Social Media for a Cause, Pt. 1

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge:

First, I’d like to start this post off by explaining what ALS is. ALS, short for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spine. People who are diagnosed with ALS are only expected to live for about two to five years after their diagnoses. In 2014, a golfer in Florida by the name of Chris Kennedy was nominated by a friend to do the “Ice Bucket Challenge” which involved dumping (or having someone else dump) a bucket of ice water on you(rself), and, when Kennedy was dared to do this, it had nothing to do with ALS, but instead participants would take part in the challenge (which was typically recorded and posted on social media), and then donate money to any charity of their choosing. Once the video was uploaded, the participants could choose people on their friends list and challenge them to do the same. Kennedy, who had known someone suffering with ALS, chose ALS as his desired charity, which, on July 15, 2014, appears to be the first time that the Ice Bucket Challenge and ALS were linked. Kennedy then challenged a few others who he knew would not turn him down, and the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge began to spread under various hashtags. The challenge eventually reached Pat Quinn of Yonkers, NY, who was also diagnosed with ALS. The campaign spread through Quinn’s social media community and ultimately reached Pete Frates, who was very involved in the ALS community and also had a large follower base. Frates posted his own video on July 31, 2014 and the challenge went viral. The ALS association started seeing a serious uptick in donations, which is believed to be a total of two-hundred and twenty MILLION dollars! A year later, scientists claim that that money helped them to uncover a gene that is linked to ALS and had previously not been discovered. This infographic shows the history of the Ice Bucket Challenge.