The song and music video for “Follow Me” by Moxie Raia and Wyclef Jean was made in partnership with Global Citizen, a social action platform that aims to inform and produce action regarding a number of major global issues. In this case, the major global issue Global Citizen chose to focus on was the refugee crisis, which is why the song was produced and shared just in time for World Refugee Day (June 20^th, 2016).

Looking at the music video as a whole, the idea was to bring together both visual and audible elements to better illustrate the experiences of a refugee and what it means to be pushed out of one’s home. Moxie Raia and Wyclef Jean sing the chorus saying: Follow me I am on your side/But we don’t have much time/Momma said there’s a war outside/Only the strong survive. Although short and simple, these lyrics speak to the reasons why refugees leave their homes, many of who are children, which the lyrics hint at. As the song continues, interviews with refugees are portrayed on a reel in black and white in the background, emphasizing the emotions of these individuals to anyone viewing the music video.

As a whole, Global Citizen aims to elicit action from our current global generation, in other words anyone able to understand and do something about our current crises. Regarding the music video in particular, the main audience appears to be a much younger generation, individuals anywhere from their mid teens to late twenties given the artists involved and the methods in which the video was shared. For the most part it was shared via YouTube, Facebook, and the Global Citizen website, all of which are platforms that younger people tend to be in tune with. With all of this in mind, the main objective was to raise awareness of the crises through World Refugee Day and get people motivated to do something about it such as petitioning or calling members of congress regarding local laws. This is evident with the link attached to the videos YouTube page, which says “Watch now and take action to help,” and takes the viewer to the a Global Citizen website with suggestions of how someone can make a difference.

The reason behind the entire campaign stems from the number of people being pushed out of their home globally at the time. On the Global Citizen website, there are lists of statistics on the previous year alone (2015), marking it as the year in which the most people were forced out in history until that point. In fact, 65.3 million people were forced to leave their homes due to war, violence, and persecution in 2015. The music video was released just after these numbers came out in an eye opening United Nations report.

Now looking at this video objectively knowing that its main goal was to raise awareness, it is difficult to say that it made much of a breakthrough doing so. Reviewing the number of views on Facebook of the video, which is just over fourteen thousand views, as well as the number of views on YouTube, the numbers do not reach very high. It is interesting to document the seven and a half thousand views on YouTube. Usually, for any artist releasing a song, especially in awareness for a specific cause, the number of views tend to reach at least one million views and beyond. However, for “Follow Me” it was not even close. Understanding the goal of reaching out to as many people as possible, it does not appear that Global Citizen and its partners were successful in their objective. Although there was great reception by fans of both artists, other critics are difficult to find due to the general lack of knowledge of the video.

There are several improvements that could have been made to strengthen their numbers and outreach. The main one has to do with the sharing and posting of the video in a timely manner. The video was not released on YouTube until June 21^st, 2016, a whole day after World Refugee Day. Ideally, releasing the video way in advance in preparation for the day would have helped build awareness, allowing it to culminate on world refugee day. Posting it the day after, a time when people have probably forgotten about the cause and the day hinders the ultimate goal. Overall, I believe the video was well made and had a great message, but the way that the message was spread was inefficient.