The Girl Rising ‘We Dream, We Rise’ Social Media Campaign in India: Reach, Engagement and Impact

Abstract

Girl Rising, a global campaign, uses the power of storytelling to build a movement for adolescent girls by inspiring people to change the way girls are valued, and sparking social action. We Dream, We Rise, is a social media campaign that was launched to call attention to age-old gender stereotypes that have gone unquestioned for generations and to inspire adults across the country to ‘dream as big for their girls as they do for their boys’. A descriptive evaluation of the campaign was conducted to measure its reach, saliency, and lessons learned. The campaign evaluation focused primarily on reach, engagement, perceptions of the campaign messaging, and intention to take social action. The campaign reached 25 million people, received more than 600,000 views, and engaged with more than 200,000 people, which yielded a more than 2% engagement rate compared to the industry average of 1%. While extracting meaningful information from social media campaigns can pose to be challenging, there is a need to move beyond just measures of reach. Measurement on quality, saliency, and outcomes are critical to ensuring that future campaigns are successful and yield the desired rigor, quality, and investments needed to facilitate change.