Beyond Slacktivism

Political Participation on Social Media

James Dennis

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783030008444
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica

Beyond Slacktivism examines how routine social media use shapes political participation. Many commentators have argued that activism has been compromised by "slacktivism, " a pejorative term that refers to supposedly inauthentic, low-threshold forms of engagement online. Dennis argues that this critique has an overly narrow focus. He offers a novel theoretical framework—the continuum of participation—to help illuminate how and why citizens use social networking sites to consume news, discuss civic matters, and engage in politics. This idea is explored in two interrelated settings. Firstly, in an activist context, through an ethnography of the campaigning organisation 38 Degrees. Secondly, within day-to-day life, by combining evidence of behaviour online with reflective diaries. Drawing on this rich data on individual-level attitudes and behaviours, Dennis challenges slacktivism as a judgement on contemporary political action. Beyond Slacktivism provides an account of how the seemingly mundane everyday use of social media can be beneficial to democracy.

© The Author(s) 2019

James DennisBeyond SlacktivismInterest Groups, Advocacy and Democracy Serieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00844-4_1

Begin Abstract

1. “It’s Better to Light a Candle Than to Fantasise About a Sun”

James Dennis¹

(1)

Film, Media and Communication, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK

James Dennis

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Episode 1: #Kony2012

On 5 March 2012, Invisible Children, an American non-governmental organisation (NGO), released a 30-minute video entitled Kony 2012. The video was part of an ongoing campaign to raise awareness of the atrocities committed by Ugandan rebel Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and increase pressure on the US federal government to ramp up their efforts to capture Kony . Featuring Hollywood-style editing and dramatic imagery, the video’s primary focus was to highlight the role of Kony in the recruitment of children to fight in the LRA’s militia. Released on YouTube and Vimeo simultaneously, the video took just six days to reach 100 million views, faster than the likes of Lady Gaga’s video for Bad Romance and Susan Boyle’s “iconic” performance on Britain’s Got Talent (Wasserman 2012). The campaign witnessed an unprecedented level of sharing on the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter. The hashtag, #Kony2012, featured in a phenomenal 1200 tweets per minute at the campaign’s peak (Lotan 2012), with over 12 million mentions of Kony on the service in total throughout March (Fox 2012). This was a result of the video’s explicit encouragement of individuals to share the campaign within their online networks. In particular, those watching were asked to lobby a number of “elites” in order to raise awareness. These elites were not, as we may expect, exclusively politicians, but twenty so-called culturemakers, cultural icons with an extensive reach and influence across large networks online. This included the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, and—as Fig. 1.1 illustrates—the pop star Rihanna.

Fig. 1.1

A tweet from Rihanna in support of #Kony2012

(Source Rihanna [2012])

Invisible Children raised over $5 million in just 48 hours. Overnight, the campaign put Joseph Kony, and Invisible Children co-founder Jason Russell, firmly at the forefront of popular discussion; the questionable impact of low-effort digital activism followed.

Debate ensued regarding the controversial narrative that some suggested was promoted through the video, that by simply clicking “share” or “retweet” you could make an observable difference in the world. This narrative spoke directly to an individual’s sense of personal efficacy, “the feeling that individual political action does have, or can have, an impact on political processes” (Campbell et al. 1954: 187). A number of interconnected critiques quickly emerged in response to the video. Grant Oyston, a political science student at Acadia University, Canada, published a Tumblr post challenging the notion that by sharing a video or buying a wristband an individual could contribute to the political aim of justice against Kony (Oyston 2012). This argument gained increasing momentum as a number of bloggers began to delve into the financial accounts of Invisible Children; less than a third of its revenues from 2011 was spent on direct services in Uganda, while a significant proportion was used for promotional materials (Carvin 2012; Kersten 2012; Oyston 2012). Ultimately, the campaign was deemed unsuccessful. It failed to turn the extraordinary mass of online activity into offline mobilisation since the “Cover the Night” campaign—a call for activists to cover their neighbourhoods with images of the wanted warlord—amounted to little more than a few posters in major cities. The campaign failed to turn awareness into observable political change.

In terms of raising awareness and facilitating online discussion, #Kony2012 was a success, but for some commentators, this came at a high price. The campaign caused damage to public knowledge due to an emotionally provocative, but crucially misinformed, campaign message. The overly simplistic narrative used obfuscated the complex role of militias in Uganda, with potentially disturbing consequences. For example, Zuckerman (2012) argues that the video provided tacit support for Yoweri Museveni, a dictatorial leader renowned for his poor track record on civil rights. Furthermore, it propagated an ever-present ideal within advocacy that Africa is helpless and dependent on the West to act as its saviour (Drumbl 2012; Fisher 2012).

Rather than genuine commitment, the driving force of the widespread sharing of the video online was claimed to be political self-indulgence; self-interested political engagement intended to fulfil one’s personal desire to have political impact or to boost one’s feelings of personal efficacy. As Fig. 1.2 illustrates, a popular meme widely shared in response to the video, taking part was easy; just click a button and become an activist. This phenomenon is known as slacktivism, and this contentious concept forms the starting point of this book.

Fig. 1.2

A meme posted in response to #Kony2012

These questions surrounding the authenticity and impact of social media on political engagement form the basis of the slacktivist critique, which has recently emerged in popular commentary about the Internet and politics. It refers to low-threshold forms of political engagement online, such as signing an e-petition, “liking” a Facebook page, or changing one’s avatar on Twitter in support of a cause. These forms of digital micro-activism are perceived by many to have an insignificant effect on politics because they are characterised not by an ethic of solidarity or an individual’s pre-existing political ideology and commitment, but merely the simulation of positive deeds or, worse still, inauthenticity (Morozov 2009, 2011; Gladwell 2010).

Set in the context of these recent debates about the rise of slacktivism, and due to the ubiquity of social media in everyday life, this research aims to explore empirically what effect the routine use of social networking sites has on political engagement and citizenship in Britain. This book examines slacktivism as a reflection of, and judgement on, this routine use of social media. This conceptual approach is adopted due to the popularity of the term to describe actions that a typical user may be expected to perform day-to-day. However, how accurate is the slacktivist critique in representing these everyday political experiences? I now move to the second episode from my ethnographic fieldwork that tells a remarkably different story. As Tufekci (2014) notes, “these symbolic, epistemic acts online—derided as “slacktivism”—may well be among the most important effects of the internet.”

Episode 2: Don’t Limit Our Access to GPs!

On 14 May 2013, the Conservative Policy Forum (CPF) issued a 12-page discussion paper to their national membership. The CPF is a policy discussion network formed of 250 local groups, which provides grass-roots members of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom (UK) with a role in shaping party policy. This particular survey sought the opinions of party members on the ways in which local healthcare provision could be improved, with a focus on dentistry services and the care provided by local doctors’ surgeries (Conservative Policy Forum 2013). The briefing paper included a list of statements on which respondents were asked to identify their level of agreement across a five-point scale. One such statement asked if “there should be no annual limit to the number of appointments patients can book to see their GP [General Practitioner]” (Conservative Policy Forum 2013: 11). This question was the trigger for a national mobilisation involving over 200,000 citizens.

The following Sunday, May 26, four newspapers covered the briefing paper: the Daily Mail (McCann 2013), the Daily Mirror (Beattie 2013), the Independent (Merrick 2013), and the Daily Telegraph (2013). These articles claimed that the Conservative Party was considering proposals to limit the number of GP appointments that a patient could make in a calendar year. The story prompted condemnation from the Royal College of General Practitioners, the professional body for GPs, and the leading opposition party, the Labour Party. Both argued that the proposal revoked a founding principal of the National Health Service (NHS), that access to treatment should be based on clinical need (Merrick 2013). As one may expect with a topic as politically charged as health care, the proposal was met with a mixture of outrage and disbelief. ¹

On Tuesday morning, May 28, 15 employees sat around a desk in a stylish office space in Farringdon, central London. This small group make up the leadership of 38 Degrees, a non-profit,...