Congratulations, You've Shared a Black Square! (Now What?) (*)
Keywords: digital citizenship, performative activism, political engagement
Digital citizenship has evolved far beyond basic online etiquette to encompass complex forms of political engagement and activism through social media platforms. As Choi and Cristol (2021) argue, we need an intersectional lens to understand how digital citizenship operates across diverse identities and power structures. This perspective becomes particularly relevant when examining the rise of hashtag publics as sites of political mobilization.
Hashtag activism has emerged as a powerful tool for marginalized voices, exemplified by movements like #ShoutYourAbortion. Kim and Lee (2022) demonstrate how this hashtag created a visual counter-narrative to abortion stigma, allowing individuals to reclaim agency over their stories. However, this raises a provocative question: Do these digital spaces truly democratize activism, or do they merely create the illusion of meaningful political engagement?
The platformization of social activism presents a double-edged sword. While platforms enable rapid mobilization, they simultaneously shape and constrain how activism manifests. As Duffy, Poell, and Nieborg (2019) observe, platform architectures influence creative expression, labor practices, and civic participation. This leads us to question whether activists are using platforms or whether platforms are using activists - commodifying their labor while capitalizing on their engagement.
The Australian experience with #auspol illustrates both the potential and limitations of hashtag publics. While it has become an indispensable forum for political discourse in Australia, critics argue that it often devolves into polarized echo chambers rather than spaces for deliberative democracy (Bogle 2016). Sunstein (2018) warns that social media algorithms create "filter bubbles" that reinforce existing beliefs while isolating users from contrary viewpoints, undermining the ideal of a shared public sphere.
These echo chambers contribute to what Zeitzoff (2020) calls "selective activism," where certain causes gain traction while others remain invisible - regardless of their objective importance or urgency. This phenomenon was powerfully illustrated in a recent critique of the "social justice trend cycle" on YouTube, which highlighted how media attention and algorithms determine which crises receive public engagement, creating disparities in awareness and action for equally serious global issues.
Perhaps most concerning is how platform affordances reshape political participation itself. Theocharis et al. (2022) demonstrate that social media platforms fundamentally alter how citizens engage with politics, often privileging performative activism over sustained engagement. The YouTube analysis reinforces this concern, noting how social media incentivizes superficial engagement for social approval rather than substantive action.
This performative quality of digital citizenship aligns with what Banet-Weiser (2018) terms "empowerment marketplaces," where political expression becomes another form of personal branding rather than meaningful civic engagement. In these spaces, as the video suggests, the quality of engagement is sacrificed for quantity, with potentially harmful consequences when activists amplify messages without adequate information or context.
As Olofinlua (2020) notes, online advocacy organizations have transformed political engagement, but we must ask whether these new forms of participation are substantively different from traditional modes or merely superficial adaptations. Digital citizenship in the age of hashtag activism thus presents us with a crucial challenge: How can we harness the mobilizing power of platforms while ensuring that this activism translates into meaningful social and political transformation beyond the echo chambers and performance of social media?
(*) Refer to a specific moment in social media activism history - the "Blackout Tuesday" phenomenon that occurred in June 2020 during the Black Lives Matter protests following George Floyd's murder. During this campaign, millions of Instagram users posted plain black squares with the hashtag #BlackoutTuesday as a gesture of solidarity.
Reference list
Banet-Weiser, S 2018, Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny, Duke University Press, United States.
Bogle, A 2016, ‘#auspol: The Twitter hashtag Australia can’t live without’, Mashable, viewed <https://mashable.com/article/twitter-australia-auspol>.
Choi, M & Cristol, D 2021, ‘Digital Citizenship with Intersectionality Lens: Towards Participatory Democracy Driven Digital Citizenship Education’, Theory Into Practice, vol. 60, no. 4, pp. 361–370, viewed <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00405841.2021.1987094>.
Duffy, BE, Poell, T & Nieborg, DB 2019, ‘Platform Practices in the Cultural Industries: Creativity, Labor, and Citizenship’, Social Media + Society, vol. 5, no. 4, p. 205630511987967.
Kim, Y & Lee, S 2022, ‘#ShoutYourAbortion on Instagram: Exploring the Visual Representation of Hashtag Movement and the Public’s Responses’, SAGE Open, vol. 12, no. 2, p. 215824402210933.
Olofinlua, T 2020, ‘Digital citizenship and political engagement: the challenge from online political campaigning and advocacy organizations’, Information, Communication & Society, pp. 1–3.
Theocharis, Y, Boulianne, S, Koc-Michalska, K & Bimber, B 2022, ‘Platform affordances and political participation: how social media reshape political engagement’, West European Politics, vol. 46, no. 4, pp. 788–811.