Digital activism: good intentions or personal gain?

The term keeps us wondering. Digital Activism. Is it new? Does it work? How do you do it? The words seem to raise more questions than answers.

Research on the topic is plentiful, fortunately. However, findings also seem to contradict recent events. Let’s take a closer look at study done by Fiona Suwana, a student at the University of Technology in Brisbane. She researched digital activism in Indonesia, trying to find out why people would practice activism online.

As it turns out, motivation to do online activism is a an intrinsic one. Such as: providing truthful information to society, believing in making social and political change, and striving for a better system. However, Suwana points out, this contradicts multiple other studies, like a recent study of British online political participation. This study concluded that motivation is mainly extrinsic, such as: conforming and receiving rewards.

Day-to-day examples seem to favor the British study. Take the #teamtrees movement. This week-old movement, started by YouTuber MrBeast, set a goal of raising 20 million usd, to plant 20 million trees. However noble the cause may be, the list of ‘highest donations’ is full of famous YouTubers, celebrities and CEO’s, trying to get into the picture. Good for the trees, for sure, but even better for the donators. One person even put a link to his own online casino as a discription of his donation. His 50.000 dollar turned into 30.000 clicks on his page so far, and who knows how many dollars. Very generous, not?

Also Elon Musk, the ultra rich philanthropist and CEO of multiple future-oriented companies, knows the value of good PR. As do more than 1 YouTuber, who have all received bad press these last years.

So the question remains: why do people practice digital activism? The answer: a variety of reasons, that might not allways be clear. But in the case of #teamtrees the outcome is clear: the result is positive, and the result is real.

04–11–2019 — Job Jan Daniël Duijnkerke @PWR

Sources:

Link to research: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1563205

The official website https://teamtrees.org/

The video that started it all, 30 million views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPJKxAhLw5I

Markting on the donationlist: https://www.reddit.com/r/TeamTrees/comments/dqa88h/who_is_mohamed_elsheiry_and_what_happens_if_you/

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We are a group of students on a university class project, trying to answer the most important question: who is at power in this online world?

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