{"id":85,"date":"2017-01-22T15:46:17","date_gmt":"2017-01-22T15:46:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/harryalexandrou\/?p=85"},"modified":"2017-01-23T04:10:47","modified_gmt":"2017-01-23T04:10:47","slug":"slacktivism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/harryalexandrou\/2017\/01\/22\/slacktivism\/","title":{"rendered":"Slacktivism."},"content":{"rendered":"

This blog post we will be discussing slacktvism<\/a>, what is it? \u00a0Slacktivism<\/a>, is the actions preformed via the internet<\/a> in support of political or social causes, but regarded as requiring little time or effort.\u00a0 \u00a0Although social media has made it easier to communicate, organize and otherwise prepare a protest, it has made people complacent with just appearing to support a cause, and has many people questioning weather the time and effort is worth it when you can just make a post.\u00a0 However, is a post as effective as a physical protest, for the most part no.\u00a0 Online protests dehumanise the cause detaching it form reality and the people involved making it easier for those who are being protest against to ignore the issue. For some people the only reason they may post about an issue is due social pressure, although individuals have may not researched and do not posses the knowledge to understand what they sharing, outside influences impact what they naively choose to support even thought it may not be showing both sides the arguments meaning there support for the protest is futile as they have desire to help any further for them\u00a0 clicking a button is enough.\u00a0 Similar to a mob mentality, often a complex idea is posted online without both sides of the argument as it is difficult to summarise many of the issue and still keep the attention of the audience,\u00a0 often it is so condensed that even with someone sharing or tweeting the post it is still not beneficial as people don\u2019t fully understand the subject and are too lazy to do their own research.\u00a0 People prefer to share a 5 minute video summarising half the points of a topic and expect it to make a difference, that is slacktavism.<\/p>\n

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For those that remember Kony 2012<\/a> it was a great example of slacktivism how a vastly complex problem was simplified, although there was a good reason for the cause it nothing actually changed even thought there were millions of supporters sharing and posing about it.\u00a0 Awareness of an issue is only part of a solution although around 100 million people have see the video made by the charity Invisible Children, knowledge of a situation is not the answer, it is a step in the right direction. Yet by clicking like sharing or putting up posters it doesn\u2019t actually effect the situation. Often and in the case of Joseph Kony the Ugandan military leader online protests are just ignored.\u00a0\u00a0 The kony 2012 video captured the ethos of a stereotypical slacktavist, and as put by Aljazeera\u2019s, Sarah Kendzior \u201cViewers oblivious to complex foreign conflict are made heroic by watching a video, buying a bracelet, hanging a poster. \u201cSarah continues with stating that viewer\u2019s emotional response and desire to catch joseph kony was sincere buying a bracelet didn\u2019t actually help. \u00a0\u00a0Furthermore, it may be argued that videos like Kony 2012 distract us from the real issues and the causes of the issues, this may be due to oversimplification of the issue misleading people by not showing the true cause meaning people can never know what to do that will stop and prevent another Kony 2012. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Although slacktivism is often used in a negative term it can sometimes and often does help even the slightest bit of awareness can lead to more donations for a charity. \u00a0A great example of so called slacktivism helping a great deal for a cause is the ALS ice bucked challenge that went viral in 2015.<\/p>\n

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For those of you living under a rock with no idea what the ice bucket challenge was people literally pouring icy water over their heads all in the name of ALS <\/a>or Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis a motor neuron disease. \u00a0Through the almost gamification of the trend by calling out friends or family to also take part the ice bucket challenge had huge impact in raising money towards the cure for ALS, and it raised more than \u00a37 million.\u00a0 This is the other side of the argument of slacktivism it can achieve great thing through awareness even if it is not understood properly understood.\u00a0 So what is your opinion of slacktivism? Is posting your outrage or support true activism or is activism taking action like the saying, actions speak louder than words.\u00a0 What cannot be argued though is how it can benefit some causes through donation like the ALS foundation.\u00a0 So is it easier to protest as people can communicate and spread messages faster or has it made people lazy, by only spreading awareness not actually affecting the issue?<\/p>\n

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Furthermore, through internet outrage people often form communities were people support one another and witch may eventually lead to some form of action taking place.\u00a0 We will be discussing a related topic on the next blog how the internet effects real life protests like the Arab springs or the London riots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This blog post we will be discussing slacktvism, what is it? \u00a0Slacktivism, is the actions preformed via the internet in support of political or social causes, but regarded as requiring little time or effort.\u00a0 \u00a0Although social media has made it easier to communicate, organize and otherwise prepare a protest, it has made people complacent with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,10,9,5,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/harryalexandrou\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/harryalexandrou\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/harryalexandrou\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/harryalexandrou\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/harryalexandrou\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/harryalexandrou\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/harryalexandrou\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions\/117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/harryalexandrou\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/harryalexandrou\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.buprojects.uk\/2016-2017\/harryalexandrou\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}