College Campus Activism:
Editors Note: This piece is a part of a series called 'College Campus Activism'. Start exploring here. For a list of sources, visit our bibliography.
What makes Stanford care?
by Rhea Karuturi
December, 2016
Stanford Survey
There are six main takeaways from this research:
1. More people heard of Fossil Free Stanford than Who's Teaching us.
2. Fossil free Stanford was more effective in delivering it's message.
3. More people overall agreed than disagreed with the messages, and more people agreed with the message of FFS than WTU.
4. Most people didn't show up to protests, but FFS had greater turnout than WTU.
The data shows that overall more people heard of FFS than WTU, and at a more granular level, a greater proportion of those who heard about FFS remember it clearly, as compared to WTU where the greatest proportion remember it, but not too clearly. This is interesting: FFS reached more people and stayed with them longer.
Both these activist groups had longer, more complex, more nuanced messages, but these often got lost in translation. In the end, they were best equipped to communicate a short, digestible sentence. FFS had a more easily understood message which was cohesive, and WTU had a more dynamic and nuanced message, and this translated to more people readily remembering FFS's message than WTU's.
When asked to rate where they stood on a scale on 1-5 regarding the messages of these groups, a majority of students choose 4 (agree). Interestingly, this is followed closely for both groups by those who chose 3 (neutral). Additionally, more people either strongly disagreed or strongly agreed with WTU than FFS, but more people overall agreed with FFS than WTU.
Of those that did participate, a majority did so infrequently, with only a. small minority attending, and a doing so frequently. In this data as well, FFS was more successful than WTU and had more participants, both frequent and infrequent.
Although we saw above that more people agreed than disagreed with the message of the groups, an overwhelming majority of students didn't attend the protests, meetings or otherwise participate for either group.
5. Most people heard about the protests from more than one channel, but the most common channel reported was emails.
This data shows a huge reliance on digital communication (email and social media) for both of these groups, but it also reveals that more often than not these were accompanied by real world networks. The effect of hearing these messages from so many channels is interesting as the echoing effect repeats and reinforces the message.
6. Students self reported statistics are the most effective media to reach them.
This data is interesting for two reasons. The first is that both FFS and WTU used statistics in their campaign prominently. The second is that this data is self reported and can reveal what students want to believe they are more convinced by than what actually affects them.
Overall, it does shed some light on digital communication, and what students find most effective in reaching them. This data may vary on other campuses which are less STEM oriented than Stanford.
For more information on the research methodology used for this survey, visit: