ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the theory and practice of transparent and ethical audience targeting through design thinking that is being developed at the Center for Emerging Media Design & Development at Ball State University. Socially-concerned communicators rarely have access to Hollywood’s or Madison Avenue’s expensive audience research databases. Free and common tools like web analytics services rarely provide publicly-accessible data for external content producers and rely on opaque user tracking and data gathering methods that can be contrary to the ethos of socially-concerned communication. Design thinking techniques can provide a scalable method to ethically and transparently understand where and how to reach critical audiences with the low budget and short timeframe required by most social communication campaigns.
