Be the Real Change: Promote Active Activism

Sayde Jayne Vockeroth

 
Abstract
This essay is a response to two perspectives on how social media has
affected activism. Our society has become fixated on the idea of creating
change, and many people feel as though they can do this strictly through
the instantaneous spread of knowledge that social media provides for us.
The problem is that this is not activism nor will it create change. Social
change can only be brought by society itself. “We all have the
responsibility to decide whether we want to promote an issue through
‘sharing’ an article on Facebook, or if we want to sacrifice aspects of
ourselves and decided how to fix the problem; that is what separates true
activists from the rest of the people on the Facebook page.” Using two
articles, one by Malcom Gladwell and one by Courtney Boyd Myers,
with contemporary examples of active activism, this essay demonstrates
the importance of not just spreading information, but investing yourself
into social dilemmas for the purpose of creating change.
 
Be the Real Change: Promote Active Activism
If I could go back in time I would want to be in Washington on
August 28, 1963 when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous speech,
as he risked his safety to advocate what he knew to be true. I would want
to be there throughout the women’s suffrage movement of the early 20th
century, as the Famous Five came together and fought so women could
be active members of government, with the right and responsibility to
vote; maybe I would even be one of them. But instead I’m here today, in
a world full of people who want to create change, but no one knows
where to start; where all people seem to consider themselves activists
because everyone has liked at least one controversial Facebook page at
some point or another. According to the Oxford Dictionary, activism is
“using vigorous campaigning to bring about political or social change”;
to the dismay of many modern “activists” the unfortunate reality of the
situation is that the word “retweet” isn’t a part of this definition. While
social media has encouraged and promoted social change, it isn’t social
media that provides it. Social media cannot substitute social activism,
though it can be used as a tool to encourage, advocate and recruit others
to become aware of global issues; it is up to us as individuals to decide
how we should respond.
In the article “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be
Tweeted”, by Malcom Gladwell, he shares an example of real activism
through telling a story about a lunch room in North Carolina, during the
nineteen-sixties. African-American youth sat in a lunch room that was
for whites only, refusing to leave until they were served; people joined
them as news spread of the brave young people who were defending
their right for equality, and “it happened without email, texting,
Facebook, or Twitter” (Gladwell, 314.) “The first students to sit down
were terrified” (Gladwell 317) because activism can be a scary thing.
The protesters feared abuse, physically and emotionally as racists waited
outside the lunch room. This is the kind of “activism that challenges the
status quo” (Gladwell 318) and obligates you to take risks; I don’t know
anyone who has felt that from clicking the “like” button on Facebook.
Gladwell suggests that social media provides us with only
“weak-ties”, suggesting the people “involved” are merely acquaintances
such as, our Facebook friends and the people we follow on Twitter. It is
our “strong-ties” that provide a support system of passionate advocates
with an emotional investment into the issue. “Strong-ties” involve a real
connection that is considerably more valuable than support from the
other side of a stranger’s computer screen. Activism affects everyone,
which is something our society struggles to see. If there were not
activists then myself and every other woman would not be allowed to
vote, nor could I attend the same school as my African-Canadian friend.
In countries all over the world women’s suffrage still has not been
achieved, children are being sold into slavery and clean drinking water
has not yet been established as a basic human right; these things are not
going to change without “strong-tie” activism. We can continue to
promote and desire a resolution to these extreme examples of poverty,
inequality and misogyny, but without “strong-ties” change will never be
directly implicated, only mindlessly endorsed. The article mentions a
theory from a Stanford sociologist named Doug McAdam, and how he
associates “strong-tie” activism with taking risks and direct involvement,
yet our society doesn’t understand that following someone on Twitter is
not the same as following Martin Luther King Jr. across America; you
need to give up something to be an activist. Our society has an “outsized
enthusiasm for social media” (Gladwell 316) which causes people like
Courtney Boyd Myers to not know where to draw the line between being
a true activist, and promoting them.
Courtney Boyd Myers challenged Gladwell’s article with her
own: Has Social Media Reinvented Social Activism? Myers claims it
has, as she discusses different organizations that use social media to
promote their causes, helping them to intake millions of dollars per year
for the particular global issue they are promoting. Prior to reading her
article I was aware of this fundraising technique (or concept); as a
member of my high schools “We Day” club, I had developed a sense of
how social media can promote the idea of change. For example, a
campaign associated with “We Day” encouraged youth to become
involved with helping bring clean water to third-world countries. For
part of the campaign an organization said that for every “retweet” that
promoted their campaign they would donate money towards the clean
water project. From this, the people who promoted the organization by
clicking the “retweet” button feel like they were the activists, not the
company who’s actually sacrificing themselves for the cause. This
organization used social media to promote their cause, and though they
had many “retweets”, I doubt many of the people who “retweeted”
looked further into it, to become actively involved. Myers’ article uses
different examples, like this, of how social media has “reinvented”
activism; what she’s missing is that it changes activism by making it
easier for people to look like they are involved while very few people
are actually taking action. Myers writes her article trying to argue
against Gladwell, though through identifying that “networks themselves
can’t solve the world’s problems, [but] they enable human beings to
come together effectively” (Myers), she seems to be agreeing. Social
media networks cannot fix the world’s problems, but they can be used as
a tool for communication, advertisement, and for raising awareness.
When an organization creates a Facebook page of the millions of people
who like it, there will only be few who actually click the “How You Can
Be Involved” tab and take action.
 Social media is not a good or bad thing, but a tool that can be
used to promote either. Gladwell indicates a lack of leadership on the
internet, instead it seems there are millions of mindless followers who
promote anything that will make them look and feel like they care. The
reality of it is that most people are not willing to invest time, money, or
even emotions towards the issues they claim they are advocating. Social
media provides our society with instantaneous communication that can
act as a great resource for promoting social change, but social media
can’t provide social change. Social media has not reinvented activism,
but rather has improved the spread of information and awareness. Social
change can only be brought by society itself. We all have the
responsibility to decide whether we want to promote an issue through
“sharing” an article on Facebook, or if we want to sacrifice aspects of
ourselves and decided how to fix the problem; that is what separates true
activists from the rest of the people on the Facebook page.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 Works Cited
Gladwell, Malcolm. “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will
Not Be Tweeted”. They Say, I Say, Ed. Cathy Birkenstin, Gerald Graff,
Russel Durst. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 312-327.
Print.
Meyers, Courtney Boyd. “Has Social Media Reinvented Social
Activism?” The Next Web. December 9, 2010. http://thenextweb.com/
socialmedia/2010/12/09/has-social-media-reinvented-social-activism/.
Accessed November 21, 2013.Web.
One Drop. “One Drop Part of The We Day Tour”. One Drop.
September 6, 2012. http://www.onedrop.org/en/projects/news/We
%20Day%202012-2013.aspx. Accessed November 21, 2013. Web.
Oxford University Press. Oxford Dictionaries. http://
www.oxforddictionaries.com/. Accessed November 29, 2013. Web.
Royal Bank of Canada. “ About the RBC Blue Water Project”.
RBC. http://www.rbc.com/community-sustainability/environment/rbc-
blue-water/about/index.html. Accessed November 29, 2013. Web.
We Day. http://www.weday.com/. Accessed November 21, 2013.
Web.