HONORS DAY ADDRESS
Sharon Jarvis
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
APRIL 14, 2012

Thank you. It is an honor to be here. As mentioned in the introduction, I teach and conduct research on politics, media and persuasion. In my department we tell students that every speech should begin with a joke.

But, c’mon.  I know you. You are honor students. I think we should begin our time together with a quiz.

Let’s go. This will be fun. True or False.

    1. There is this thing out there called Facebook.  True.
    2. Most young people are on it.  True.
    3. Some of you are on it right now.  True.
    4. Just before Spring Break, a film entitled “Kony 2012” took Facebook by storm.  True.

Congratulations!  You have aced yet another exam at The University of Texas. You did this in front of your families and friends. We continue to be so proud of you.

But let’s return to “Kony 2012.” For those of you who are not familiar with it, the 30-minute film was created by the group Invisible Children, it was shared via social media by an unprecendented number of young people around the world, it focused on one villain — Joseph Kony, the head of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda—and it invited the young people who watched it to become heroes by spreading the word about the evil Mr. Kony.

I bring all of this up because the film was the first viral video to reach 100 million views in just six days. To put that in comparison, it took Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” 18 days, Rebecca Black’s “Friday” 45 days and Justin Bieber’s “Baby” 56 days to reach that milestone.

As a communication scholar, I’m fascinated by anything that can captivate so many young people so quickly. Let me say why.

When your grandparents were your age, marketing historians believe that they saw roughly 200 commercial impressions a day.  Estimates suggest that you will see over 5,000 such commercial impressions today. Scholars believe that you will notice 360 of them and possibly recall up to 136 of them.

Marketing professionals look at these data and say that we live in an “over-communicated society.” They suggest that there is a “traffic jam on the turnpikes of the mind.” Given this busy communications environment, it is very difficult to break through the clutter, to be noticed, to be talked about. The film “Kony 2012” did just this. And, it did so because people your age were sharing it across the globe.

One of the most interesting observations on this film for me has been an email message that I received from one of my political communication undergraduates. In the note, she advanced three observations. First, she noticed how many of her friends who do not regard themselves to be political, got “completely swept up” in the Kony movement. Second, she was puzzled that all of this was taking place the week of the Super Tuesday presidential primaries, and wondered why young people were intrigued by some remote happening instead of a domestic event that could directly affect their lives. Third, she closed her note with two earnest questions:

• What will it take to get more young people to care about campaign 2012?
• What will it take to get more young people to care about their communities?

I’d love to turn her questions into a challenge for this audience:  What if we started thinking about safeguarding our communities like we do our grade point averages?  Yep.  I said it. Safeguard our communities like our grade point averages.

This challenge may strike many of you as strange. We all know that millions of young people in the United States—and around the world—are turned off by politics. If you are among them, you have many reasons to be disappointed. Some elected officials have behaved poorly, the news media emphasize scandal and negativity, and the major political parties—the very institutions that used to bring individuals closer to political life—are regarded by your age cohort as unnecessarily polarized and unwilling to work together for the common good.

But to continue to have the opportunities we currently enjoy—in your lifetime and in that of your children and grandchildren—we need people to care. And you know what? We especially need honor students.

All of you have done things that you probably didn’t want to do to keep your terrific GPAs. While your friends may have been out on the lake, down on 6th Street, or simply sleeping in, you have read widely, asked critical questions, persevered through tough problem sets, and critiqued others’ arguments. You’ve made sacrifices for your GPAs. You believed in that purpose. It took a bit of work, focus and discipline, but you did it.

These are exactly the skills, talents and commitments your communities need.
And, going back to Facebook, these are not the instincts that today’s media outlets encourage.

One of my favorite books on this topic was written by Rod Hart, the Dean of our College of Communication. In Seducing America: How Television Charms the Modern Voter, Hart argues that television makes us feel good about feeling bad about politics. It miseducates us and makes this miseducation attractive.

In an update to the book, he worries that the Internet may be television on steriods. The internet provides unlimited distractions. It makes users feel busy, but busy doing what? Perhaps not doing anything at all.

It has been said that democracy is the only form of government where people get what they truly deserve.  I can think of few better targets for your brains, your work ethics, and your passion than caring about your communities.

And, if you are open to accepting this challenge, let me share an easy way to start.

Exciting new research shows that calling attention those who are actually participating—instead of berating those who aren’t—is a more motivating and effective route to engage people. In a study entitled “Everyone is Voting and So Should You,” scholars emphasize that positive peer pressure is a powerful means of increasing voter turnout.  Let me re-state that for emphasis: invoking a positive form of peer pressure increases the likelihood that more young people will become involved.

Whether you realize it or not, you’ve been doing exactly this in your classes. Each time you’ve asked a smart question, shared a thoughtful observation with a classmate, or sent an email to your instructor—you know, acted like an honor student—you made your classes better places to be. You injected positive peer pressure into a learning community where your colleagues began to expect more from themselves, where your faculty could go deeper into the material, and where the impetus for change was passed from student to student.

In our contemporary climate, we face an uphill battle as we attempt to break through the clutter and make people notice positive peer pressure about political life. Our modern media environment makes it very easy to not think about our communities, our hometowns, our states and our countries. But you all are no strangers to the power of positive peer pressure.  As honor students, you have done so much to make this university a better place. I can only imagine what you could to do make your communities and countries a better place, as well.

We are so grateful and will long remember your gifts to us. Let me congratulate you once again in front of your families and friends. We are so proud of your tremendous talents. We extend warmest wishes for continued successes in the future.  Hook ‘em horns!