Social Media for Social Activism: The Pros, Cons, and Potential
What is Social Media Activism?
The emergence of social media platforms has changed the way humans communicate and thus, how social movements begin and conduct themselves. Previously, people had to find ways to communicate their cause and organize in real life locations. Social media has allowed groups to voice their thoughts more easily and to many more people than ever before, bringing with it fundamental benefits but also some potential limitations.
What are the Benefits and Limitations?
Research is increasingly being done on the idea of social media activism and how activists and organizations use these platforms to communicate with each other. Researchers argue the special benefits to this new style but also emphasize the potential drawbacks and misconceptions compared to traditional activism.
Increased Connection
Social media enables humans from all around the country and globe to communicate with each other. The low barrier of entry means that those who had not had a voice before are now able to be heard by a large number of people and gather support for causes important to them.
Networks and Community
Increased connection across distance leads to the building of widespread networks. Social movements can be less localized and instead gather support from a large range of people.
Along with this, social media, as a “social” resource, can help build community within activist organizations. Dhiraj Murthy’s article Introduction to Social Media, Activism, and Organizations, says, “In large organizations, social media are often supported because the technology can help foster the sense of a “digital village” (Berghel, 1995), where individuals are able to “see” the lives of others within their organization and feel closer to them (Brzozowski, Sandholm, & Hogg, 2009)” (Murthy).
Researchers have argued some potential drawbacks to networks. These include lack of clear leadership within a movement and weak connections between participants.
For the first one, social movements, like other organizations, require some level of structure to arrange plans and take action. With people being spread out and on similar ground, it may be difficult to establish a hierarchy with leaders and focused subsets.
The second involves the idea of weak ties. When it is so easy to rally a large number of people through an online platform, there is not much holding them together. There may not be a strong sense of loyalty and people can move on with their lives with no one holding them to it.
Bart Cammaerts’ article Social media and activism says, “In this model, weak ties turn into strong ties if (online) interaction and mobilization turns into offline collective actions potentially creating bonds, collective identities and a common sense of purpose” (Cammaerts).
“Slacktivism”
The ease of which people can learn about and participate in social media movements has led to the rise of the term “slacktivism.” This describes people doing surface level acknowledgements of a cause and feeling like they are contributing much more than they are.
However, “slacktivism” may not be as negative as it may seem. Even if many will not do anything beyond sharing a hashtag or post, the act of simply spreading awareness increases the potential amount of people who will actively participate.
“Social media play an important role in facilitating the mobilisation for, and coordination of, direct actions offline [...] Lowering the cost and increasing the efficiency of mobilization and coordination with a view to offline direct action is one of the main features of social networking sites and smart phones, enabling on-the-spot or in-realtime communicative practices” (Cammaerts).
Activism in the Modern Age
Social activism has changed its appearance since the creation of the internet. The prevalence of social media today allows movements to gather supporters from all around and to organize their actions with easier communication.
Though weak ties and “slacktivism” may be seen as a negative outcome of this new type of activism, the large-scale spread of knowledge facilitated by social media increases the potential of offline actions by smaller groups of people.
As Cammaerts states, “Technology is not treated as an end in itself, but is seen as being used strategically to facilitate direct action offline and to integrate mobilization and recruitment strategies with the distribution of information and movement agendas” (Cammaerts).
Social media activism may not be able to enact change by itself, but it is a starting point for people to get information and get involved with causes that speak to them.
