Yes
Freddie Hopkinson
At the height of the Sydney Café siege in December, Rachel Jacobs wrote a Facebook post describing how she had offered solidarity to a Muslim woman intimidated into removing her hijab on the train. Within two hours, there were over 40,000 tweets using the hashtag #IllRideWithYou.
By offering their company on public transport across Australia, tweeters showed their support for the Muslim community and their rights to freedom of identity. At a moment when Australians could have easily scapegoated the Muslim community, social media activism moved the Australian public to show solidarity and understanding.
It demonstrated how much Australians care about multiculturalism and freedom of expression. Through online activism, a global movement proved the gunman wrong: community ties were far too strong to be broken by senseless violence.
The growth of social media over the last 20 years has revolutionised the way communities interact with each other. Through Twitter, Facebook and other platforms, almost all of us can get in touch with the latest news instantly. Like the invention of the printing press, this media revolution has undoubtedly reshaped our social discourse. Entirely new international dialogues about concerns for the future of our planet are being opened up through the Facebook pages of organisations like Amnesty International and Greenpeace. More than ever, people are being given the chance to express their visions for a better future.
Not every revolution set in motion by a new generation of media-savvy activists has been successful. We need only look at the horrific consequences of the Arab Spring for the people of Egypt, Libya, and Syria to begin to doubt the merits of social media activism. In Ukraine too, it is easy to draw a direct link between the optimistic young bloggers of the February 2014 revolution and the bloodshed we see today. Social media campaigns have been pivotal catalysts in the development of unrest in many regions of the world, but that doesn’t mean that the form of media itself is inherently bad.
Looking back to the social media campaigns of January and February 2011 in Egypt, it is hard for us to deny the constructive vision of young bloggers calling for democracy in a nation deprived of it for so long. The sentiments of these activists may well have been hijacked by both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian army, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they weren’t a force for positive change.
Most of all, social media activism should be seen as a force for good as it makes politicians of every persuasion listen more closely to the concerns of the people. Rulers may well choose to ignore the demands of social media campaigners, but in the Twenty-First Century, it has become very hard for them to claim ignorance. At the last UK general election, figures as diverse as Gordon Brown and Michael Gove rushed to address the concerns of Internet activists on Mumsnet. Through the complaints of Mumsnet bloggers, social media redirected politicians back towards the concerns of the ordinary voter.
Ultimately, social media activism expands public debates on issues that matter to us. The consequences of these debates may not always be positive, but better that they be had rather than side-lined. As a result of social media activism, the Twenty-First Century is becoming an era when ordinary communities can affect change, and be heard like never before.
No
Lucjan Kaliniecki
The Internet has made a lot of things very easy. 50 years ago, it was inconceivable that anyone could order anything they pleased, know about everything or communicate with anyone, and do all this within such a short amount of time. To say that the Internet has revolutionised our society is an understatement.
We must be cautious, however, when it comes to considering what the Internet actually does. It doesn’t create the products that we can buy or the knowledge we can find on it. Rather, it gives us a very convenient way of doing the things that humanity had already been doing for a very long time.
Another activity we’ve been doing for a very long time, and something we are pretty good at, is complaining about the things we don’t like and seeking to change them. The process of change and adaptation is more often than not a difficult one, and getting things done takes a lot of grafting and personal effort.
That said, human beings, whilst ingenious, are also pretty lazy. We often don’t implement changes because it would be too much effort to do so. This is good and bad: we human beings need a certain degree of consistency to be comfortable, but glaring injustices can go unchallenged due to our lethargy.
What better galvanising force for our social lassitude, then, than the remarkable tool that is the internet? In the same way that gaining knowledge and trading goods has been accelerated, so too can the very mechanisms of social change. We can be made aware of causes and pledge our support for them at the click of a button. It couldn’t be easier.
But what does clicking that button actually do? What connection does a Facebook ‘like’ or a Twitter ‘retweet’ provide between the social media activist and the cause itself?
I’d argue that in fact it doesn’t actually do that much at all. We may feel that we have helped a cause and done our bit, but in reality the minimal amount of effort we have expended in doing so will only be matched by a small change for the cause in question. At best this is harmless, the impact minimal, our actions go unnoticed. Even here, though, the faux sense of benevolence just shields us further from the worthy causes we purportedly support.
But at worst it may prevent us from actually taking any meaningful action. Where before we may have felt guilty for not taking the time and effort to help others, a feeling that may have compelled us to do something, now we can assuage that feeling of guilt through perfunctory actions such as sharing a Facebook post or signing an online petition. We fill our personal good deed quota and get on with our lives, even though our actions have had little impact.
In this sense, social media activism is self-serving and vapid when used as a means to an end. As I have said, the Internet does not do anything new for us. It provides a more convenient way to do things we’ve always done. In this way, as a tool, the Internet has allowed us to be aware of causes and issues of which we may previously have been unaware. This is good, but it does not negate the fact that a real effort must be made in order to achieve real change in the real world.
Social media activism has meant we often mistake the means for the end. It should be used as a starting point for achieving tangible change, the basis on which hard campaigning is built, but unfortunately it has instead become the proxy for it.
