#subactivism

Are you a digital citizen? Have you subscribed to a cause for good or for bad?

The term digital citizenship used to describe the relationship that social medial allows for users to participate in the potential benefit for society (Mossberger et al. 2008, p. 1).

Before the dawn of the internet social movements had to communicated though slower methods such as newspaper publications, snail mail or word of mouth. However, since the internet has now become readily available the way that social movement communicate has evolved to digital activists. Sites like Change.org, have emerged specifically as a result of digital communities.

In 2011, we saw the rise of the Occupy movement which highlighted the disproportionately wealthy and the other 99% of the population (Occupy Wall St 2019). The way in which the world protest has changed, traditional methods of protesting has now evolved with advances in technology and mass communication has allowed for causes to spread globally.

At the same time that people are now mobilizing their social agenda to social media and spreading the word faster than before. It has become so easy on Facebook to click like or share a post to show your support for whatever cause you want to public to know that you are supporting. You no longer have to even leave your house to support the cause. The digital age has given birth the new much lazier sibling to activism which has many names such as clicktivism or subactivism (Bakardjieva, 2009, p. 103). For everyone who is too busy but still wants change or too lazy, you now don’t even need to leave the comfort of your own home. Whilst reading this blog, on another tab you could sign as many petitions as your heart desires.

Social media has become an amazing platform for change and to notify the world of your movement (Gerbaudo 2012, p. 17). Facebook is a great platform for recruitment, people can form groups and pages, together they can set movements and share ideas and content. Twitter has become a great platform for live updates and YouTube is the platform to upload your videos to then share to the world. No movement is complete now without the use of social media to push your agenda to the world.

I do personally think some clicktivism is stupid, like when everyone changed their profile pictures to a certain colour to support some cause. I’m unsure how that changed anything, but I guess awareness, is still better than nothing.

References Bakardjieva, M 2009, ‘Subactivism: Lifeworld and Politics in the Age of the Internet’, Information Society, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 91-104

Clicktivist 2018, Clicktivism, [image], viewed 12 January, 2019,<http://www.clicktivist.org/what-is-clicktivism/>.

Mossberger, K., Tolbert, C., & McNeal, R 2008, Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

A few weeks ago I performed a little study on social media. I wanted to know how often my friends from Facebook would share posts related to activism and protest (as opposed to posting photos, jokes, or any non-political material). My prediction had been that this would happen in 1 out of 10 and I was pretty close: A bit more than 20% of the content that showed on my feed was associated to these matters. However, after learning about these figures I soon realised that my curiosity for this topic was just awakening. Now I had other questions, which I believe were much more meaningful: What was beyond each and every post intended to raise awareness about a certain cause? Were my Facebook friends conscious of the causes they were supporting? And more important: By sharing posts aimed at protesting, were they really contributing to the cause they were seemingly supporting? 

Even though there is no single way to answer the above questions, interestingly enough I have found that the online activism issue has been long studied over the last years. Indeed, this topic has attracted such a great deal of interest among scholars that they have coined the term ‘digital activism’ to the use of electronic communication people give aimed at protesting or performing activism of any kind (Edwards, Howard, & Joyce 2013). Nevertheless, while some researchers remain optimistic about its potential for a true cultural transformation (see Youmans & York 2012), most researchers investigating this phenomena are aware that sharing Facebook posts or retweeting critical information about, for example, the breach of human rights in a random country may not be enough to make a real change. Watch the following TED talk by sociologist Zeynep Tufekci (2014) to learn more about the dichotomy that digital activism sets out.

But because we humans are great at polarising ourselves, there is a third group who also has something to say about this issue – those who believe that digital activism is nothing but an ephemeral practice; a real waste of time. 

This group of critics often referred to those who engage in protests that only take place online (mainly on social media) as ‘Slacktivists’ or ‘Subactivists’ (see Bakardjieva 2009; Asian Research Institute 2012). Their rationale is that supporting a political or social cause requires much more effort than simply sharing a post or signing a petition. However, while this may be true in some cases, as in the #icebucketchallenge (Kosinski 2014), there is evidence that a number of online petitions have actually achieved their purpose, thus transforming – at least in part – certain aspects of our society (Stark 2016; Sommers 2015). 

References

Asian Research Institute 2012, ‘Methodological and conceptual issues in cyber activism research’, National University of Singapore, viewed January 6 2018, <https://ari.nus.edu.sg/Assets/repository/files/publications/InterAsiaRoundtable-2012.pdf>.

Bakardjieva, M 2009, 'Subactivism: Lifeworld and Politics in the Age of the Internet', Information Society, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 91-104.

Edwards, F, Howard, PN, & Joyce, M 2013, Digital Activism and Non‐Violent Conflict, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2595115 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2595115

Kosinski, B 2014, ‘#IceBucketChallenge: Why You’re Not Really Helping’, Huffpost, viewed January 6 2018, <https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-kosinski/icebucketchallenge-why-yo_b_5656649.html>

Sommers, J 2015, ‘Change.org's 10 Biggest Victories As Petition Website Celebrates 100 Million Users’, Huffpost, viewed January 6 2018, <http://www.smh.com.au/national/people-power-14-online-petitions-that-changed-australia-in-2015-20151222-gltgyb.html>.

Stark, J 2015, ‘People power: 10 online petitions that changed Australia in 2015’, The Sydney Morning Herald, viewed January 5 2018, <http://www.smh.com.au/national/people-power-14-online-petitions-that-changed-australia-in-2015-20151222-gltgyb.html>

Tufekci, Z 2014, ‘Online social change: Easy to organise, hard to win’, viewed January 6 2018, <https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_how_the_internet_has_made_social_change_easy_to_organize_hard_to_win>

Throughout time, the means of protest and activism for change has held a similar path for centuries. Most commonly, civilians would take to the streets and protest against the state. In a modern society, the landscape for the means of activism has changed significantly in a very short space of time. This is due to the developing and ever-growing online world, where social media has changed how we communicate entirely, and in turn how we demonstrate our beliefs in the need for change and accountability from hegemonic powers.

As we all know, social media is a powerful tool for getting across an important message to a large amount of people at once. Just made yourself lunch? Put a filter on it and tell the world on Instagram with #cleaneating. Ate at a fancy new restaurant and the waiter forgot to bring your water? Rate them on Facebook or rant on your blog. But in all seriousness Social Media can be used for good. Many activist and grassroots organisations are taking to Facebook and Twitter to get across their message. I think it’s great that organisations are taking this up. We are in a digital age where social media is slowly taking over, and in order for anyone to catch up it is important to embrace this change. There are many different ways that activism works online. Leah Lievrouw (2011) talks about this potential for social media and how there is now an “opportunity for expression and interaction”. She says that activists, artists and other political and cultural groups can use social media as it is not expensive, and it is a powerful tool for challenging popular culture. There are heaps of ways social media is helpful such as no geographical restrictions, visibility and voice and alternative views are able to be presented. I agree with this view. Social media creates many opportunities for activists to present their views and share them.

I’m really glad we are doing this topic because it means I have a chance to talk about an activist group I am involved with. They are called Collective Shout and they are a grassroots campaigning movement against the objectification of women and sexualisation of girls in media, advertising and popular culture. They do this by naming, shaming and exposing corporations, advertisers, marketers and media engaging in practices that are offensive and harmful. Collective Shout doesn’t have a head office or even a building. Instead, they rely heavily on Social Media to get their messages across. By utilising the power of Social Media, thousands of voices are able to be heard. Twitter and Facebook are Collective Shout’s main means of communication. The function of ‘re-tweeting’ on Twitter means that anyone from around the world who is interested in the cause can share important information. For example, if an organisation sells a product that is offensive or rude, Collective Shout can share photos of the product via twitter, causing anyone who follows them to be aware not to buy that product. In the same way, Facebook can be used to do this through the use of ‘likes’ and ‘sharing’.  If you are interested in learning more you can check out their website here: http://collectiveshout.org/. While Social Media is a great tool for activist organisations, there is also the other side to it where, just like everything, there are negatives. These are clicktivism and culture jamming.

“The Oxford English Dictionary defines Clicktivism as ‘the use of social media and other online methods to promote a cause.’ That’s a good starting point, however it is a tad narrow given the scope of all online activism” (Clicktivist.Org). Pretty much the idea behind clicktivism is that social media is the best tool to use for any organisation or cause. It also means that the rise of social media has changed the way that organisations use the internet for campaigning. Culture jamming is using existing mass media to comment on the actual media itself. Basically, it is a form of resistance to popular culture. Where activist groups have a voice, subactivist groups can do the same.    There is an argument around Clicktivism and culture jamming that while social media is a great tool for NGO’s and activists, there are groups with a ‘not-so-good’ cause that can also emerge. An example of this is the “Cut for Bieber” hashtag that emerged last year, where Justin Bieber fans began cutting themselves as a result of the singer allegedly doing drugs.  Through social media, the hashtag #cutforbieber resulted in thousands of young girls self-harming themselves.