Slacktivism

Malcolm Gladwell’s article Small Change illustrated to me a very distinct difference between the activism of today and that of the era pre Social Media. Today’s weak-tie connections allow people to take a more passive role in changing our world. This is slacktivism, based on “weak-tie connections,” at its finest. While it is possible to use different platforms to spread a real social movement, as #Blacklivesmatter seems to be doing, it takes a lot more than a social media presence. It seems to me that Social Media is more a method of collecting, archiving, and updating information about a movement in real time, rather than waiting for it to become well known and written about on a larger scale. While the participants being semi-organized may not be as dedicated, they are able to contribute at least a retweet to the movement, working to spread awareness to all of their weak-tie connections on Twitter.