Archive for October 19th, 2009

One of the most pressing topics in the digital activism debate is that of slacktivism, a “pejorative term that describes “feel-good” measures, in support of an issue or social cause, that have little or no practical effect other than to make the person doing it feel satisfaction. The acts also tend to require little personal effort from the slacktivist.”

Livestrong wristbands or green-tinted avatars are some prime examples of what Evgeny Morozov calls “the ideal type of activism for a lazy generation”. He worries that the same lowered transaction costs that were supposed to make activism more accessible are, in fact, displacing effective models of change:

“The real issue here is whether the mere availability of the “slacktivist” option is likely to push those who in the past might have confronted the regime in person with demonstrations, leaflets, and labor organizing to embrace the Facebook option and join a gazillion online issue groups instead. If this is the case, then the much-touted tools of digital liberation are only driving us further away from the goal of democratization and building global civil society.”

But placing political importance on every politically-inclined action misses the motivation behind it. Much of the involvement in what is seen as digital activism should, instead, be seen through the lens of social activity.

Fred Stutzman noted this while examining the success of the Students Against Facebook News Feed, a group that garnered hundreds of thousands of members and encouraged Facebook management to implement significant changes in one of their most important site updates:

In the Facebook, groups are arbitrary affiliation vectors. Groups can be whimsical, such as a group named after a movie quote, or serious, such as a group dedicated to volunteering. Groups are costless to join, and they simply require a click of the mouse to join. Many users partake in a large number of groups; groups are generally thought of as a low-involvement way to make identity statements.

Certainly many of the group members disliked the changes to Facebook, but this is unlikely to be the only, or even the predominant, motivating factor for “slacktivists.” Instead, as Stutzman mentions, these digitally mediated acts are ways to craft an identity. As danah boyd writes in her essay on teens’ use of social networking sites [PDF], these sites “are providing teens with a space to work out their identity and status, make sense of cultural cues, and negotiate public life.” Joining the Barack Obama for President group or tinting your Twitter avatar green may do little to actually beat McCain or Ahmadinejad, but that is not the motivation for many of the clicks. It isn’t, as Evgeny writes, that “our digital efforts make us feel very useful and important but have zero social impact.” Instead, it is that the digital acts are innately social that they have impact, but for important personal social interests, not necessarily wider societal goals.

To be fair, the widespread misinterpretation of digitally mediated actions isn’t just due to the skeptics who rightly point out that traditional power structures still matter. The digital activism adherents also place too much emphasis on the case studies like the recent Trafigura kerfuffle where Twitter hashtags seemed to play an important role. They look at cases like Students Against Facebook New Feed and see a political act where much of the action was, in fact, motivated by personal social motives. Mainstream media stories that breathlessly count the number of group members or new trending topics on Twitter are to blame, as well.

Humans are diversely motivated beings, and often these motivations are mundane or vain; it’s important to recall this while celebrating or vilifying next week’s digital activism case study.

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