Activism Vs. Slacktivism

People continue to use this hashtag to convey their message. Social media has helped a lot of people be aware of this movement. As more people know about this movement, the use of this hashtag will continue to increase.

Today, people seem blinded by their outsized enthusiasm for social media. According to them, a few clicks can change the whole world and accomplish wonders such as curing cancer. Good intentions become sufficient on their own, as if there were no need for medicine and scientific researches anymore. Well, this is pure nonsense. Facebook’s likes cannot save African children from starvation, the same way Twitter’s 140 characters will not put an end to acts of terrorism. This notion is not even remotely debatable. For instance, the project Kony2012 had a perfect starting point; inspiring video, moving story and most importantly worldwide spread. Unfortunately, the terrorist is still at liberty, and the lack of thorough investigations is to blame. Instead of focusing on the real problems of war and kidnapping of children, the so-called activist related to the obvious and spent all of his money and energy on his movie. Ultimately, due to the predominance of weak-ties, the project was not successful. More importantly, certain tools of social networks, especially “likes” and “retweets”, encourage people to feel good about themselves, when actually they should incite them to put their efforts and means in the cause they supposedly defend. As Gladwell wrote, “[current] activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that

Their actions alone sparked the revolution for sit-ins and silent protesting, contributing to the Civil Rights movement. The protesters didn’t put anything on social media that allowed their sit in at the diner to grow, but simply the sight of how “people spilled out onto the street”(Gladwell 400) that grabbed activists’ attention. Gladwell observes that in the absence of social media in these events, the protesters tend to be stronger, have emotional bonds, and be more organized. The people participating in the revolt had strong connections (strong-ties), due to the fact that they all share a high risk of consequences. Talking about the dangers starting on page 404, protesters faced violence from the Klu Klux Klan and other white supremacists. Gladwell uses the examples of the revolutions in Moldova and Iran to show how while Facebook and Twitter did let people be “confident to stand up for freedom and democracy” (401), the use of that social media is a weak-tie. Social media helped bring awareness to these, but as Gladwell explains “social networks are effective at increasing participation-by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires” (408). He talks about how social

Malcolm Gladwell’s article "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will not be Tweeted" raises a significant question about the prospective contribution of web-based social networking to the advent of progressive social movement and change. Gladwell bold declaration that "the revolution will not be tweeted" is reflective of his view that social media has no useful application in serious activism. Contrasting various elements of the “high-stakes” lunch-counter protests in Greensboro, North Carolina in the 1960’s with the “low-stakes” activism achieved through social media, Gladwell concludes that effective social movements powerful enough to impose change on longstanding societal forces require both “strong ties” among participants and the

The authors, Yarimar Bonilla and Jonathan Rosa chose disciplines with the background in communications, sociology, and public affairs. These three disciplines are not only present in this article but also represent the issue as a whole. Social media reflects communication, society’s behavior portrays sociology, and the political viewpoints symbolize public affairs. Key concepts like ethnography, police brutality, social media, and activism are all exercised in the article to help determine if a hashtag could become a field site. Research methods such as communication research and content analysis are evident throughout the article. For example, the article discusses a numerical description by stating, “during the initial week of protests, over 3.6 million posts appeared on Twitter documenting and reflecting on the emerging details surrounding Michael Brown’s death” (Bonilla & Rosa 2015). The article does not directly state any key thinkers nor key theories but Black Lives Matter founders Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi all encourage the content of the article and the supported sources.

The following quote from the essay is an excellent example of the distinction that he makes, “The evangelists of social media don’t understand this distinction; they seem to believe that a Facebook friend is the same as a real friend and that signing up for a donor registry in Silicon Valley today is activism in the same sense as sitting at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960.” This quote also brings to light his opinion about the level of commitment and sacrifice activism demands now compared to a less technological age. He makes the point that social media and technology make contributing to a cause, such as the Save Darfur Coalition page on Facebook, much easier today because they can reach greater number of people and that people are more likely to contribute because it costs them little in terms of resources (time, money, travel ect). He also weighs the merits of the structure of activism through social media versus the structure of a more centralized

In his essay, “Changing the Face(book) of Social Activism”, Mark Pfeifle writes about the role social media has played socially and politically in our world. In his time, Mark Pfeife has served as a top national security advisor, communicator and deputy assistant for George W. Bush. Pfeife has come to the conclusion that social media has redefined social activism - in place, calling it “social slacktivism”. The word “slacktivism” is a conjuring of his views and biases. Pfeife believes this describes the populace as taking action over the internet without doing anything physically to change things. An example that Pfeife brings up is during the presidential election of 2008, Barack Obama’s campaign was promoted all over online, sources like

Gladwell suggests that social media is not the proper platform for activists to use seeing that “networks don’t have a centralized leadership structure and clear lines of authority, they have real difficulty researching consensus and setting goals. They can’t think strategically, and they are chronically prone to conflict and error.” He believes activism requires a hierarchy figure that is responsible for making decisions and plans in order for progress to be made and that this is impossible for social media considering the fact that everyone

In order to explore these well-defined frames in the media, we have narrowed down the period to focus on the key events that have caused more recent responses in the media. To explore this, we will be using framing and cultivation theory to examine how individuals feel regarding the hashtags and compare this to how the media is portraying the movement in the media. As mentioned above, the BLM and ALM movement have been in the news off and on for a while. However, we have chosen to focus our study on the news regarding the BLM and ALM movements starting on February 24, 2015 through August 10, 2015. February 24, 2015 was chosen as the starting point as this was the day that the Justice Department announced that they were no longer pursuing a federal hate crime case relating to the death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida (Berman &Horwitz 2015). This particular event helped the BLM movement gain momentum in the media and online. This allows us the opportunity to examine the frames during peak points in public interest and to include some more recent deaths that have been connected to the

One popular social media app is Twitter, Twitter became very popular in 2012 but it was created in March of 2006, it is a website/app that allows registered users post short messages to other registered users(Followers).The article “Black Lives Matter is Killing it on Twitter” by Brandon Patterson is speaking about how activists are getting millions of people to help out in a large movement through social media. Social Activism is an action where people all over the world gather together to bring social change through an App.Social Activism is used a lot on Twitter because Twitter is used all around the world, most people use Hashtag Activism such as “#BlackLivesMatter” as a movement for struggles blacks have been going through.The hashtag

Looking at activism through these portals is very productive way of starting political conversations and inspire participation, but it is difficult to maintain a sense of control. As we see with the different examples she mentions, starting with the campaign against racism on #HowIMetYourRacism, it effectively generated a critique and gained a apology from the creators, on the other hand, the #CancelColbert hashtag lost context and the focus was taken off the initial argument that Asian Americans are simply not being seen, recognized, or heard. This also was the case for the casting of The Last Airbender movie, which featured Asian storylines through white actors. Using media collaborations, they were able to translate these online forms of participation into Asian American media activism that reflected many of the different understandings of cultural citizenship, reminding us of the complexities and contradictions that this concept

With slacktivism and activism there are pros and cons but in slacktivism there are more cons than in activism. Some of the cons in Slacktivism are an over kill of info; others may include situations like in the ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) period

Do you know what hashtag activism is? Many people do and use it in their everyday life.Hashtag activism is the act of using hashtags to promote or support a cause on social media. From #ALSIceBucketChallenge, #BlackLivesMatter, #BringBackOurGirls, and #WhyIStayed, there are many hashtags for many reasons.There are pros to hashtag activism as there are cons.It would be better if we looked at the pros cons and the examples of wins and fails with hashtag activism to see if it is helpful or not.

The 2011 uprising in Egypt was in many ways a traditional brick-and-mortar revolution, but with a cyber-twist to it: based on their statistical analysis of a large body of tweets related to the 2011 uprising in Egypt, Starbird and Palen (2012) observed that activists used Twitter as an important tool to share ideas and information with like-minded people, because Twitter allows a high number of activists interact using its retweet and other mechanisms. In this case, Twitter was used among participants and supporters of a traditional mass movement to bypass government controlled

From the time that social media was first introduced, whether we talk about Facebook in 2004 or the “ancient” times of GTalk and MSN, the virtual world was seen as a new haven for discussion, free speech, and breeding ground for new ideas. Twitter introduced the hashtag circa 2007, which allowed categorizing a similar set of materials together. For instance, if a user wishes to look at pictures of animals, they can simply type in “#animals” in the search bar. Within seconds the user will be presented with millions if not billions of pictures from all over the world. Hashtags are primarily seen as an element that groups people together, rather than dividing people. The world has seen the effective use of hashtag plenty of times ranging from