From the President's Desk: #EndCCStigma: Social Media as a Tool to Change Public Perception of 2-Year Colleges

This article tells the story of the #EndCCStigma social media campaign and podcast. Created by a community college president, this grassroots effort to elevate the public perception of community colleges is comprised of a Twitter hashtag, a news aggregation algorithm, and a podcast series. In addition to delving into the concept of "stickiness" within these marketing efforts, which refers to ideas that are, among other things, simple, unexpected and emotional, the three-part theory of the campaign is analyzed. Local and national news stories that were aggregated as part of the campaign are highlighted as case studies. Direct transcriptions from the podcast series are shared to provide extensive first-hand voices of community college students, faculty, staff, and advocates. The article ends with an examination of recent national data on community college stigma, as well as the results of a survey on a community college campus conducted by students themselves.