Is Social Media the Future of Activism?
Image by David Schwarzenberg from Pixabay
Social activism has come a long way since Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the doors of the Catholic Church. In the past century, people have rioted in the streets, chained themselves to trees, and staged strikes as forms of activism. The recent development of social media has transformed self-expression in numerous ways. Because of this, the mechanisms for social change have also changed. How would the Civil Rights activists of the 1960s react to the use of TikTok as a mouthpiece for social change? Social media has created platforms for infinite issues to get their moment in the limelight, allowing marginalized groups the ability to voice their concerns and gain visibility. However, it does beg the question if real change can come out of social media activism.
Through its facilitation of globalization, social media has become a major tenet in modern-day activism. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok give voice to the powerless as their accessibility to the public is unmatched. Messages from across the globe can now reach millions just with a few clicks of a mouse. Social media has also become incorporated into the planning of social movements. In the Arab Spring protests of 2011 and the Euromaidan movement of 2013, organizers used Twitter and Facebook to coordinate protest locations (Gladwell, 2010). Using these platforms not only helps from an organizational standpoint, but they also act as a form of accountability on the global stage. By documenting issues on social media, protestors are exposing injustice to the world and forcing people to interact and come to terms with said injustice.
Social media has been praised for their ability to lift up voices and facilitate protests, but these platforms do not build the strong relationships necessary for protests. In the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, protestors were strongly linked to each other by their relationships with each other and shared goals (Gladwell, 2010). Many of those that participated in sit-ins were friends that had been planning the protests for months. The Civil Rights Movement was able to use these strong link relationships to plan and execute long-term protests. In online activism, protestors form a network rather than a hierarchy. Without a hierarchy of relationships, it becomes challenging to plan complex protests and commit to them. Social media is able to spread awareness on issues and protests, but it does not provide the proper foundation to hold people accountable to fully participate in the movement for the necessary period of time.
In response to greater reliance on social media in protests, some governments have begun to surveil and control the internet heavily. Social media can only be a powerful platform when people have access to the internet or reliable news sources. To combat protestors' use of social media, governments use their influence to censor content and spread misinformation. This can effectively shut down the role of social media in activism, leaving the people without this avenue of forcing change.
Social media’s influence on social status has also left many questioning what motivates people to speak on issues. Has activism become a way to stay socially relevant? With social media, it has become easy to present the façade of bringing about change without doing anything in real life to make an impact. While it is vital to circulate information on issues, there must be action beyond an Instagram infographic. With the evolving personalization of social media, people have now become trapped in their own personal echo chambers. Rather than seeing posts from a variety of sources, social media platforms have begun to curate feeds to the users’ preferences. This began as a marketing tool but has now evolved into a mechanism for misinformation and confirmation bias. On social media, people will only interact with what they agree with rather than being exposed to varying points of view. This makes spreading marginalized messaging much harder.
Social media has changed society in an infinite number of ways and will continue to do so. How we adapt to these changes will determine our futures. In the face of cruelty, many have turned to social media to voice their concerns and fight for change. These platforms have changed activism, for both good and bad. It is important to acknowledge the way that social media has opened up the world, allowing us to learn more about each other than ever before. With that in mind, we must also be conscious of the ways that social media falls short. When striving for change, our power doesn’t come from how many likes our post gets, but rather from our commitment to the change itself. It is easy to just hit repost and feel as if a change will come, but only with real human connections can we combat issues in the world.
References
Gladwell, M. (2010, September 27). Small Change. The New Yorker. Retrieved February 9, 2023, from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell