Congratulations, Kris Rampersad, you’ve earned a spot in the top 1% of rising creators …
When Facebook congratulated me for earning a spot in the top 1% of rising creators, I embraced the new recognition with pleasure and here’s why, and why I shouldn’t!
Metaphor for Global Inequalities & Inequities
In developmental circles, being labelled among the one percenters is equivalent of a mark for crucifixion – coming so close to Easter and all that. It is the definitive metaphor of inequity and inequality and the wealth, resource and power gaps that plaque development. For instance, in its most recent report ‘Survival of the Fittest’, Oxfam estimates ‘the top 1 percent’ grabbed nearly two-thirds of the USD$42 trillion in new wealth created within the Pandemic, since 2020 – almost twice as much as the 99 percent of the world’s population who continue to reel from the after-effects of not just the health challenges that emerged from the pandemic, but the social, cultural, financial, economic, educational and other accompanying backlash.
The wealth-obsessed world justifies such inequalities and inequities as endemic in nature, arising from the acclaimed Eurocentric ‘Pareto Principle’ that skews and distorts principles of natural balance from the idealistic 1:1 to a 80:20 ratio.
The Alternative 1 percenters
But one percenter can also mean being ahead of the game. The original one percent rule, before it was highjacked by the Pareto-inclined economists, meant that those who are 1 percent better rule their respective fields and industries.
Now That’s something, considering Facebook has some 2 billion daily users.
So when Facebook sent me a notification that I am among the top 1 percent of Rising Creators, well I welcomed the recognition!
Congratulations, Kris Rampersad, you’ve earned a spot in the top 1% of rising creators this week.
Kris Rampersad, Facebook
It sent the message through my parent profile page, KrisRampersadGlobal, which is aligned to my Facebook presence as KrisRampersad1 , and pages reflecting various interests and activities – Leaves of Life , Media Education, related to media outreach, education and advocacy, pages related to books Through the Political Glass Ceiling, and LiTTscapes, World We Want People along with Demokrissy aligned to the highly acclaimed Demokrissy blog, the page GloCalKnowledgePot that receives my website feeds along (Don’t forget to like, follow, share and subscribe as you visit them!) These allow for expression of creativity in a range of forms and formats from written texts to digital and visual forms, memes, animations and video.
1 percenters in Internet Culture
To lurk may be social, as is to share and to like and comment, but to create is in the rare air of divinity!
In internet culture, the 1% rule recognises that only 1% of users actively create new content, while the other 99% of the participants only lurk. That is, about 1% of Internet users create content, while 99% are just consumers of that content or for every person who posts on a forum, about 99 others view that forum but do not post.
Consumer vs Creator Culture
Those of you who follow my outreach initiatives would appreciate my active advocacy against the consumer culture that has riddled our region embedded in mercantilist colonial trade practices and now neo-mercantilist culture. New digital cut and paste, app and template-driven cultures threaten to drown out creativity and creative and critical thinking. I am daily accosted by leading executives and fresh off the latest tech schools across various arenas – climate change, education, gender equality – demanding a ‘template’ that they could adopt to magically deliver on the very many complex development challenges.
Small Island 1 percenters
From a small island in the Caribbean from whence we seem to be eternally swimming against the tides of technology – mainly borrowed – its algorithms, problematic bandwidths and infrastructure, narrow community use and appreciation of the range and value of social media and the share lack of numbers, to be identified in the top percent feels like a beam of sunshine on a needle in the proverbial mass of stacked dry hay.
So in local parlance,’ I taking that!’ To compete as small islands on the international schema of new media, you may appreciate the value therein.
What’s a rising creator? The chaff from grain
According to Facebook, ‘the Rising Creator title shows that your content has received strong audience engagement, while meeting quality, originality and integrity guidelines.’
Facebook claims that is new Rising Creator Labels allow people to discover up-and-coming creators who are the best at building engaging communities on Facebook.
Now take a deep breath and savour what that means. Facebook is among the leading social media platforms with almost 2 billion daily users. Further, Facebook removed more than ten million content pieces from its perceived content or copyright violations.
What does this mean ?
Main benefits of a Rising Creator label is that posts will be seen by more people. Getting the label means Facebook recognizes the content of the Page and will boost it in their algorithms. It will also be easier for people to find and discover the Rising Creator. Facebook announced that with this new feature, the “Rising Creator Labels allow people to discover up-and-coming creators who are the best at building engaging communities on Facebook.”
It is a way to recognise Creators who work very hard to conceptualise and create original and engaging content.
…and beyond Rising Creator? Why not ‘Veteran’?
But of course as a critical thinking creator, I cannot fail to acknowledge the little nagging voice that question ‘rising’ as opposed to ‘veteran’ and to question the audacity of new media to believe it is reinventing the wheel that forces many of us with established credentials to reassert and reinvent ourselves into the mould of AI and its acceptable tags, hash tags, labels. But that’s another conversation for another time.
On the Cutting Edge of Creation
At the height of the pandemic came the MultiMedia Micro-Epic – a new creative genre for our age that ambitiously and audaciously adapts the conventional long form classic for short form new media!
Blend Conventional Journalism, Classic Creative Techniques and New Media, the reorientation of life for a fast paced, quick takes, CEIBA-EDUtainment promises a melting pot of delicious creative offerings. Stay tuned!
Meanwhile, I relish the accolade and bask in the sunny thought of being in the rare air among the Top 1 percent of global Rising Creators and welcome partners, sponsors and collaborators in the process.
About Dr Kris Rampersad
About Dr Kris Rampersad:
Sustainable Development Strategist-Facilitator Media/ Gender/Culture/SIDS
Dr Kris Rampersad is an award-winning journalist and international development consultant, thought leader, researcher and content creator across the spheres of conventional and new digital media, gender mainstreaming, education, culture, heritage and inclusion and SIDS.
She holds PhD in Humanities – Literatures in English (with sociology, economics and politics); encompassing developmental studies of post-colonial societies with a diploma in Mass Communications from the Jawaharlal University/Indian Institute of Mass Communications.
She is a Fellow of Foreign Press Centre of Japan, University of Cambridge and a Commonwealth Professional Fellow who laid the foundation for Commonwealth civil society transition from conventional to New Media aligned to Commonwealth developmental issues.
The first sitting journalist/editor in the Caribbean to complete a PhD, she is a UNESCO Cultural heritage expert educator and National Geographic Educator, Google Digital Skills Ambassador, Woman Techmakers’ Ambassador, Small Island Innovators’ Ambassador, World Pulse (Gender Network) Ambassador.
She straddles the spheres of academia and journalism and communications, outreach and advocacy to engender the multifarious socio-economic and political developmental challenges of post colonial societies, SIDS, the Global South and Developing World and bridging developmental gaps for equity and equality of participation and access. She is closely involved in solution-driven research, analyses and communications for gender mainstreaming, equality and equity. She has a highly successful track record in strategizing, policy development, planning, implementation, content creation, editing, adapting, developing targeted core and critical outreach communications outreach and public education campaigns from conceptualisation to communication and connection and crafting messages from diverse lay, popular and technical data for the range of recipient communities from preschool to policymakers via conventional through new communication platforms.
She has long experience in multilateral relations and served as President of the UNESCO Education Commission, an Independent Member of the UNESCO InterGovernmental Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage. She was the first UNESCO ICH educator/facilitator for the English speaking Caribbean and was actively involved in training and local to international stakeholder engagement processes that significantly augmented the Caribbean presence on UNESCO Lists – Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda- World Heritage, Reggae – Intangible Cultural Registry, Port of Spain, Nassau, Kingston – UNESCO Creative Cities
Among other accolades, she holds the Trinidad and Tobago National Medal Gold for contributions to the development of women and journalism and is recognised as a pioneer in development policy blogging for new media by the UNESCO/BBC & Partners’ Communication’s Initiative.
She has functioned as a non-profit advocate/educator, communications specialist, researcher, educator and independent scholar across the UN, Inter-American, EU-ACP, Commonwealth and other geo-political configurations with extensive experience in analysing, communicating and connecting global to local realities. She has close knowledge of global systems, mechanisms, instruments and developmental challenges in futuring the post pandemic planet.
She is the author of groundbreaking studies as Finding a Place, her dissertation which tracks the migration, settlement, adaptation and processes of society-formation (now being redeveloped for multimedia).
She is also the author of the highly acclaimed LiTTscapes – Landscapes of Fiction, a springboard for advancing literacy and blue print for the development of Caribbean Literary & Heritage Tourism, Through the Political Glass Ceiling that captures the ascension to office of the First Woman Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago and I the Sky & Me the Sea – The Adventures of Munnie Butterfly and Danny Dragonfly, the first of a Caribbean EcoCultural Adventure Fable Series.