Downfalls of social media activism

There are many positive aspects about social media activism, but much like with most things, there is also a negative side to social media usage for activism. To understand the tool fully, it is important to analyse both the positives and the negatives, and this portion will seek to do the latter.

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One of the issues with online activism is that you end up “preaching to the choir”. The people who engage online and witness the activism, are often times those who share the same beliefs (Iskander, 2011). The purpose of activism is not to have a discussion and simply agree amongst yourselves that a change is necessary; the purpose of activism is to inspire or create a necessary change (Valenzuela, 2013). That purpose is defeated if the people who agree are the only ones witnessing the activism. Part of the power of traditional forms of activism is visibility. One can still maintain the participation of those who share the same views but is also able to reach those of differing opinions (this activism usually takes place in public spaces or places occupied by those of opposing perspectives so that they have to pay attention, as examples), and also attract the attention of those who have the power to make a change because they can see that you are making a sacrifice for it and will be held accountable for your sacrifices (McCaughey and Ayers, 2013).

Iskander (2011) further expressed when analysing Web 2.0 activists, that social media have shown how to connect people online and to act as a tool for political debate and organization, but as long as this remained only online, the Web 2.0 activists, although they were talking more, were still largely talking only to each other (Iskander, 2011). This highlights two issues; the one previously discussed about the need to combine SMA with traditional activism and the concern for “preaching to the choir” where activists engaging online are mostly engaging with those that have the same viewpoints which defeats the purpose of a movement to change minds and ultimately actions and reality (Valenzuela, 2013). People end up expressing their convictions to people who already understand, are aware of. and believe them because they themselves are similarly convicted. This completely defeats the purpose that many movements have to create change and increase awareness.

On the other hand, while this is a downside to social media use, it can also be viewed in a positive light. “In particular, social media users can construct and participate in information networks with users similar to themselves, ultimately limiting exposure to other perspectives and reinforcing existing worldviews” (Stewart, Arif, and Starbird, 2018, p. 1). This exposure to other perspectives and those in power is what brings change to fruition and is therefore important (McCaughey and Ayers, 2013), however one could argue that social media usage does not hinder that but helps that as it generally provides easy access (with the click of a button) to anyone utilizing any platform. This helps with

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both organization and communication (Costanza-Chock, 2012). In fact, “social media creates participation opportunities—such as boosting protest turnout or supporting fundraising campaigns—that broaden mobilization, thus helping scale movement endeavors” (Mundt, Ross, and Burnett, 2018, p.1). These participation opportunities would most likely be geared at those with similar feelings and convictions and therefore this possible “downfall” of social media in terms of preaching to the choir can actually be something that lifts a movement up from time to time.

Another problem addresses and slightly contradicts one point made earlier in the positives section. Social media has been able to remove some of the organizational structure of social movements and eliminate in some cases almost completely, the hierarchy within organizations, however, in some cases it has done the opposite and promoted a hierarchy where people who began the movement, or have the most followers, or the most “shares”

are suddenly looked upon as leaders not because of their content but because of their numbers or engagement. Many people do not even fully comprehend how this works.

Therefore,

“a less obvious issue is the lack of understanding of how social media affect the organization of activist networks. Specifically, social media are often thought to make activist movements more transparent. However, social media can and often do foster their own hierarchies and privilege certain voices (usually more central to the organizational network” (Murthy, 2018, p. 2).

While this is an issue, it can be easily solved once those whose voices are privileged share that privilege with others by sharing their content, posts, and forms of participation in general. All they have to do is decide to share their role and communicate that the opportunity for others to lead exists.

That in and of itself can cause another problem because while social media allows the sharing of the privilege of leadership and content production for a movement, there can be a downside. Because while social media may “empower” each individual to have a voice (Murthy, 2016), having each individual use that power all at once will undoubtedly lead to having high levels of noise, which will ultimately inhibit decision-making, innovation, and productivity (Hemp, 2009). This will certainly cause confusion within the group and could also have consequences in terms of the clarity of a movement’s message to outsiders. The simple solution to this problem, however, is to ensure that some type of internal organization and structure exists within the movement, and everyone is

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on the same page in terms of what they are communicating and when they are communicating.

The flipside to this is ironically another con for social media activism because while social media allows everyone to have a voice, because of the inherent nature of social media platforms as spaces for socialization and leisure, as opposed to politics and social movements, people might engage a bit and participate, but they will not become too invested in the movement and many certainly will not take on responsibility for or leadership within the movement.

“They use the media to become aware of topics and to be informed of issues of interest, but they tend to follow and read rather than initiate and lead. Because the tools they know well and use regularly allow anyone to be a media producer, they know they have a technical capacity to create democratic dialogue and plan political actions, but they rarely do so.” (Burke and Sen, 2018, p.8).

There is however a bright side to this of course in that, if many are not leading or adding to the conversation and simply are involved to be involved and stay aware of what is happening, there will be less of the problematic ‘noise” mentioned before and the movement will have achieved at least one of its goals which is spreading awareness, and increasing it audience.

The last disadvantage that will be discussed is the problem of polarity online. Many people post about the same topic however within those posts on the same topic there are very different opinions, for example when searching randomly for the topic particularly through hashtags (and hashtag activism has become a key part of social media activism).“Hashtag activism happens when large numbers of postings appear on social media under a common hash tagged word, phrase or sentence with a social or political claim”: the results are not filtered out based on your preference or opinion; all opinions are grouped together (Yang, 2016, p. 13). So, for example if one were to search

#CatalanIndependence, there would be search results from those who are both pro-independence and those who are anti-pro-independence. Or if someone were to search

#BlackLivesMatter there would be results for those who were supporters of the movement and from those who were against the movement. The users are then forced to filter out the results, research the sources and then choose who to engage with and how to engage or use the content.

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In spite of all of these disadvantages, the benefits outweigh them significantly and for each obstacle faced by social media activism there is a clear way to overcome it. Social media is a powerful tool especially because it shares its power with the people who can then use that power to create change.