Social Media Activism: Does it Work?
- By Sarah Guenther
- Apr 10, 2016
- 2 min read
Activism has been around for a long time. Dictionary.com defines the word as “the doctrine or practice of vigorous action or involvement as a means of achieving political or other goals, sometimes by demonstrations, protests, etc.”
While the word is often used to describe a physical call to action, it has taken on a new meaning in our digital age. Social media activism has exploded since the creation of sites like Twitter and Facebook, where people can share links to articles and conclude their message with a relevant hashtag.
Whole movements have begun with a simple hashtag. #BringBackOurGirls, #BlackLivesMatter and #YesAllWomen were all created by normal people who wanted to fight for something they believed in. Hashtags create a way for people around the world to comment on and share their experiences about different issues.
In her article “The Case For Social Media and Hashtag Activism,” Sabina Khan-Ibarra points out reasons why social media activism works. Social media reaches millions of people worldwide and allows people who don’t know each other to engage in conversation about important issues. And while social media activism is often done behind the computer or phone screen, it allows people who don’t necessarily have the time to get out of the house to be involved in activism.
It’s easy to say that the Internet reaches millions (even billions of people), but visuals help too. This infographic gives some interesting details about Internet usage around the world and these numbers are from 2013, so they are inevitably larger today. At this time there were over two billion Internet users worldwide. Add to that one billion Facebook users and 500 million Twitter users and you have a large audience of people.
Social media activism (or hashtag activism) can be a valuable way to inform people about issues, but many have argued that it is a fake form of activism in which you don’t have to take action. It has been criticized for its laziness; merely retweeting or sharing something doesn’t mean that you actually care about it or want to affect real change.
According to its critics, a better term is slacktivism: a term that combines the words "slacker" and "activism" to refer to simple measures used to support an issue or social cause involving virtually no effort on the part of participants. These critics say that slacktivism is done so that the person doing it can feel some kind of gratification for doing their part to contribute to an issue or cause.
Television maven Shonda Rhimes had this to say about it: “And while we are discussing this, let me say a thing. A hashtag is not helping. #YesAllWomen #TakeBackTheNight #NotAllMen #BringBackOurGirls #StopPretendingHashtagsAreTheSameAsDoingSomething. Hashtags are very pretty on Twitter. I love them. I will hashtag myself into next week. But a hashtag is not a movement. A hashtag does not make you Dr. King. A hashtag does not change anything. It’s a hashtag. It’s you, sitting on your butt, typing into your computer and then going back to binge-watching your favorite show.”
While everybody has a different opinion on using social media to affect change, it doesn’t hurt that it is used as a tool to educate people about important issues.
Comments