications
The Team
About
The Mental Media Challenge was a competition I launched with my peers during my junior year of college. At the time, I was taking a graduate-level course, EMM 505: Leadership in an Age of Transformation. The goal of the class was to design and launch a grand challenge that would have a positive impact on the world. We created the Mental Media Challenge, asking college students to remix any type of media that currently conveyed a negative message about mental illness and transform it to promote a positive message.
Cover / Project Vision
How can media reshape public opinion and help destigmatize mental health, specifically depression?
Why does the media often portray mental illness inaccurately? Are sensationalized films, news reports, and slang more valued than truthful representation of this important aspect of our human experience? In the U.S., 43.4 million adults—about 17.9% of the population—were diagnosed with a mental illness in 2015. Why is this demographic so frequently misrepresented? How can society better understand and support people living with mental illness?
Who are the people affected by mental illness, and how can we empower them?
How can we take existing media that negatively stigmatizes depression and reimagine it in a more positive light? To achieve this, we need help from our community. There is immense creativity here at Champlain College that can be harnessed to craft positive messages for those suffering in silence. Our goal is to raise awareness of the harmful stereotypes surrounding depression in media and, through this challenge, encourage advocacy—spreading more accurate and compassionate representations of depression and mental illness overall.
From awareness to advocacy.
I Was Quoted in an Article!
“Elijah Dixson says he wanted to learn how to use media to make a positive change in the world. That’s why he took part in the new Emergent Media graduate course called ‘Leadership in the Age of Transformation’.
‘Media is an incredibly powerful tool,’ says Dixson, and undergraduate student in the Stiller School of Business who is majoring in Game Production Management. ‘Sometimes we use it to help other people, sometimes we don’t’
The course was designed by Ann DeMarle, Associate Dean for Emergent Media, and John Abele, innovator, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and co-founder of Boston Scientific and FIRST Robotics.”
https://www.flipsnack.com/CCMarketing/.html
Final Slide Show
