Social Media Activism

Social Media Activism is a subcategory of Media Activism (also known as Digital Activism, Online Activism, Internet Activism and Hashtag Activism) that uses online means of communication and social networking sites to promote political or social change. Activism through the Internet can help organize people, initiate and mobilize crowds, and provide the possibility of organizing events with high levels of engagement, focus and network strength. Sites ranging from Facebook or Twitter to online petitions like Change.org or blogs are the common internet tools used by online activists.

History:

This timeline consists of major events that shaped online activism.

Early Social Media Activism 1990-2000

This timeline highlights major events that have paved the way for and influenced online activism:

Lotus Marketplace-1990 The first recognized online protest occurred in 1990, when raised concerns over consumer privacy led the public to take action against product called the the Lotus Marketplace (developed by Developmental Corporation when consumers found out that the direct-mail marketing database contained the names, contact information, and purchasing behavior of millions of Americans in CD-Rom form. Consumers began organizing through email and message boards in order to contact the software company and be removed from the list. When around 30,000 people had attempted to contact Lotus, the company decided by 1991 not to release the database. See more [here]

MoveOn.Org -1998 Joan Blades and Wes Boyd created an online petition about the Bill Clinton’s impeachment after the public found out about his affair with Monica Lewinsky in 1998. After feeling frustrated with the “ridiculous waste or our nation’s focus” and the partisan warfare happening in Washington D.C. to decide on the impeachment, the petition “Censure President Clinton and Move On to Pressing Issues Facing the Nation”, had collected thousands of signatures within days, helping transform a national conversation. MoveOn.org is now a 5 million-member site that allows participants to propose ideas for political change.

World Trade Organization Protests in Seattle — 1999 In January 1999, the City of Seattle was selected to host the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference in November-December 1999. Months before the conference, concerns about worker’s rights, sustainable economies, environmental and social issues led NGOs, interest groups and individuals to begin organizing through the internet in order to develop strategic routes that blocked streets and set up “dense and diversified communications network[s]” to protest the conference. The Independent Media Center was created by these organizers as a result, and is now a worldwide alternative news source.

Social Media Activism 2000- 2010

There are a number of other events in Social Media Activism worth noting. These include:

California Immigration Protests — 2006

Colombian Las Farc Protests — 2008

"Where is My Vote"- Iran Election Protests- 2009

Arab Spring 2009- Present

Rise of Hacktivism

Wikileaks-2005- Present

Launched in 2006, Wikileaks is a not for profit media organization created to disseminate original documents from anonymous sources and leakers, specializing in “ the analysis and publication of large datasets of censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying and corruption.” Initially, Wikileaks operated as a standard wiki model- a collaborative site where anyone could post or edit materials and chose what materials were accepted. During this period, Wikileaks released several documents relating to Kenya in 2008, specifically about the corruption of former president Daniel Arap Moi, and about the Kenyan death squads. After the release of the of the ‘politically packaged’ “Collateral Murder” video in April 2010, Wikileaks has taken a more political role. Wikileaks now works with news organizations to analyze to “analyze, redact and release” cables, which are confidential messages that’s meant to be accessible to other diplomatic and military staff with the appropriate security clearance. This information is released in a curated manner and is used to illustrate a point of view.

Anonymous-2004- Present

Originally from the online bulletin boards from the website 4chan.org, the group Anonymous are a group of online activists or “hacktivists” that follow no particular ideology or set of guidelines. They perform many common hacking techniques like DDOS attacks, or Distributed Denial of Service attacks, making the websites crash from an overload of malware infections when the flood the website with arbitrary information from a number of different computers that are under their control. In the past they have declared war on ISIS, declared war against Scientology websites, have played a big role in supporting Wikileaks leader Julian Assange,shut down child pornography websites, launched series of DDoS attacks against the Tunisian government during the Arab Spring Protests.

Trends

Social trends are any type of activity that is participated in by society as a whole. With sites like Facebook and Twitter, social trends are not necessarily restricted to one particular region. Through the use of words or phrases that are preceded by a pound sign #, social movements have the potential to reach millions. Trending topics that can be found on the right side of Twitter’s home page reflect the most controversial news, which can include political updates, social events, and entertainment news. It can also push for “Social Media Challenges”. Using the # these challenges are used to encourage people to engage in an activity, for example 2014’sALS Ice Bucket Challenge, where users nominated other users to throw a bucket of ice water on themselves as a way to spread awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as motor neurone disease and in the US as Lou Gehrig's Disease).

Ethics Behind Social Media Activism

Praises

Ability To Make Change

With the ability to reach a wider audience, and with technological advancements like the camera application to record important events, awareness of social and political issues allows people to join in and be informed, join political conversations, assemble communities or campaigns to create change than conventional social movements. Political scientists and communication scholars urged politicians to tap the huge potential of engaging voters and campaigning via social media because those who use social media for political purposes are more likely to vote or to donate to a campaign. Barack Obama’s campaign raised US$500 million dollars of contributions with the help of 35,000 groups organized by My Barack Obama website, the most popular Facebook page, and 1,800 YouTube videos . Of US$1.1 billion raised by the Obama team in the 2012 presidential campaign, US$690 million came from online donations.

Accessibility and Affordability

Internet based activism is more affordable and accessible than conventional activism in the analog world that runs into obstacles like potential danger, harassment, time constraints, location etc. The Resource Mobilization Theory emphasizes the importance of resources in social movement development and success.The theory argues that social movements develop when individuals with grievances are able to mobilize sufficient resources to take action.The emphasis on resources offers an explanation why some discontented/deprived individuals are able to organize while others are not. Being online already gives users access to information, to influence and allows them to enter communities that share common goals. Smartphones have facilitated this participation with the inclusion of internet service on phones.

Education

Social media itself is becoming more and more of a method for education. Whether this be personal posts on Tumblr or sharing political articles on Facebook, social media is a great method in which to scatter information around the world. "As students learn about an issue they care about, their natural instinct is to share their new knowledge and insight with others." As long as the information being shared is fact (which is a large assumption), users of social media will likely be exposed to more and more information. The goal? Find like-minded people and develop opinions together; or come across material that you disagree with, conduct research, and campaign against it! The main goal of social media activism is to educate the public and get them involved.

Critiques

"Slacktivism"

Defined as “the act of showing support for a cause but only truly being beneficial to the egos of people in this so called activism” see more here. Those who criticize Social Media Activism are skeptical of the intentions behind their online activity and social and political movements. Many argue that simply clicking on a link or participating in the hashtag devalues the concern about political or social issues because “liking” “sharing” or “tweeting” a post is a low-cost effort that does not require more thought from the user, unlike the conventional modes of social activism like campaigning, marketing, raising money that required more action and initiative from the protestors. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS describes the term "slacktivist", saying it "posits that people who support a cause by performing simple measures are not truly engaged or devoted to making a change".

Self Promotion and Self-Fulfilment

Online activism has been used as a tool to exercise free speech and inform others of social injustices occurring around the world. While many people have the desire to give back to the community, a factor that plays a role in their participation is the online presence of their friends or followers. Skeptics believe online activism is pushing people to jump “on the bandwagon of social issues to become prominent figures of a movement and it can give those same people a false sense of “being ethical” or “doing what is right” with a post once a week”.

Personal Gains

Online activism is seen as unethical when online petitions that acquire emails sell those email addresses for a profit to other sectors online. While asking for donations for a cause is not seen as unethical, it becomes a problem when only 1% of the donations are going towards the actual cause, while the rest is beign distributed within that organization, since that money is not being invested in social change and action. Political gains through the use of social media activism furthers the skepticism of these critics who believe online activism has been used as a tool to deceive votes, political figures on social media platforms speaking on social issues as a way to gain followers for their campaign concerns many as their is a lack of transparency in their motives.

Fake News and Filter Bubbles

The proliferation of fake news and filter bubbles on social media websites played a role in voters attitudes in the 2016 election cycle. Through the use of Filter Bubbles-the intellectual isolation that can occur when websites make use of algorithms to selectively assume the information a user would want to see, and then give information to the user according to this assumption, "fake news stories" that were in favor or against a candidate to show up on the users social media page and create a false narrative of that candidate or their opponent. For more information see Filter Bubbles

Sabotaging the Movement

According to Columbia University professor Todd Gitlin believes that social media doesn't make a difference: “It also inflates the feeling that the movement is already on top of its environment, that it’s got momentum.” If students observe a popular hashtag circulating their campus and their friend groups, they are perhaps just as likely to participate as think "enough people are already on this bandwagon, I don't need to donate my time to the cause." “Social media are like wisps of oxygen — they get people excited but then they wear out.” If not participation in the movement, perhaps social media activism at least aids the community's education.

Popular Movements

This is an incomplete list of popular hashtag movements categorized by year

Year	Movement	About
2009
	"Where is my vote?" or the Green Movement	The movement was widely seen as a new non-violent, non-utopian and populist paradigm of revolution that infused twenty-first century Internet technology with people street power.
2012
	#Kony2012	Online campaign which aimed to arrest the Ugandan guerrilla group leader and head of the Lord’s Resistance Army Joseph Kony before the end of 2012.
	#BlackLivesMatter	Created after Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman, was acquitted for his crime, and dead 17-year old Trayvon was posthumously placed on trial for his own murder.
2014
	#BringBackOurGirls	276 Chibok girls were abducted on 14 April 2014. 81 returned. 195 still missing.
	#WhyIStayed	Beverley Gooden’s goal was to reverse victim-blaming inspired other women to come forward with traumatic stories, explaining why they stayed.
	#Ferguson	Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot and killed on Aug. 9, 2014, by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in Ferguson. As a result a protests arose all over the country protesting police violence. See more here
	#BlackLivesMatter	Has allowed for millions to join in on the conversation addressing systemic racism and police brutality.
	#UmbrellaRevolution	“Fight for democracy and autonomy, change the pattern of social movements. By all and for all, Umbrella Revolution inspires Hong Kong to revive.”
	#YesAllWomen	The hashtag started by an anonymous user was used to highlight female struggles, which revealed that, although not all men are sexist, all women are affected by sexism.
	ALS Ice Bucket Challenge	Now an annual event to raise awareness and funds to find treatments and a cure for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), it started off as a challenge that went viral in the summer of 2014, having more than 17 million people uploaded their challenge videos to Facebook, watched by 440 million people a total of 10 billion times.
2015
	#LoveWins	On Friday, June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States [SCOTUS] ruled in favor of marriage equality in a 5–4 decision, reaching 6.2 million tweets within 6 hours of the ruling.