Critical Analysis Post #3 - Week 6: Digital Citizenship 2: Activism and protest
Source: <http://blog.actionsprout.com/social-media-slacktivism-nonprofits/>.
Do we underestimate or overestimate the power of social media when it comes to activism? Can it really be the most effective way to start a revolution in this day and age? There have been many instances where social media has been used as a tool to instigate political change, but some may say that this can discredit the actions done by those in real life – those who stand up and do something about it (Gerbaudo 2012). After the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011, journalists were quick to credit the power social media had in uniting the public (Youmans & York 2012).
Certainly, it gave affordances to the public such as lowering geographical boundaries for activist communication, physical gatherings could be organised and member morale could be maintained. Conversely, there can be security risks when relying on social media for such tasks. To be effective, social media might only be best when used alongside an activist movement, as there is also a risk that there will be inaction in real life despite a strong campaign online (Youmans & York 2012).
Source: <http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/01/201112515334871490.html>.
The Dangers of Social Media Activism
Social media may enable activists to communicate and have their voice be heard. However, as many social media companies are based in the US, the security and information laws differ from those of foreign countries. According to Youmans and York (2012), foreign governments request these US companies to surrender user data or to remove content from their service. Any successful attempts to do so may reveal the identities of anonymous activists and can especially cause harm if that information was leaked to the public or they were arrested due to a lack of freedom of speech laws.
Additionally, the algorithms or reporting mechanisms on social media such as YouTube may cause activist content to be temporarily or permanently suspended, thus losing the material’s strength in reach or relevance. During the Syrian uprisings, videos capturing the brutal violence of the regime were posted but taken down due to it violating YouTube’s policies in regards to showing graphic content. However these policies were adjusted to ensure that videos in this context could stay, as to not hide the truth of the events.
Slacktivism and You
Source: <http://www.disaster-ology.com/home/2015/12/2/in-contemplation-of-activism-and-defense-of-slacktivism-revisited>.
‘Slacktivism’ describes the act of putting a minimal amount of effort toward a cause, often for a person to feel like they contributed without actually doing anything. If anything, it helps with awareness of a cause, but rarely does it go further. A perfect example of this would be the social media craze surrounding Kony 2012, a campaign that put all of its effort into the marketing and hardly anything toward reaching their goal of finding and arresting warlord Joseph Kony (Kligler-Vilenchik & Thorson 2015).
Another campaign that struggled with slacktivism was the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Many were happy to take part in the challenge, however many either dropped the ‘ALS’ when referring to it, or did not actually know what ALS was or what the challenge was for. The public were distracted with taking part in the challenge, and unfortunately not many were donating money, which was what the campaign was intended to encourage.
Source: <https://au.pinterest.com/divagirlrobin/ice-bucket-challenge/>.
References
Gerbaudo, P 2012, Tweets and the streets: Social media and contemporary activism, Pluto Press, London.
Kligler-Vilenchik, N & Thorson, K 2015, ‘Good citizenship as a frame contest: Kony2012, memes, and critiques of the networked citizen’, New Media and Society, vol. 18, no. 9, pp. 1993-2011.
Youmans, W & York, J 2012, 'Social media and the activist toolkit: User agreements, corporate interests, and the information infrastructure of modern social movements', Journal of Communication, vol. 62, no. 2, pp. 315-329.
