Does the use of social media have an impact on the involvement of social movements in society?
Throughout the years, social media has had a powerful impact on how the world communicates today. It is a big part of our life nowadays.The new tools of social media have reinvented social activism. They make it easier for the powerless to give voice to their concerns. Although sometimes when current issues are all over social media, they only attract Facebook likes or Twitter favorites. This can also be referred as, Slacktivism. Slacktivism is actions performed through the Internet in support of a political or social cause but regarded as requiring little time or no involvement. But like it only attracts Twitter or Facebook likes, it does attract supporters and raises awareness. The use of social media has an impact on the involvement of the social movements in society.
Social media causes may attract more likes
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Internet activism allows more people to become aware of a situation. Awareness is how political will is generated (Internet Activism). When slacktivism is used outside the theater of protest to do things like generate money, it's still highly effective (Internet Activism). K. Kristofferson suggests that, “getting people to join private online groups may be a way to turn ‘likes’ into meaningful participation.”(9) Sure, fewer people will donate when they hear about a cause on social media -- people who actively seek out charity work are certainly more likely to donate to a cause. If a charity exponentially expands their awareness by expanding to social media, fewer people need to donate for that organization to meet their goals (Slacktivism). People cannot create change if they do not know about the issues or support a movement they have never heard of. Awareness is necessary for activism, and slacktivism sends waves of awareness across countries and
In Mark Pfeifle’s article “Changing the Face(book) of Social Activism,” the definition of the term slacktivism is introduced with the words of the Urban Dictionary which defines it as an idea that belong to people who want to look like they are taking action to support a cause when they mostly do nothing. Despite the dictionary’s meaning of the term, Pfeifle concludes that slacktivism has completely changed social activism because people all over the world now have the ability to create impacting and beneficial reforms on society. He argues that social media is more powerful than ever, and the way people play a role in politics has changed because of it. Pfeifle gives an example of the power that social media has when he points out that the Democrats regained power through the use of social media during Obama’s run for presidency. He states that social media can form political groups with greater masses of people while reducing the expenses as well as the difficulty of organizing one anywhere in the world from Cairo to Zuccotti Park. He also supported his conclusion with the example of Kony, a cruel guerilla leader whose brutality was exposed to the world with the help of slacktivists. Keeping all these events in mind with the contribution of social media, Pfeifle sees the totality in the positive change of social activism from slacktivism. Pfeifle is right about slacktivism having successfully transformed social activism since it causes vast social changes, increases the
Fortunately, with social media the way it is today it is not extremely difficult to find but about social movements. But there is a down side to that, which is people make so called “social movements” that really have no standings. After a great deal of research, the choice of a social movement for this assignment was clear to me. Unfortunately for this movement it has not received as much media coverage as other movements have. The social movement to which I am referring to is “#IStandWithAhmed”.
Social movements are organized attempts, or efforts to bring change in the established institutions in a society based on common interest and goals. Social movements are very crucial to everyone since it has the power to bring change which affect people’s lives. For instance, the abortion-rights movement is a significant issue today. Everywhere in the media, you will find people debating whether women should have legal access to obtain abortions in the United States. I believe this movement is a problem that everyone has put their mind to. Everyone on Facebook often expresses their opinion about this movement, some agree that it should become legalized while others oppose to this idea because it is against their religious beliefs.
In this age of technology advancement and with the inventions of smart devices such as mobile phones,tablets home computers that give people access to the whole world through social media platforms.One often wonders what are the people,who have an easy access to issues and matters across the globe doing ? Where are they spending most of their time and what are they up to?The simple answer to that question is that a relatively larger number of existing human beings nowadays are spending their time,on their smart devices addressing their views on socio-political issues.Also,can this selected population of human beings, advocate for social change just by scrolling through critical issues,liking and sharing their opinions on them while also typing their comments,in a virtual platform. Malcolm Gladwell effectively critiques 21st-century social activism because history suggests that traditional activism has shown to bring about change in the real world by tackling issues at hand in reality,rather than debating on them in a Facebook Group.
The issue of activism versus "slacktivism" — which is the key term coined that explains when “people who are happy to click a ‘like’ button about a cause and may make other nominal, supportive gestures. But they’re hardly inspired with the kind of emotional fire that forces a shift in public perception” (McCafferty, 2011, pg.1-2) — is at the heart of every debate over online or e-advocacy, especially in regards to hashtag activism. Many people believe that due to the nature of social media, people won’t often go farther than using the hashtag associated with a tragic event. Slacktivism suggest that concepts like hashtag activism do not translate to any real measurable offline activism efforts or bring about social change.
Technology and social media have led to advancements in medicine, transportation, and communication. Stem cell research, for example, is a major medical advancement allowing developments in stem cell therapies. With that there is no question about whether or not technology has changed life as people know it. But as far as major social changes, social media has not assisted in advancing very much. Social activism is unable to be accomplished through technology and social media because it can be easily edited and manipulated to satisfy one's sense of reality, and it allows us to passively participate in society. Based on “Small Change” by Malcolm Gladwell it is argued that social media is self serving and is not responsible for social activism in the world because of its weak ties rather than strong ties. And in relation “The Influencing Machine” by Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld also insinuates that social media is self serving and is something that
Malcolm Gladwell, staff writer for The New Yorker, and foremost critic of online activism, discusses the differences between online activism and activism in his article “Small Change”. Gladwell reasons that the most important part of activism is the connections that are formed between human beings. But the activism associated with social media does not have this characteristic. As he puts it, “the platforms of social media are built around weak ties…Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing you acquaintances (Gladwell, par. 15).” So, not only is Facebook rife with slacktivism, but it is also not conducive of any form of strong
People are responsible for the changes that happen in society, what matters is how they do it. There are several ways to make a social change and it depends on whether a person has strong or weak ties to the situation. A weak tie is a friend of a friend, or a casual acquaintance — whereas strong ties are those people you know and trust. For example, the gay rights movement, many people used online activism to help legalize gay marriage because they believed in the cause but may not have necessarily known anyone on a personal level. Social media plays an extremely important role when it comes to spreading awareness about a cause due to its ability to quickly and efficiently spread information. The problem is that “the internet is now about interactivity
Throughout the history of Europe since 1648, many different changes have occurred concerning the treatment of European people, through social, cultural, and political movements. Although it was not a quick and easy process, by the 21st century, European people were mostly able to freely participate in society by making decisions for the people, as opposed to a higher power ruling ones life. Different events, such as the industrial revolution, the holocaust of World War II, and the spread of communism have aided in gaining individual’s freedoms so that all people are treated as equal humans.
Finally, the author suggested that consumers of social media may use it as an instrumental platform where they can advance their own interests. By advancing their interests, they are more likely to engage in political activity including political protest. The content on social media outlets may be used for mobilization making it possible for individuals to use it to serve their own interest by engaging in further political action including political protest or social movements.
Social movements can be defined as being a general organized group of people who are concerned about the same general issues, and take action to affect political and/or cultural change (Staggenborg, 2). As Staggenborg (2) explains, “movements have organized to protect the environment, oppose wars, and advocate the rights of more and more groups, including workers, women, gay men and lesbians, students, disabled people, senior citizens, and many racial and ethnic groups.” Many social movements have existed in the short period of time that they have been studied, allowing society to recognize the failures and accomplishments movements have undergone. As Carroll and Ratner (6) explain social movements, they describe it, “by contesting the
During the year 1966 and 1967, a social-political movement happened in China significantly affecting the country’s economy and society. The movement called the Cultural Revolution re-imposed Chairman Mao’s thought (who was the state president of Communist Party of China) as the dominant ideology to citizens at that time, demanding to eliminate capitalism and traditional elements of Chinese society. It was this movement which made China’s civilization retrogress more than ten years. Culture Revolution was one of the most unsuccessful social movements in history, which almost brought no good influence to the society. It is not my purpose to say that social movements all had bad impacts on our society and history. In contrary, social revolutions, especially new social movements, are very fundamental and indispensable processes in our history which reflect the motivation of humanities’ thoughts and social orders, most of which promoted human society. The most notable features of new social movements are that they are less political than conventional social movements, which concentrated on materialistic qualities, but more social and cultural, focusing on issues about social mobilization, cultural innovations and the transformation of identities. However, when movements happened and succeeded, some old identities of the previous era were forgotten. They were sometimes automatically neglected by us because new changes made by social movements attract more attention from people.
Social movements have been seen as large informal organizations that have put more attention on areas that dealt with political and social issues and in doing so started revolutions that were focused on making changes that were important to their societies. (Wiki) Two of the social movements that I have decided to focus on were in one way or another successful in their social movements were Iceland and Chile compared to the other nations that had revolutions and had not really succeeded.
“Slacktivism” can be the first step to acknowledging a cause. Social media has been described by in “someones essay” “as the government’s soft weapon”. This basically states that social media is the basis of how people access information on a certain topic. The internet is literally like an open book. You can access information everywhere. But this is where the problem arises. Does simply viewing and sharing, or re-tweeting a tweet really do something? Surely there have been tons of successful online campaigns to solve issues. For example, in Pfeifle’s essay, “Changing the face(book) of Social Activism”, the brutal Ugandan guerilla leader was an issue in Africa. How did people know about this? The answer is YouTube. What resulted from that was the deployment of 100 U.S advisors and 5,00 African Union troops. Social media only solves the issue of awareness.
There are a few resources out there that could be used to tackle my social science issue and give clear answers on my topic. One resource that I have found useful to my topic is the book, OccupyMedia!: The Occupy Movement and Social Media in Crisis Capitalism. The source provides information on how protesting has grown amongst a younger generation with the use of social media. This source is one of the sources that came up during my keyword search targeting how social media has changed protesting and influenced a younger generation to get involved. The source is different from my other sources given that it is a book with many different layers. It explains not just