Tribute Media Project

Heroes save us, love heals us, and stories unite us. 

The Tribute Media Project is an innovative media initiative that celebrates the best of humanity. Encouraging and welcoming active learning and media making through diverse community engagement, the Tribute Media Project calls on people to recognize heroes and loved ones in their communities and share them through social media posts. 

Through collaboration with educators, parents, and community members, the Tribute Media Project encourages the discovery of community storytelling by utilizing a larger storytelling platform on Instagram. As one of the most popular social platforms today, Instagram connects media makers to over 1.16 billion users worldwide.

By learning how to identify, write, design and post messages that citizens learn to share -- individual human experiences transform into a collective consciousness and heartfelt expression of love and remembrance. We aim to foster citizen journalism, where members of the community can participate in collaborative forms of media to practice emotional awareness and foster interpersonal connections through social media literacy.

The Tribute Media Project highlights a diverse representation of people that are responsible for the progress we see in our communities and causes. For example, the @heroestribute includes individuals involved in supporting access to education, protecting civil rights, climate saving initiatives, and pro-LGBTQ+ activism. Everyone is welcome to contribute to the @lovetribute and @heroestribute archive on Instagram.

TRIBUTE MEDIA ACTIVITY GUIDE

The Tribute Media lesson plan invites beginner to advanced digital media users to discover ways to identify and craft an empathetic personal or community story. Participants will learn to use and tell more meaningful stories on social media while becoming project contributors and responsible community storytellers. The lesson guide can be used by yourself, or presented to your classroom, or community group for everyone to participate in. 

The Tribute Media learning activity can be completed within one session and demonstrates how an active-learning media-making and publishing project can teach critical media literacy skills. Our step-by-step guide explains how to identify an individual that you deem valuable to your community/ life, craft a post with a photo and accompanying story about the person. Carefully follow the simple hashtag instructions detailed to ensure that the Tribute Media Project team can access your post and present your honoree. After posting your tribute, our team will find and curate your post as part of the tagged Instagram page of your choice - @heroestribute or @lovetribute. By participating in the Tribute Media Project with your story post contributions, you will positively inspire others.

To request a digital copy of our step-by-step Tribute Media Activity Guide with tech resource links and a video demonstration, simply send us an email on the Get Involved page of this website.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

At the end of the Tribute Media Project lesson, students and community members will: 

  • Develop information and media literacy skills with a new sense of responsibility 

  • Explore their individual creativity

  • Honor individuals who positively impacted their personal lives and community

  • Deepen appreciation for and connection to diversity in the world and 

  • Foster citizen journalism emotional intelligence and digital content creation with social media literacy

Once learners submit their first tribute post, they will become Tribute Media Project contributors. An ongoing cultural archive, the Tribute Media Project aims to transform individual human experiences into a collective conscience and heartfelt remembrance. 

PROJECT HISTORY

Launched in 2020 amid the devastating COVID pandemic by media management graduate students and their professor -- two Instagram accounts created space for uniting people to honor heroes among us and loved ones lost. The opportunity to engage in a community of storytellers celebrating modern heroes brings about gratitude and positive outcomes around the globe. Existing online, the Tribute Media Project is available to a community of millions of social media users and can foster emotional connections that span the globe and connect total strangers. 

Even without the coronavirus pandemic, the need for this kind of storytelling will exist for generations to come.The project is now an ongoing cultural archive transforming individual human experiences into a collective conscience and heartfelt remembrance. 

The Tribute Media project is an engaging critical media literacy and active learning experience. It encourages individuals to use media to highlight the best of humanity during the pandemic and beyond. In 2020, Media Smart Citizens hosted a Tribute Media Workshop in collaboration with UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) during Global Media and Literacy Information Week. In 2021, the National Association of Media Literacy Educators (NAMLE) invited Media Smart Citizens to present the Tribute Media Project at its biennial conference which showcases leading voices in the field and explores how best to advance the field.