Press Release

                         

News from National Youth Council

For Immediate Release

Editor: Kelly Guan (Marketing Manager)
Tel.: 93764050

Email: shanshan.guan93@gmail.com

Stop cyber bullying to stop hurt someone else

Singapore has the second highest number of cyber-bullying cases after the US

Singapore National Youth Council, September 1, 2013 — Cyber bullying is a growing problem for teenagers and young adults. "The new breed of bullies is narcissist. They treat the Internet as their stage, with an instant audience of thousands -- or even millions," said Dr. Carol Balhetchet, the director of youth services at the Singapore Children's Society.

Now, experts say, the bullying has turned "viral." A 2006 survey found that a quarter of 3,488 Singaporean students polled had been victimized by cyber bullies.

Psychologists are worried about the effects of cyber bullying and how the attacks may be escalating in frequency and intensity. In Singapore, students commonly band together in blogs and social networks to intimidate victims, say teachers and school counsellors.

Online bullying, called cyberbullying, happens when teens use the Internet, cell phones, or other devices to send or post text or images intended to hurt or embarrass another person. A recent report from the government-sanctioned Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society (Aims) listed cyber bullying among teenagers as a concern.

The schools need to consider develop rules against cyber bullying to protect teenagers.
Don’t forget that even though you can’t see a cyberbully or the bully’s victim, cyberbullying causes real problems. If you wouldn’t say it in person, don’t say it online. Delete cyberbullying. Don’t write it. Don’t forward it.

There are series of preventive tips provide for teenagers and parents to help against cyber bullying in the official website National Crime Prevention Council; such as speaking with other students, as well as teachers and school administrators when teenagers meet with cyberbullying.

-END-

For further information please contact:

National Youth Council

Blk 490 Lorong 6 Toa Payoh

HDB Hub Biz Three #06-10

Singapore 310490

Tel: (65) 6 734 4233

Fax: (65) 6 737 2025

Email: PA_NYC_ENQUIRIES@pa.gov.sg

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Survey questions

For this PR campaign, we have come up with the survey questions above regarding the topic of Cyber Bullying, and we have asked 50 people to help us on the survey. For each of the 10 questions, there are different options for the participants to choose from. All these results below are based on how the participants think upon answering the survey.

 1.  Have you ever been bullied on the Internet?

• Yes
• No

 2.  Are you anonymous when you go online?

• Yes
• No

 3.  Have you ever written negative comments about someone online?

• Yes
• No

 4.  If you are being cyber bullied, what will you do?

• Take it up with the person bullying you
• Report it to authoritative figure (E.g. School or Parents)
• Nothing
• Commit suicide

 5.  If you are the witness to a cyber bullying situation, what will you do?

• Intervene
• Join in
• Do nothing

 6.  Do you think cyber bullying is an issue to be addressed?

• Yes
• No

 7.  How often do you think cyber bullying may happen?

• All the time
• Often; but not all the time
• Sometimes
• Hardly happens
• Never happens

 8.  Do you think cyber bullying is the worst form of bullying someone?

• Yes
• No

 9.  How did you feel after you have been cyber bullied?

• Unhappy
• Angry
• Embarrassed
• No feeling at all
• Others (please specify)________________

10. How has your behavior changed after being cyber bullied?

• Hated the people who bullied me and wanted to take revenge
• Scared to face people and lose confidence
• No change at all
• Others (please specify) ________________

Evaluation

Since we are using a lot of media tools, such as blog, newspaper, advertising on MRT, bus, ect… we have confidence that out campaign will be successful. Then, we can changing the situation of cyber bullying step by step. People will know that is not an abnormal phenomenon. We need to treat this seriously. On the other hand, if our campaign could move further, more organisation want to sponsor us to achieve their social responsibility as well as increase their social reputation. If we can get the sponsorship from them, we will have more finance budget to expand our campaign and a chance to achieve more popularity.

However, everything is possible. Even how perfect the plan is, but there is always have an error. If the information we spread on our campaign are not attractive enough, less persuasion to influence people or we did not receive any supporting from the government. But the main problem is: there are many similar campaigns in Singapore, and this is our first time to do this campaign.  The lack experiences may cause failure which is the campaign not successful as we expectation. As a reason upon, we might lose the sponsorship and nobody will interest on our campaign.

Cyber bullying can be prevented by the ways we have suggested, but this will require a collaborative effort on behalf of the victims and the additional parties (eg: parents, teachers, co-workers， friends. Also is should be noted that cyber bullying is a very serious promblem and it does have effects. We feel that our camping has effectively informed our target publics that cyberbulling can be prevented but this requires a collaborative effort between the victims and the helpers (eg: parents, teachers, friends of the victim). We feel that our camping has effectivly informed people about the concequences of cyber bullying and that it is a serious issue which needs to be addressed. 

For our weakness as stated in the SWOT Analysis we had stated that we do not have enough rallying point for our campaign and we do not have enough time to establish good relationships with our target publics, however we feel that if we had more time to conduct our camping we would be able to overcome this weakness. As for the less experience we fell that we have gained experience while conducting this campaing and will thereby improve in the next camping activity For our threats we see that if we have goverment support, then our camping will be more effective as the goverment will be able to enforce rule on cyber bullying. 

Gantt chart (Timeline for our campaign)

Budget

Finance budget

The finance budget section for our camping will depend on the various tools that we intend to use for our camping. Depending on the tools (Blog, Press Release, MRT and Buses Adverts, Newspaper Adverts, Magazines Adverts and Celebrity Talk Shows) we intend to use we have come up with the budget for our camping.

A. Celebrity Talk Show

If we use a famous celebrity to talk about Cyber Bullying we see that the cost will vary per celebrity, but it will usually always be in million regardless the celebrity, used.

B. Newspaper Adverts

In Singapore the main languages that are spoken are English, Chinese and Malay and accordingly they are various newspapers in Singapore. The costs vary as per newspaper. Different newspapers have different criteria for the advertisement printed. Costs are as follows:

S.No	Newspaper Name	Criteria for each newspaper	Cost depending on the criteria chosen (SGD)	Size of advert display	Total Cost per day	Number of days advert run for	Thus total cost
1.	Strait Times Newspaper (English)	Monday to Wednesday   (Base Rate)	$41.50 per cm (Base rate)	18x15 cm	$1,369.50	3 days	$5,478.00
2.	My paper (English)	To run for duration of 3 days	$517.44 (Per Day)	18x15cm	$517.44 (Per Day)	3 days	$2,069.79

 C. Magazine Adverts

We intend to use the I-weekly magazine in Singapore

Double page advert cost

$7,600 (Total cost)

 D. Train Advertisements

 

S.No.	Advert Type	Duration of Advert	Main Line (All Excluding Circle) (Based on the 4 lines operational in 2013)	Number of trains we intend to use	Total cost (looking at 4 trains for 4 weeks)
1	Concept Train (entire train exterior)	4 weeks (minimum)	$8,000 per week/per train thus 32,000	4 trains	128,000

E. Bus Adverts

S.No.	Type of bus	Minimum add period	Monthly rate per bus	Number of buses we intend to use	Total cost
1	Wholly Painted Bus	3 months	$2,990	4 buses	$179,400

Thus Total Cost Comes To

$322,547,79 SGD

Time budget:

Situational Analysis & Target Publics

The SWOT Analysis of our campaign:

Strength:

1: Because we consider different varieties as our media communication tools, that is a better way increase the number of people who can notice about our campaign.

2: We can content with our audience immediately and get feedback, know more details from them.

3: The contacts in our campaign are flexible and each of our member take their responsibility in our campaign and increase the performance.

Weakness:

1: It is our first time to do public relation campaign so we have less experiences.

2: As a blog, the rallying point are not enough to influence their behaviour.

3: We need a long time to set a good relationship with our audience because when we use blog, the popularity is the most important item for us to spread our information and our activity.

Opportunity:

1: If some relevant department or government support our campaign, we can face more audience use other approach of media communication tools to deliver more positive sprite to them.

2: Cyber bullying is a normal problem over the world, so we have a huge number of audience to let them know more information about cyber bullying.

Threaten:

1: If some relevant department or government won’t support our campaign, it will be tough for us to continue our activity deeper and be successfully about our campaign.

2: There are several similarity over the society and they have more experiences than us.

Target publics:

A. Government

The first of our target publics that we wish to inform of the effects of Cyber-bullying is the Goverment bodies. These are important publics because if the goverment will support our camping we will thereby be able to raise more funds for the camping and thus will be able to reach a wider audiunce. For example is say the Goverment of Singapore supports our camping activities we can then request for funds to conduct our activities such as the cyber-bullying day event and also the goverment is a useful public because they can enforce that cyberbullying be taught in local schools and that the teachers should teach the effects of cyberbullying, how it can be prevented and what can be done about this isssue. Via Goverment support our camping has a high chance of reaching very audiunces - the bullies, the victims and the supporters, for cyber-bullying.

B. Media

The media is a useful tool for reaching our target publics as the reach of the media is very strong, and they have various means to be able to reach out to the target publics. The media personal can help us to inform the victims in particular that there is help avaliable and that steps can be taken to prevent cyber-bullying. The media can also help infrom the public of the effects of cyber-bullying and show the seriousness of the issue at hand. Via the use of the media we hope to create a wide amount of awarness for the issuse at hand in the hope that the victims will speak out and help can be provided for.

C. Victims of cyber-bullying

Our camping is largely aimed at this segement. These are the victims of cyberbullying.Our camping looks at trying to inform this segment in particular that help is avaliable for them and that cyber-bullying can be stooped and how it can be done. This target public is important because many victims of cyberbullying do not tend to react to cyberbullying, thereby suffering the concequences and the effetcs of cyberbullying. The campaing hopes to prevent this issue and tell this particular segemnt that help is avaliable, what they can do to prevent cyberbulling and we wish to urge this segement to speak out against cyberbulling.

D. The cyber bully themselves

Our camping also looks at trying to inform cyberbullies that cyberbulling needs to be stopped. We wish to inform the cyberbullies that if they are conducting cyberbullying they should stop doing so, we have discussed ways of how cyberbulling is condcuted and thus if say the cyberbully is unaware of the fact that they are condcuting cyberbulling we have stated ways of how cyberbylling is condcuted and if the bully feels that they are using any of these ways stated they can understand that they are conducting cyberbullying and stop doing so. Those cyberbullies who are fully aware of the fact that they are condcuting cyberbulling will now be informed of the concequences they face if they continue doing so.

Strategies & Tools and Tactics

Strategies:

1.)     Work with Schools

We intend to work with schools in order to try to prevent Cyber bulling. With schools we intend to try to get the schools to teach the students, the effects of Cyber bullying. The effects as stated before in our research apply both to the victim and the bully. If cyber bulling is taught, teachers can cover various effects such as student’s unwillingness to go to school and low grades due to the cyber-bullying. The schools can try to get the victims to speak out by having programs which encourage this. They can have messages in their newsletters which are sent to the students homes. These newsletters can have a section on cyber bulling. If schools have notice boards, they can have information on where the victims can go to speak out against cyber-bullying, such as the school counsellor.

      2.)     Work with Government

We wish inform the government of the effects of cyber bullying. The aim is that if the government supports us they will be able to reach out to the target publics on a broader scale. Also the government can have legal laws which will help protect the victims and also state actions which can be taken on the cyber-bullies if they are caught.

 

Tools :

1.) Blog

The advatages of using Blogs to try to reach out to the target audiunce is atht via the use of blogs it is an easy to follow and it is accessible by the user. Another advantage of Blogs is that it can be used as a starting point for an online community about a certrain event/ group ogf people. For example via the use of the blog the victims will get to know about the effects of bullying and they will understand the various signs of being cyberbullied. For the bully via the blog they will also get to know about the effects of cyberbullying and they may realise that they are conducting cyberbullying unintentional, or if they are doing it intentional they will get to knwo of the effects of cyberbullying on the victims and the effects of cyberbullying on them as the bully.

2.) Press release

The major beneifts of using a Press Release as one of the tools for your camping is that the press release once it is published it can reach a wide audiunce which will include the vistims the bullyies and the helpers. The press release can be sumited to multiple agengies and released on the spot in a fast and efficient manner. Via  press release the company can establish relationships witht he media concat personal such as editors of newspapers, adn other media websites. The key advatage being that the information in a press release can be sent out quickily, in the hope to reach the target audience as fast as possible.

3.) MRT / Buses

By using MRT and Buses to advertise our camping, we hope to get the attention of the potential target audiunce, for example say the victim of cyberbullying is using the train to communicate and then on the messages in the subway platform and the doors of the train they see a stop cyberbullying advert or message, they will know that there is help avaliable. Even though the victim may not respond to this message due to the fear of the cyberbully, the concept is that if the victim passes the same message or identical messages, they may a a tendency to react to the cyberbullying which they are going through, and one day ask for help. This tool will prove to be effective because if on a dayily basises are cyberbullied and they see cyberbullying texts or messages, now on a daily bases they will see messages stating that help is avalaible, they need to reach out.

4.) Newspaper Adverts

The benefits of using newspaer adverts for our camping is that in a newspaper advert can reach wide aduinces easily so thus we can try to reach our target publics easily. Seccondly the message that we put in the newspaper can be repeated on a dialy bases, so that in the hope that eventualy the target audiunce is reached and that they can reach out for help. If say the message we psot is stating that help is possible for the victim they can contact these organisations which help prevent cyberbullying such as the local police number, then the victim knowing that they are cyberbullied will repeately see the message in the hope that they will contact their local police and seek help/take action against the cyberbully. The advert that we creat can be of large size and can stand out in the newspaper, so easily visible by the target audiunce.