MS. RAVINA RAJ KOHLI

You do not need a social media to create a social movement. One day, a lady in pink scarf was walking down a street and saw a man beating up his wife.She picked up a stick and beat the man. That lady, Sampat Devi, has formed a Gulabi (pink) gang. Within two years, without access to the internet power, television, telephony, pure and simple media – the word of mouth, there were 10,000 women. Today, the Gulabi gang touches over 100,000 women. Their sole purpose is to protect others not themselves, they are a group of vigilantes, they are not violent – they facilitate women who are victims of violence. They have also been effective in making change.
So, social media is not about media, it is about the soul, a common cause and a common purpose, about community. She studied media impact in 14 Muslim countries and discovered that the Muslim majority countries have had the least access to new media. Do not confuse social media with new media. Despite that, we have seen what has happened to the Arab world, we have seen the effect of the multiplier effect of the soul and of common cause/purpose. That comes from a tremendous strength and a space that no media platform can give. Most media target their messages to women as women consumer decisions, except for Saudi Arabia.

Sound Bites

• But women are going to become and will always be the single most important influencer in the way media is used or abused – they will set the trends, set the rules, do not need censorship, understand the value systems and will imbibe them into media and create the change that the world wants, whether its men, politics, religion.
• The soul of a woman is her strongest point and that is what social media uses best.