Slactivism

With the advent of social and digital media, we have become a generation constantly fed with information at every moment. With news available at our fingertips at every second, it becomes easier to be passionate about social causes without actually taking real action. So much so that the ways activism has been expressed has changed drastically. Where we previously marched, knocked on doors, called, rallied under the hot sun and in the rain, now we sat behind computers and smartphones and clicked or tapped. This is known as slacktivism or armchair activism, and has historically had bad rep for creating a false sense of activism and passion for social causes because there wasn’t real action taken to enact social change.

Yet, that the online generation is growing and burgeoning everywhere is an inevitable fact of life. Today, we practically live our lives and express ourselves via our iPhones and Androids — a report by wearesocial reveals that more than half of Southeast Asia’s population uses the internet.

However, research done by Weber Shandwick (the Innovation Trends report) has found that, contrary to stereotypes, slacktivists have shown to be twice as likely to volunteer their time, four times as likely to encourage others to get involved, and five times as likely to recruit others to sign petitions for a social cause. This is significant when we think about fundraising for social causes in an era which celebrates and binds people through ideas and shifting norms.

Here comes an opportunity: research done on consumers has concluded across the board that consumers are speaking up for social causes. They reported being more likely to support a brand if it stood up for social causes. It has become a well-known truth that more and more, people care about the social impact of the brand before they consume it. They like to know that the company they pay for services and goods are contributing positively to society. This is the basis on which social ventures such as TOMS, Etsy and Change.Org have been poised to fluorish in today’s community and market place. Against the dynamic changes of people in power and industries which transform and reinvent the world today, we look for something that will reinvent the way we see things. We want to know that businesses care about the same social causes that we do. By supporting social causes, businesses also show that they don’t relentlessly mine for profit and are concerned about the impact they deliver to our civil society.

Today, we face a population of young people who are more engaged than ever. People rise up, eager to enact change. We just have to look at the Umbrella revolution in Hong Kong and in India thousands were mobilized at the grassroots level to enact civil change. We have become more involved in civil change, on top of the ease of access to tools available to us such as social media.

Harnessing the power of technology to enact social change and create social good is not a bad thing. What is key is making the purpose of action clear and accessible to the man on the street. Have them ask themselves what they care about and want to barrack for. From then on, they’ll feel the desire to give and contribute to their local communities.