
It can be seen across newsfeeds daily. A new hashtag. A new campaign. Celebrities and citizens alike sharing their support and requesting backup for some cause or other through a tweet, Instagram, or post including said hashtag. The burgeoning use of social media to promote activism would seem reasonable given our increasingly digitalized society, but does this platform truly increase the odds of offline activity? Numerous campaigns have tried and failed to translate online support into offline results supporting the notion that social media is beneficial as an activism launching pad, but fails to produce long-term change when utilized alone.

What is social media activism? Social media activism is the use of social networking sites, including—but not limited to—Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, to support and promote a social, political, or environmental campaign. Social network sites are defined as “web based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system” (Fatkin 582). Users will typically demonstrate their support for the cause on social media with a like, share, or post dedicated to identifying the problem-at-hand, announcing their opinion on the matter, and encouraging their friends/followers to join them in supporting said cause. Social media activism is a popular form of expression for people of all ages and tends to become more apparent following the announcement of an environmental disaster, a new political action, or social change. Expressions of activism are usually one of two types: approval of and for the cause or a statement against the given cause that favors an opposing viewpoint. Due to its social component, this form of activism tends to have a greater focus on allowing a user’s online following to acknowledge their efforts and devotion rather than on the cause itself unlike other widespread forms of activism from years past. 

Now that the aims of social media activism have been outlined, who would be interested in using a platform of this type? The enticing thing about social media activism is that it is fairly accessible and an established and prominent tool amongst today’s societies around the world. In the United States, 65% of all American adults are active on social networking sites. Demographically, 90% of individuals between the ages of 18 to 29 and 77% of individuals between the ages of 30 to 49 in the USA were found to use social media as of 2015 (Perrin 4). This universality and popularity is favorable to charities and other companies or nonprofits who would like to garner more support. These entities see social media as a valuable tool in spreading their message and engaging an even larger pool of people in their goals. They hope that social media will expand their outreach and garner more offline activity—activities which include volunteering and donations. 

Despite the desire of nonprofits to utilize social media to promote their agendas, opponents argue that social media is an ineffective means of activism and is incapable of producing offline activity. The reason: slacktivism. Slacktivism is a term assigned to social media activism by those who view it as ineffective. In the essay “The Nature of Slacktivism: How the Social Observability of an Initial Act of Token Support Affects Subsequent Prosocial Action” the authors Kirk Kristofferson, Katherine White, and John Peloza define slacktivism as “a willingness to perform a relatively costless, token display of support for a social cause, with an accompanying lack of willingness to devote significant effort to enact meaningful change.” The authors go on to argue that social media promotes slacktivism because it allows its users an opportunity to contribute small token acts—activities that require minimum effort, but represent a show of support—in a public arena. This satisfies a human need to appear generous in the eyes of others who witness this token act. The publicity attached to an individual’s token act then makes the user feel as if no further action is needed since their peers have read their share or like as investment in the cause, therefore causing the user to contribute nothing else to the campaign. With no time or money contributed little can be done to further the progress towards change. 

However, there are some limitations to this slacktivist view as Kristofferson and company discovered through their research study. Their study examined the effects of the publicity of an initial token act—wearing a button or signing a petition—on the likelihood of an individual’s response to lean towards slacktivism. After examining the behaviors of three randomly-generated groups of individuals who were offered a free poppy in honor of veterans (one group that was asked to publicly display the initial token act, one group that was asked to privately carry the initial token act, and one group that was not asked to give any form of initial token support), the researchers found that the group of individuals who privately demonstrated their initial support were much more likely when asked later to donate to the cause than those individuals who publicly showed their support. These findings suggest that social media activism can produce more continuous and substantial support when the initial token act is carried out in private rather than in public. So, social media could be beneficial if the individual uses it to follow a page dedicated to a cause that they are interested in or to like an image or post related to the campaign but does not attempt to make their support known to others by sharing a post on their wall for all of their followers to see. The more typical, public response of individuals on social media is the behavior that allows a like to translate into little more than just a like. Since public shows of support are the more common of the two found on social networking sites the slacktivist view of social media activism is not far-fetched, but rather entirely plausible and commonplace in a society that is unwilling to give too much of their time. 

Besides slacktivism, there are paradoxes associated with technology that limit its abilities to act as an effective means of activism. Two such paradoxes are the efficiency versus inefficiency paradox and the social judge versus socially judged paradox. These paradoxes are examined in a study conducted by D. Eric Boyd, Benjamin Michael McGarry, and Theresa B. Clarke. Through in-depth interviews with a sample of online consumer activists, the researchers found that both paradoxes persisted when participating in social media activism and inherently worked to decrease the effectiveness of social media activism. The social judge versus socially judged paradox can be summarized as the nature of social media platforms to allow an individual to share their opinion which either supports or condemns a given topic or the opinion of another (i.e. social judge) while also allowing others the same ability to comment on that individual’s activism attempt (i.e. socially judged). Despite the user’s desire to share their own opinion and support for a cause that they feel invested in affecting, the opinions of those who oppose their viewpoint can be a factor which sways individuals away from engaging in social media activism. The paradox surrounding the efficiency and inefficiency of social media activism is centered around social media’s time limiting component. Social media is supposed to decrease the amount of time someone must expend on a task, but if an individual were to post something online showing support for a cause that others oppose more time could be wasted than spared. Debates online tend to drag on and result in few concessions making them a frivolous and time-consuming endeavor. If social media does not make activism more accessible to those who are in need of a more convenient way to exercise their support than it is not much better of a platform for activism than previous forms. 

Although, social media does act as an effective amplifier for various causes around the globe or as Mary Joyce so eloquently phrased it in her anthology on digital activism, “In the digital age, the Internet provides every one of us with a megaphone.” Its ability to connect millions of people across continents, time zones, and cultures in an instant has allowed it to become an ideal method for spreading the word. An event could transpire in Africa—as with the kidnappings of nearly 300 young schoolgirls by the extremist group Boko Haram in Nigeria—and within moments be shared with Twitter users in the United States, Europe, Asia, and beyond. The news of the kidnapping of those 300 schoolgirls was immediately reported by one Nigerian woman along with the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls in a single tweet and transmitted across borders and seas onto the feeds of hundreds of thousands of other Twitter users—although the hashtag did take a couple of days to garner momentum on the networking site. Once the hashtag went viral, it was picked up and shared by not just the typical average Joes, but celebrities and political leaders too. A topic which was once isolated to a small region soon became a global topic of discussion. If that hashtag had never been shared, these kidnappings would not have been as widespread of an issue of concern since many people would be unaware of its occurrence. 

Similar to the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag campaign, social media has been found time and time again to act as a platform through which individuals can spread the word on a topic that is important or significant to them. Social media was used as a major tool in spreading the word on the freshly minted Giving Tuesday in the United States—a day dedicated to giving back to charity following the heavily commercialized holidays of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. A new social media campaign was launched in which users were asked to submit an “unselfie” online with the hashtag #Unselfie. The “’unselfie’ was created for this event [and encouraged individuals] to take a picture of themselves giving back or donating to a good cause and upload it to their Instagram or twitter accounts” (Fatkin 582). The hashtag was posted on social media tens of thousands of times—approximately 16,493 tweets were garnered on Twitter between 5:10 am and 5:10 pm on December 3, 2013 (Fatkin 582). This exposure allowed for the newly formed holiday to grow. As a result, the following year more countries followed in the United States lead making Giving Tuesday a greater sphere of influence online. The hashtags #GivingTuesday and #Unselfie also encouraged users to rethink their consumerism and the importance of giving back by raising awareness on these issues and bringing them to the forefront of the public’s attention for the day. This level of attention would not likely have been reached were it not for the ability of social media to connect people to one another in a matter of moments despite distance. 

While social media may be an effective tool for raising awareness, it fails to produce consistent offline results despite what some supporters may argue. There are certain instances in which social media has been able to translate online activity into offline results, but they are not the norm. For instance, the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag campaign referenced earlier was able to capitalize on its media attention and induce those in power positions to finally respond to the incident. The “#BringBackOurGirls [hashtag campaign] has prompted physical protests, both within Nigeria and around the world, which in turn has stirred Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan to promise, ‘wherever these girls are, we'll get them out’ as well as encouraging the Obama administration to announce that they would be ‘sending military officials and hostage negotiators to Nigeria to aid in the recovery efforts’” (Gibson). Due to the governmental awareness of the global audience surrounding the kidnappings, a response to the incident was finally elicited that promised action. Furthermore, when the government failed to retrieve the girls as promised social media provided a platform for those Nigerian citizens invested in the original campaign to advocate for the removal of the sitting president, Goodluck Jonathan. A video was posted by one of the founding members of the #BringBackOurGirls movement Hadiza Bala Usman “calling Nigerians to go to the polls for the presidential election on March 28, 2015 and to overthrow Jonathan and the People’s Democratic Party” (Carter Olson 775). These leaders sought a change in government, believing that perhaps a new regime would finally be able to return the girls to their homes and ensure the safety of the rest of their citizens. In the end, their campaign was successful and Goodluck Jonathan became the first sitting president to be defeated in a Nigerian election. He was succeeded by General Muhammadu Buhari, a candidate who commented on the embarrassing mishandling of the kidnappings before the election. These votes acted as a form of protest in which the #BringBackOurGirls community in Nigeria declared that “if the government would not heed their daily cries for the return of the Chibok schoolgirls, then they would find a government that would take a stance against Boko Haram” hence General Buhari’s appointment (Carter Olson 775). During his first term as president, General Buhari began to make greater efforts to search for the missing girls even allowing the organizers of the Bring Back Our Girls campaign to meet with him at his office. Here, social media was able to translate its online support into real world change. 

Despite the offline activity witnessed with the #BringBackOurGirls movement, social media can still not be held as an effective means of activism. While social media can allow activists to establish and organize a protest within a matter of minutes, “easier to mobilize does not always mean easier to achieve goals” (Tufekci).  Support can be shown and protests can be held, but it is never guaranteed that they will translate into change or that these concerns raised will not fall on deaf ears. There is also the risk that the attention and passion for a cause will fade just or almost as quickly as it flourished since that is the way with social media. Topics tend to circulate and stay at the forefront of the public’s mind until progress begins to slow and the next big thing appears asking for social media backing. With such a short attention span to battle against, it is nearly impossible for social media campaigns to grab a hold of any concrete changes. According to the current cycle the hashtag will begin, support will be forthcoming, action will be promised, progress will slow, and attention will fade. The Save Darfur Cause Facebook page acts as a prime example of the limited timeframe attributed to each campaign. Researchers found that support for the cause—donations and the recruit of new members to the group—experienced a maximum in the months directly following its inception in May 2007. The surge in donations and “rates of increase [began to slow] as early as the end of 2007 and had largely plateaued by the end of the data collection period” in January of 2010 (Gray 3). Even in the name of a cause as large as Save Darfur—a cause that aimed to bring an end to a period of genocide—could only maintain a fleeting spark of support before fading out of the public’s view. It is for this reason that social media must be viewed as an ineffective means of activism. 

While it may seem enticing for charities and countless other organizations to carry out their agendas online, their expectations for success will be left unmet. Social media, while beneficial as a tool for raising awareness, is ineffective in producing meaningful offline activity. Despite the increasingly digitalized nature of society, social media does not appear to be the most effective medium for initiating activism. Instead, social media’s public nature tends to turn users into slacktivists—users who demonstrate their support through online measures alone with no attempt to assist the cause beyond the screen—rather than activists. Until a method can be found that encourages users to not see social media as the end all be all of activism, but rather as a launching pad for future action, social media cannot be the main method through which activism is carried out if these attempts wish to be successful offline. 
