I read Malcolm Gladwell’s piece on new media digital activism in the New Yorker and it made some sense to me at first. I’m as skeptical as the next person, and very tired of the ‘slacktivist’ social media campaigns that I come across in the US. However, I think it’s important to note that the problem isn’t in the tools being used by activists/’slacktivists’. The issue goes deeper, and it’s more about context and culture.
A few things that I’m mulling over are:
1) In a repressive environment, using social media tools to organize is just as dangerous and subversive as using ‘traditional’ ways of organizing. Organizers, activists and sympathizers use a combination of tools to participate and to reach specific goals. It doesn’t matter if the tools are digital or not. What matters is whether or not they are effective in the context where they are being employed. Lina over at Context, Culture and Collaboration has a good post on the use of tools to fit the goals.
2) The level of commitment to a cause is in direct proportion to the level of personal risk. i.e., the more committed you are, the higher the personal risk you are willing to take; the higher the personal risk, the more committed activists likely become. In the US context, unless perhaps you are gay or Muslim [update Aug 2014 — “or Black”], there is not a lot of personal risk in uniting or fighting for a cause, and most of the causes that are social media driven do not create any major personal risk to those who join them. I find a lot of US campaigns to be meaningless or misdirected compared to activism in many other places. US-based ‘activism’ campaigns are often more about cause marketing or branding an organization or collecting emails than they are about changing a serious social issue at home or abroad. This is not the fault of the social media tools or of ‘digital activism’, it’s a reflection of US culture, our current values, the organizers behind the causes, and the sociopolitical moment we are living in.
3) Some of the digital media evangelists in the US and in the US media don’t understand enough about grassroots organizing or the sociopolitical contexts in other places to see beneath the social media tools to the networks of engaged, involved people and the broader movements happening off-line. They see social media use and think it’s the core of a movement when in fact it is probably just the only piece of it that they have access to at the global level; it’s the shark’s fin. This comment from Esra’a really got me thinking about that.
When a t-shirt can get you in trouble
When I lived in El Salvador in the early 1990’s, (eg., before social media) political oppression was heavy. During the war, you could get arrested, tortured, or disappeared for something as simple as wearing a political t-shirt; criticizing someone from the ruling political party (ARENA); owning a cassette of Mercedes Sosa, Los Guaraguao, or Silvio Rodriguez; reading a book of poetry by Roque Dalton; or merely gathering in a group or having a meeting. That didn’t stop people from organizing though, both in hierarchical ways and loose networked ways.
In 1994, El Salvador held its first elections since the signing of the Peace Accords. It was the first time that the guerrilla group, the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) was allowed to participate as a political party. It was a hopeful yet dangerous time. Only the bravest came out publicly to show their support for the FMLN, the past 14 years of repression still fresh in everyone’s minds. There were political assassinations of opposition candidates taking place, fears of widespread fraud, concerns from voters that their votes would not really be secret. ARENA had used every media channel it owned (all of them) to warn foreigners that any ‘interference’ in local political issues would get them deported.
I was working with an international organization that was hosting a group of Ecumenical Elections Observers. One day, as part of the orientation program, I took a delegation of the observers to the office of the FMLN to meet with the head of the party, Facundo Guardado. (We had met with leaders from ARENA earlier in the week.) Facundo gave us all FLMN t-shirts.
That afternoon, coming home from work, I was walking down the alley way a couple blocks from my house, the t-shirt in my bag. I heard a couple of motorcycles come up behind me and the familiar ‘ch ch, sssss ssssss, mamacita‘. I was alone in the alleyway, so I quickened my pace to reach the little open area where the Barrio women would sit for a minute to catch their breath when coming back from the market with their heavy baskets and the older men would gather to play checkers under the trees in the afternoons. Before I could get there, one of the men pulled his motorcycle up in front of me and the other came up on my left side, cornering me. I saw that these were not just men harassing me, they were in military police uniforms and I got nervous.
They asked for my passport.
‘I don’t have my passport with me. I don’t carry it because I’m afraid it will get stolen.’
They didn’t like that answer. ‘Do you think we can go to your country and walk around without papers? No, we can’t, we’d be deported. Why do you think you can do that here?’
‘Let me look for my driver’s license. I’m sure it must be in my bag. Is that OK?’ They continued to scold me angrily.
I started digging around in my bag to try to find my local driver’s license but failed because my bag was so full of stuff. I was afraid that they were going to see the t-shirt which would lead to a lot of questions and make it look like I was getting involved in internal politics.
My neighbors started popping their heads out of their doorways and windows and watching as the military police questioned the gringa who lived in the Barrio. Just as I was going to be observing and standing witness to their upcoming elections, so they were observing and standing witness for me while I was being questioned by the authorities. Cautiously, one of them said in a respectful voice loud enough to reach the policemen ‘Ella es de aqui.’ She’s from here. Another one agreed. ‘Sí, ella vive aquí.’ The police ignored them and continued to question me. More and more people began standing around to watch from a distance.
My heart was beating loud and fast. The afternoon sun was hot. I started carefully removing things from my bag and placing them on the dirt road… the soda I was bringing home for my husband… my notebook… my sweater… hoping to make some space in my bag to find the driver’s license without the t-shirt coming out. I had no idea what was going to happen if I didn’t find my license. What if they took my bag and searched it and found that t-shirt? Would they seriously arrest me? Would I be deported?
After what seemed like hours, I saw my mother-in-law running towards us, carrying my son. Someone had alerted her that I was in trouble. Her eyes flashed like they did when she was worried, upset or angry. She was on fire. ‘Buenas tardes, oficiales. What’s the problem? What’s happening? Uh hunh, she is my daughter. My daughter-in-law. This is her son. She lives here with us, here in the Barrio.’
‘Sí, es verdad,’ it’s true, several of the neighbors called out. While they were speaking, I finally found my license. It had gotten caught up between the pages of my notebook. I showed the police and they lectured us all about the importance of carrying papers, got on their motorcycles and rode off. For a few days after the incident I felt nervous that they would follow me in the alleyway again, or find me someplace else and continue their questions, out of sight of the neighbors and far from my brave mother-in-law.
So what does that have to do with activism and ‘slacktivism’?
The simplest of things can get you in serious trouble in a repressive environment. Not carrying your identification. Listening to revolutionary songs. Discussing politics. Reading a book by someone who critiques the government. Wearing a political t-shirt. Standing on a street corner to watch a protest.
Would any of that be seen as subversive in the US? As deeply significant and meaningful? No. Most of us don’t have to carry identification. Teenagers listen to Bob Marley without even knowing what the songs are about. We critique politics openly all the time. Our kids read Marx in school. We make fun of our political leaders on TV and billboards and t-shirts. We join political campaigns and publicly demonstrate who we are voting for. These activities are all very low risk at this time in the US cultural and sociopolitical environment. Engaging in activism in the US, wearing t-shirts, joining on-line groups and the like is often seen as slacktivism because these are very easy things to do, don’t require a lot of effort or personal risk. We are not doing a great job of engaging people in real debates in the US, and I worry about some of the changes happening now in the US (think: Tea Party), but it’s hard to deny that we do enjoy an amount of freedom of expression that’s difficult to come by in many other places.
In 1994 in El Salvador, people were not using social media to organize. But if they had been, it would have been every bit as risky as wearing or owning an FMLN t-shirt and just as meaningful. Simply identifying with a cause was subversive, much more so if you actually spoke out or identified yourself publicly. Wearing a political t-shirt in that type of environment is not ‘slacktivism’. If social media had been around then, engaging in the movement digitally would have been dangerous and probably very effective considering both the hierarchical structure of the armed opposition and the networked structure of sympathizers across the country, the region, and the world. Activism is not about the tools, it’s about the movement, the cause, the social change, the level of commitment and the potential danger and risk that people place themselves in when publicly identifying with a cause and fighting for what they believe in. That is what gets people heart and soul into a movement, regardless of the tools that they are using.
I think there is a risk of a US-centric critique of all digital activism as ‘slacktivism’, when that is not always the case. Should we call out the US media and those people who are hyping up social media as the key factor in social and opposition movements such as recent ones in Iran or Moldova? Yes. Should we in the US take a closer look at and question what’s behind our shallowness and cultural propensity towards ‘slacktivism?’ Definitely.
But we should also be careful about projecting our weaknesses and cultural frameworks on all uses of social media tools in activism.
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Related posts on Wait… What?
11 concerns about ICTs and ‘social media for social good’
What a great read and food for thought. thanks for that.
……love silvio rodriguez
thanks, Angelica!
Great post, Linda. And, as you know, this echoes many of my thoughts recently on the whole “m” vs. “d” debate.
For as long as social media is pedaled by social media ‘experts’ it will always be hyped up. You don’t see many genuine activists doing this, most likely because they’re often too busy dealing with the very real challenges they face in the real (vs. online) world.
The best conversations I have about how technology can help solve real world problems are with development workers and conservationists. Ironically, they’re the ones who usually think of the technology at the very end, something we always say should be done but rarely do.
Ken
Thanks for your comments, Ken. It really does echo your thoughts on the m vs d debate. Is it the anthropologist in us?
Terrific account, Linda. Yes, and we shouldn’t neglect older internet tools that are still around. I’ve recently begun anthropological fieldwork on social media and activism in Barcelona (Spain) and I’ve already found a highly successful campaign (ending in the banning of bullfighting in the region of Catalonia this last July 2010) that made minimal use of social media. Much more important was the use of good old-fashioned email, petitions signed on printed paper, phone calls, SMS to keep volunteers updated, etc.
I expect to find a great deal of variation across activist initiatives – will keep you posted!
Thanks John for your input! I look forward to reading your research.
Thank you for this post, I much enjoyed reading it, and think you made the point about the embeddedness of the meaning of any kind of activism in an excellent way.
I am not so sure, though, whether it is fruitful to continue to adhere to the distinction between “western democratic regimes” and “non-western authoritarian regimes”, as your emphasis on danger seems to imply. Isn’t the embeddedness of meaning true anywhere? When Micah White wrote in the Guardian recently that “Clicktivism is ruining Left Activism” (a piece that I feel had much in common with Gladwell’s), I wrote a response from the Indian context here: http://bit.ly/d1hQuN . In India too, there is quite a bit of concern among activists that social media are wrecking activism’s strength, but in the post I argue that, precisely because of the way those active online position themselves vis-a-vis those on the ground in the country, these fears at least for now are unfounded. I would love to hear your response to this blog if you can find the time – my email address is anja at cis-india dot org.
Thanks and looking forward to your next post,
Anja
Thanks for your comment Anja, I enjoyed reading your post also and I think we’re pretty much in agreement. I’ll be adding you to my Google reader! As for making the distinction, for me it’s not really western vs non-western. Authoritarian regimes and discrimination against a certain group can happen anywhere. As you rightly say, it’s meaningfulness which is key. There is definitely a place for social media in activism, and it can be extremely useful in organizing and sharing information and offering different ways for people to be involved. It can also be extremely shallow. In the US, for example, a lot of ‘activism’ is actually marketing and branding or it links ‘activism’ with purchasing something and is mostly aimed at increasing sales for whatever company is supporting the ‘advocacy’ campaign. I find people get hung up too much on the tool and not enough on the broader context.
I think you make some good points, Linda. Like John says, ‘social media’ is just another tool among others, which include things like SMS, email and petitions – but also direct action, protests and stunts.
However, I don’t agree at all with the fact that people’s committment to a cause is always in direct proportion to personal risk. Here in the UK there are lots of committed activists, willing to take high levels of personal risk – look at groups like Climate Camp, Plane Stupid and Crude Awakening, for example.
While it’s undoubtedly true that people, as Gladwell writes, often become activists because they have friends already involved, I don’t doubt that many people attending for example Climate Camp for the first time do so because they’ve first heard about it on social media. Once there, they then meet people, make friends and get more engaged and committed.
Thanks for commenting and giving those examples of committed activists — I think the persons involved in some of the non-violent direct action campaigns you listed are putting themselves at some risk by doing more than signing a petition or clicking ‘join’ and I do think that somehow risk brings some people’s commitment to a cause to another level (and of course others drop out of a cause when the risk becomes too much). I’m sure there are actual academic studies on this. I’m just going by personal experience. I agree with your last paragraph, social media is one of the possible outreach tools to bring people into a deeper level of commitment. For me the issue is that a lot of campaigns in the US don’t provide any real options for deeper commitment, they are fundraising or brand awareness campaigns but they are pretending to be activism. Or in other cases, I suppose there is no real ‘action’ that you can do ‘here’ to support structural change and social justice ‘there’ and organizations simply come up with an action that sounds good and engages people but really doesn’t impact things ‘over there’ (eg., there doesn’t seem to be any proof that boycotting mobile phones/conflict minerals will actually do anything to end the complicated conflict in the DRC, yet that’s currently a proposed action of a big campaign).
Dear Linda,
I am from Kashmir and am writing from India. I agree with you about the level of risk being in proportion to the level of commitment. This is proven best in Kashmir where there is a brutal military occupation by India. The occupying forces there have total impunity and can kill even on mere suspicion (they don’t even need proof of wrong doing). In June 2010 a new wave of popular uprising started in Kashmir with young boys taking to stone throwing as a means of protest, like the Intifada in Palestine (actually it has now been dubbed as Kashmiri Intifada). The government of India came down with total media censorship (expectedly) and set about feeding absolute lies to its own public and the world at large. Stuck in a situation where the occupier was, in addition to killing you, assassinating your image as well these Kashmiri boys decided to use technology to their advantage. They got live footage of protest events, political interviews, killings, curfews and other news to the outside world via FaceBook and YouTube. In this way they effectively broke the censorship that India had imposed on this region. The mainstream Indian media cut a very sorry figure because they follow the government line on Kashmir very closely, and were then forced to start reporting on the events with some amount of veracity. If you search on YouTube and FaceBook the word ‘Kashmir’ you will see what how a lot of content will come up.
So I agree with you when you say that “there is definitely a place for social media in activism, and it can be extremely useful in organizing and sharing information and offering different ways for people to be involved”. Technology in Kashmir exposed Indian colonial occupation there, got the Kashmiris organized in a completely new manner and energized the whole independence struggle there.
Regards.
Siraj, thanks for sharing your experiences form Kashmir. It sounds like social media is playing a powerful role there, especially in terms of reporting what the mainstream media is not.
For you to see what the situation of media is like in Indian Occupied Kashmir, here is an editorial by a local newspaper.
Regards.
Kashmir Coverage: Media in the service of misplaced ‘national interest’
September 17, 2010
By Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal
On September 15, 2010, Sagarika Ghose wound up the debate on ‘AFSPA: Is army needed to govern’ in her Face the Nation programme, in which there were four panelists, with these words: “Both the Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits from the Valley here on the panel want pretty much the same. They say Kashmiris do not want to be with Pakistan. They want greater stakes for Kashmiri youth in India….” During the hour-long discussion, neither of the Kashmiri panelists, Sanjay Saraf, a social activist, and Hameeda Bano, professor of English in Kashmir University, came close to stating that Kashmiris wanted any stakes in India or be closer to the Indian mainstream. Such a reference did crop up in the discussion, but the point was articulated by Lt Gen (Retd) V. G. Patankar; it was conveniently shifted to the mouths of the Kashmiri panelists. The wrap-up of debates with misrepresentations and interpretations, seemingly not unintended, sums up reportage of the Kashmir conflict by Indian newspapers and television channels in the last three months. Besides such interpretations, there is selective black-out or dwarfing of events or presentation of only the official version, that too without verifying facts.
Kashmir has been in the news for over three months now — ever since stories of the Machil fake encounter close to the Line of Control in North Kashmir cropped up, leading to sporadic protests and the death of a teenaged boy, who was hit by a tear-gas shell while returning home from tuitions. Since then it has been a cyclic process of more protests, agitation and more killings by police and CRPF. Nearly 90 people have been killed so far, several hundreds injured, many of them still recuperating after being seriously wounded by bullets, tear-gas shells or gun pellets.
The media reportage has been unable to shed much light on why the anger is spilling out on the roads. Or it has been marred by serious inadequacies and inconsistencies. Mostly, the media has lapped up the official versions like gospel truth and treated the protests as yet another ‘proxy war’ by ISI, Lashkar-e-Toiba and Pakistan. Some have blamed the separatists and the opposition PDP. No questions are asked, no evidence is demanded. As always, when it comes to reporting the Kashmir conflict, the reporters and editors often operate within the ‘ultra-nationalist’ and ‘national interest’ paradigm, refusing to even critically analyze the statements and versions of officials, often given on conditions of anonymity. The officials are quoted as ‘highly placed sources’.
An alleged mobile phone conversation between members of the Kashmiri separatist group Hurriyat Conference was aired by many Indian news channels in mid-July. The channels claimed the duo was saying, “Ten to 15 more protesters must die during fresh protests”. The translation of the transcript was dutifully carried without even trying to check if it was authentic. Another translation widely circulated on the Internet challenged this version, elaborating that the two people in question were only joking and had made no mention of instigating mobs. This version was not given any space by the channels that went overboard with the initial propaganda.
When the killings began in June, the media by and large blacked out the brutal violation of human rights, barring some exceptions, and thus gave a certain degree of legitimacy to the killings within the paradigm of ‘self-defence’ against ‘paid Lashkar agents’. It was a month later that the news channels and newspapers woke up to the tragedies suffered by the victims and their families. This, however, was balanced out with projections that there were tragedies on both sides. Barkha Dutt, Group Editor, NDTV, who spoke of victimized children and teenagers, families left grieving their dead, was quick to equate their trauma with that of a CRPF jawan with a broken jaw (suffered due to stone pelting) recuperating in a hospital. Even when it comes to expressing compassion over human tragedy, it is done with caution, no fingers ever raised against security agencies who ought to be responsible, but have been turned into icons of ‘nationalism’. Criticism of human rights violations is deemed to amount to an attack on the nation and Indianness.
The phenomenon did not begin with the current spate of violence in Kashmir. It has been in practice throughout the last two decades of bloody conflict. Even prior to that, whatever did not suit the interests of the Indian establishment, the media was expected to black out. However, it was never done so brazenly as in the last 20 years by a fully co-opted media.
As for the local media, it stands divided between Indian national interest and Kashmiri national interest. The division is not simply on basis of the regional differences between Kashmir valley and Jammu. It also stems from the fact that the newspapers are heavily dependent on government support, government advertisements and even clandestine aid. Some of the newspapers in the Valley, torn between the competitive nationalisms, have tried to balance out their pro-government reportage with opinion pages that are quite critical of the government policies. For media persons, particularly those in the Kashmir Valley, particularly, reporting or commenting on the conflict-related issues it has been a razor’s edge walk. They have been trapped between a repressive state, militants and other non-state actors. They have been trying to resist pressures and physical intimidations from all sides, including the state and its agencies.
The last three months have been particularly trying. Excessive curbs and lack of advertisements are virtually squeezing the space of newspapers in the Valley. The local television channels are also facing restrictions. They are only allowed to carry one news bulletin of 15 minutes’ duration each day. No live coverage of events and no discussions. The government maintains that restrictions are imposed on the news channels operating in the Valley as they have not been duly licensed and registered. However, news channels in Jammu have been given a free hand even though they too have no conformed to the basic norms of registration.
For the second time in the last three months, all newspapers in the Valley have been forced to suspend their publications. From Eid onwards, no newspapers have appeared because of the imposition of curfew and the government’s refusal to give media persons the necessary passes to go about. A similar situation was witnessed in July when newspapers were barred for five days. While the local media has been muzzled by limiting its access to information, ‘friendlies’ from outside the state (once known as ‘parachute journalists’) the state are encouraged to visit the state, move around and report events.
Ms. Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal is Executive Editor of The Kashmir Times, published simultaneously from Jammu and Srinagar.
http://www.countermedia.in/?p=157
[…] he seems to imply that violence is a necessary condition for effecting social change. In response, Linda Raftree recalls the nerve-wracking experience of carrying a politically-themed t-shirt through the streets […]
As someone who in the 90’s worked with C.I.S.P.E.S. The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador and is now working with Organizing for America I have to agree with Gladwell that Social Media/E-mail has made activists slack and lazy.
It is easy to turn out a 100 people for an event now, because you can spam everyone in the world but the top down structure of Organizations no longer has to involve and work with people in the same way. So OFA and Move-On can exclude core activists and feel as if they are getting results because they do not have to build people up and hook them to stay involved.
So they can turn out people but can they build long term structures without the people on the ground being trained to do the work and generate new activists? I’m not so sure. I learned a lot of skills from CISPES , I don’t see that kind of training going on with OFA and wonder if anyone can go from OFA to do something else as an activist.
Mark Badger
http://www.markbadger.org
Thanks for your comment Mark. I wonder if we crossed paths in the 90s at some point…. I don’t know much about OFA, but you are getting at what I mean also. A few years back I heard people from a top ‘e-advocacy’ firm presenting. They made it very clear that the point of their e-outreach and clicking on this, that and the other had nothing to do with achieving any actual advocacy goals. It was to get people’s names onto an email list so that they could solicit them for donations afterwards. I referred to that tendency in my post on ’11 concerns about ICTs and social media for social good.’ It seems like another version of (RED) where the goal doesn’t appear to really be advocacy, it seems to be more about fundraising and branding. I’m well aware that organizations need to do fund-raising and there is nothing wrong with that — that’s the only way we can get our work done. I think though that fund-raising tactics that mask themselves as advocacy are part of the problem maybe? I probably need to think through that a little more, but I maybe it goes back to the overall goals of the campaigns and what exactly they are trying to achieve. I think there is a big tangle of stuff that could be researched and unpacked…. very interesting.
[…] Activism vs slacktivism: it’s about context not tools – Wait… What? – “In 1994 in El Salvador, people were not using social media to organize. But if they had been, it would have been every bit as risky as wearing or owning an FMLN t-shirt and just as meaningful. Simply identifying with a cause was subversive, much more so if you actually spoke out or identified yourself publicly.” […]
Very powerful, many thanks for sharing, Linda
[…] Linda Raftree op haar blog terecht erkent, zijn sociale media en de manier waarop ze gebruikt kunnen worden in eerste instantie tools, vaak […]
[…] of insightful analyses and critiques have been written about Gladwell’s argument. For now, I do not have any analysis to add, but […]