Activism or Slacktivism?
In this day of age, activism is getting rarer. Although campaigns, ideologies and problems can come to the attention of the world much quicker than it has in the past, people tend to believe that raising awareness is taking an active part in the solution of said problems. While liking and sharing content can in fact raise awareness, it does not constitute as activism, it is instead known as "Slacktivism". This essay will focus on the infamous Kony 2012 and the more recent ALS Ice bucket challenge, and how, although they can raise global awareness, this form of "activism" rarely results in the solution to the problem, with most campaigns fading out of the public eye over time.
"Activism: The doctrine or practice of vigorous action or involvement as a means ofachieving political or other goals, sometimes by demonstrations, protests, etc." (Dictionary.com, 2014). This is the definition of activism, note the use of the words vigorous action or involvement. Being an activist involves being passionately engaged with the subject matter, going out of the way to raise awareness and do whatever it takes to fix the problem or obtain the legal rights, for example there are many gay rights activists in taking a risk by going out into the streets to join rallies and protests so that governments around the world introduce the right for citizens of the same gender to marry. Slacktivism: Actions performed via the Internet in support of a political or social cause but regarded as requiring little time or involvement. "Slacktivism is not activism. While slacktivism may raise the awareness of a topic to the public, it doesn't do much else." (Oxforddictionaries.com, 2014). Slacktivism is defined by how little effort it takes from the "slacktivist" in question. Liking, commenting, and sharing videos or statuses on social networking sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr without donating to the cause and/or physically attending a protest or rally, cannot be called effective activism.
The most notable online campaign is the notorious Kony 2012, a perfect example of slacktivism. Kony 2012's video campaign is the most viral video ever (Gregory, 2012). The video was made by "Invisible Children Inc." and outlined the "secret war" that was happening in east and central Africa by "The Lord's Resistance Army" a.k.a LRA (Invisible Children, 2014). The video outlines what the LRA has been doing for the past 30 years and uses the story of a young boy named Jacob. Kony 2012 tugs at the heartstrings and begs for the support of the American people to help spread the word, which it eventually did, seemingly overnight the video became some more than a phenomenon, as of this day, the video has just under one billion views, sitting at around 99,705,903 views. While this campaign raised a staggering amount of awareness of the LRA and its warlord leader; Joseph Kony, it didn't hold up. By the end of 2012 almost everybody had forgotten about the campaign, leading many to believe that those who shared the campaign did it because so many others did, to a large majority the campaign lost most of its meaning just as fast as it gained it. Did we ever catch Kony?
More recent examples of online campaigns haven't quite had the same success as Kony 2012 did, however they did raise awareness for the causes they stood for. The most recent viral awareness raiser is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, where a person pours a bucket of ice cold water over themselves. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord (Alsa.org, 2014). This means that eventually the motor neurons, that give the brain the ability to control muscle movement, die leaving long term sufferers ultimately paralyzed. The Ice Bucket Challenge (IBC) was introduced sometime during 2014 and has become a popular way of raising awareness, even celebrities have recorded their IBC and pledged large quantities of money to ALS research. While this may seem like activism as these people are doing something for this cause, it's still not quite legitimate activism. While celebrities are doing the "challenge", nominating other celebrities and donating money, most people doing this are opting to pour the freezing cold water over themselves rather than pledging money to the cause. This choice makes the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge nothing more than next level slacktivism, where instead of being active towards the cause and donating towards research. Some people nominate who they want to do the ICB and give them a timeframe to complete the challenge, and if this requirement is not met, they must donate, effectively making this a race against time to avoid having to donate. While pouring a bucket of ice over oneself can be taken as a course of action, it does not help ALS researchers in finding a cure for the rare disease.
In conclusion, online activism can fairly effectively increase the awareness of campaigns and causes, however, whether or not action is taken is up to the individual, linking, commenting on and sharing ALS Ice Bucket challenge videos, using the Hashtag Bringbackourgirls, taking "selfies" with no makeup on or changing your Facebook profile picture to a pink equal sign cannot be activism. Activism requires the "Vigorous action" of an individual towards a particular cause. These examples showcase the definition of slacktivism, little effort put into the actions of these "Slacktivist". In short, if the people of today feel as though sharing a status about a rare or deadly illness, pouring ice over themselves or liking a video about a "secret war" in another country, then everyone has become a Slacktivist...