4. #GetUp or #GetOff? Digital activism or “slacktivism”?
With the rapid digital technological advances in how we share, store, access and view information, we are led to believe that this will improve our lives. Mossberger et al. (2008, p. 1) refers to the potential benefit for society to facilitate membership and participation from the new digital tools as digital citizenship.
Habermas defines the public sphere as a place where private individuals come together as a “public” for the purpose of increasing critical knowledge, which in effect lead to political change. (Habermas cited in Kruse et al. 2018, p.62).
While Habermas argues that the public sphere does not exist in modernity, largely due to the influence of money through corporate interests within mass media, he claims it can be revitalised with speech communities. Speech communities can be referred to as communicative action that is respectful and open without intimidation and aimed at a common goal of finding the truth (cited in Kruse et al. p.63).
I have the technological means to participate in issues affecting my society, and care about the state of the world that I will leave behind to my children and their families and so on. These convictions led me to the GetUp! site, signing an online petition to stop the Adani coal mine. GetUp, as its website proclaims, is a not for profit organisation, powered by the values of every day people coming together to do whatever it takes to make extraordinary change. This is done online, offline, and with the guidance of employed expert strategists, and in the media (GetUp! 2019).
Shirky argues that social media has revitalised the public sphere, and the networked population has more opportunities to engage in public speech and to take collective action. Although, he admits that it is difficult to keep online conversations dissolving into name-calling or blather (Shirly cited in Kruse et al. 2018 , p.64)
So, could this explain Micah White’s view around the changes to activism and networked populations of similar minded people? White, who co-founded the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 (he now considers a failure), believes the expectations of participants have also shifted, likening protests to going a show or concert.
"We've started doing these large spectacular marches, whose goal is not to actually overthrow the government or anything like that, but to be a beautiful experience," (White cited in Funnel 2017).
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-25/activism-is-broken-heres-how-we-fix-it/9077372
Gladwell (cited in Jericho 2012, p.257), a critic of the role social media has on effective activism, agrees that good grassroots campaigns is about action, and not playing it safe. Slacktivism – a pejorative term for the ‘feel good’ measures of activism surrounding social and political issues, is argued by Harvey (2014, p 282) to generate a false sense of accomplishment. Harvey adds that despite negative connotations as lazy and ineffective, since the 2000’s social media networks have played a key role in recruiting various activist groups.
With GetUp’s claims of doing “whatever it takes to make extraordinary change”, I’m not convinced it stacks up against current individualism that promotes the generating of one’s own wealth and capital that exists in society.
References
Funnel, A 2017, ‘From slacktivism to ‘feel good’ protests, activism is broken: Here’s how we fix it’, Future Tense ABC News, 25 October, viewed 24 January 2019, <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-25/activism-is-broken-heres-how-we-fix-it/9077372>
Getup 2019, viewed 26 January 2019, <https://www.getup.org.au/>
Harvey, K 2014, Encyclopedia of Social Media and Politics, CQ Press.
Jericho, G 2012, 'How many votes are there on Twitter?', in The Rise of the Fifth Estate, Scribe, Victoria, Australia.
Lisa M. Kruse, Dawn R. Norris & Jonathan R. Flinchum (2018) Social Media as a Public Sphere? Politics on Social Media, The Sociological Quarterly, 59:1, 62-84, DOI: 10.1080/00380253.2017.1383143.
Mossberger, K., Tolbert, C., & McNeal, R 2008, Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.