The aim of this project was to increase the number of people in the Warwickshire area who signed up to give blood. A large proportion of the population are able to give blood, and yet only 4% of people currently do, with the younger generation giving less blood than previous generations have. However, the demand for blood is high: around 8000 transfusions are carried out each day, and roughly 1 in 3 people will need a blood transfusion in their life.The social media campaign used an infographic and hashtag, which were repeatedly posted on Facebook by the members of the group over a short period of time. Using social media enabled us to track the responsiveness of our posts, through likes, shares, and follows. The campaign utilised persuasive techniques such as celebrity endorsements and guilt tripping to influence the reader’s decisions. By contacting Give Blood, the number of sign ups could be obtained. The effectiveness of our campaign would be shown though increased sign ups in the period during and after the campaign, compared to signs up in an equal period before the campaign.Targeted social media campaign using the hashtag #GiveLifeThe infographicMatthew ConnellJake DunkleyJoshua Mann

Our group made a poster with the aim of reducing missed appointments at the University of Warwick health centre. We chose this topic because missed appointments cost the National Health Service (NHS) huge amounts of money every year, and on a smaller scale £160 per appointment missed.Hallsworth et al’s (2015) study found that informing patients that missing their appointment would cost the NHS £160 in their text message appointment reminder reduced missed appointments by almost a quarter. For this reason, we chose to emphasize this number on our posters. As research has shown salience is important in persuasion and that large bodies of text are often ignored (Vlaev, 2015), we designed the poster to have minimal text and the £160 figure large, attention-grabbing, and with a stack of money beneath. In the small amount of text we included two easy ways to contact the health centre to cancel appointments, by phone or text. We posted our poster on social media groups for University of Warwick students and at popular locations around campus.We used data from the University of Warwick health centre which records weekly missed appointments and compared data from the week before our posters were displayed, to the data from two weeks later. Missed appointment time decreased by approximately 3 hours, which we hope is as a result of our posters.ReferencesHallsworth, M., Berry, D., Sanders, M., Sallis, A., King, D. et al (2015). Stating appointment costs in SMS reminders reduces missed hospital appointments: Findings from two randomised controlled trials. PLoS ONE(10):10Vlaev, I. (2015) Salience. Unpublished raw data.Rachel FraserCarolyn NoorderhavenImogen O’MalleyKatie Kenton

What have populist politics and terrorism in common? It’s something that is causing politicians a problem.