Social Media and Activism

Social media has influenced activism since the 21st century. activism is ‘the doctrine or practice of vigorous action or involvement as a means of achieving political or other goals, sometimes by demonstration protests’ (Sivitanides and Shah 2011:2). other than that, social media or the internet has offered both positive and negative impacts on the activist. digital activism allowed people to speak their voice and doing the political movement and it actually helps people a lot (Sivitanides and Shah 2011:2). 

Recently, a social movement called the "Me Too Movement" have been attracting public attention. me Too Movement is a social movement against sexual abuse and sexual harassment where people publicize allegations of sex crimes committed by powerful and/or prominent men that owned by women. on 2017, Alyssa Milano who was an actress, started a conversation on Twitter that says “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.” and after that, her tweet became viral and a lot of people speak up about their experience.

Slactivism is the practice of supporting a political or social cause with very little effort or commitment. Examples of slacktivism are posting a Facebook status to support a cause, "liking" a charity organization's cause on Facebook, tweeting or retweeting a charity organization's request for support on Twitter, signing Internet petitions, and posting and sharing YouTube videos about a cause. as for me, I once liked a tweet to help an organization and I have re-posted a post on Instagram that aims to help others.

Youtube is the most used internet platform nowadays. but because of that, some people are not using it wisely. posting activism video may be caused by consequences when it doesn't match with other people that relate.

Reference list :

Cabrera NL, Matias CE and Montoya R (2017) ‘Activism or slacktivism? The potential and pitfalls of social media in contemporary student activism’, Journal of Diversity in Higher Education 10(4):400–415 DOI: 10.1037/dhe0000061.

Wilson D and Serisier T (2010), ‘Video Activism and the Ambiguities of Counter-Surveillance’, Surveillance & Society 8(2): 166-180.

NBC News (16 October 2018) A year ago, Alyssa Milano started a conversation about #MeToo. These women replied, NBC News, Accessed 31 December 2020.