Childrens social campaigns in Polish social media : research study on social marketing in 2012

Social campaigns aim at informing as well as shaping attitudes towards phenomena recognized by the authorities or activists as important from a political or a social point of view. Children and young people are present in particular categories of social campaigns. Sometimes they are recipients of a campaign (e.g. they are warned against the dangers of the Internet), while in other cases they are presented as a social category which requires adults’ special attention (their parents, teachers, neighbours, professionals, etc.). Our study is devoted to the leading children’s social campaigns on television and on the Internet. We would like to present an analysis of campaigns created both in our country and abroad, on a local, regional and global scale. We are interested in how children and young people are presented in them. We also aim at defining the main threats that television and the Internet pose for young people. Finally, we would like to pay attention to other people and organizations involved in social campaigns, such as parents, state agencies, NGOs or consumers in general. The results of the study relate to the involvement of social campaigns’ creators as well as to their system of values and norms. They also stress the differences between national and international campaigns for children and young people.