Slacktivism – Because it’s Easy to Praise Yourself for Doing Next to Nothing

Earlier this week, the internet seemed to explode with a viral campaign launched by Invisible Children, a charity organization, that is aiming to bring about the arrest of Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony.

Shortly after the Stop Kony campaign began to gain attention, Facebook feeds were overrun with links to the video as well as to the group’s website.  #StopKony and “Invisible Children” were both trending topics on Twitter for several days. 

And all Invisible Children had to do to bring attention to their cause was release a video that described who Kony is and what the group plans to do in terms of arresting him. 

Stop Kony is not the first, nor will it be the last, activist campaign to be spread via social media websites.  Chances are it will eventually fall to the wayside just as quickly as it spread, just like all those that came before it.  Even now the number of posts have diminished greatly and it has fallen out of Twitter’s trending topics.  This is just days after the campaign first gained notice. 

Social media activism can do a lot of good; there is no question about that.  A recent example of the good social media can do in raising awareness is the revolutions that took place in several countries around the Middle East.   

Unfortunately, such good stemming from social media activism is the exception rather than the rule.  Most often, social media activism accomplishes little if anything at all besides opening peoples’ eyes to issues they might not otherwise be aware of.   That sounds great on paper but often there is little connection between the issue and the methods to bring awareness. 

Changing one’s profile picture to a cartoon does not actively raise awareness about child abuse, for instance.  No one would even know what was going on if not for an accompanying status urging others to do the same.  It also does nothing to help combat the problem, which often occurs. 

When the campaign does go further and proposes a solution to the problem that solution is often misinformed, useless or downright dangerous.  This is evident in the Kony campaign, where Invisible Children’s solution is not informed by anyone actually trained to handle such situations nor is it taking the Ugandan people’s wishes into account.   

Because social media activism requires little effort or detailed and multiple sources of information in order to pass on to others, it is often called faux activism or slacktivism. 

Reposting, retweeting, reblogging and sharing posts does help to raise awareness about various issues around the world.  Unfortunately, it does so with as little effort as possible and usually does not lead to further action from many people who see or share it. 

The other troubling issue with social media activism is that few people take the time to research the cause they are promoting to others.  Many people see a video, a link to an article, a picture and then decide it is important because everyone else said so and pass it along.  It takes much less time to click some sort of “share” button than it does to run a search in Google and start reading up on both the cause and the organization promoting it. 

Of course there are those who see the latest campaign and do go on to research the issue before determining that it is worthwhile to pass along to their friends and other connections on social media websites.  These are also the people who will more likely remember the issue after it has fallen off of the social media radar. 

Donating to and otherwise supporting a charity or awareness group is a kind and unselfish thing to do.  But there needs to be some sort of personal filter for those groups that garner one’s support and those that do not.  It is irresponsible and unhelpful to pass on a group’s cause simply because it comes across one’s radar and appears to have a nice message on the outside.  Any group can manipulate people to believe giving them support is worthwhile. 

What these groups cannot do is manipulate the research and criticisms around them to fully support them.  Doing a little bit of research before supporting a cause will save yourself and your friends from throwing support behind a questionable cause.