Activism or a Performance: How Instagram Fuels Performative Activism
Photos on the beach, images of friends enjoying warm weather; this is what you would expect to see on Instagram during the summer. Rather than posting snapshots of carefree life, people in Summer 2020 were posting infographics. Upon opening Instagram, you would be flooded with posts of aesthetically pleasing graphics about police brutality, infographics titled “How Not To Be Racist”, lists of Black-owned businesses, and other content addressing the BLM movement. Instagram’s ability to spread information quickly makes it a clear example of Luciano Floridi’s concept of a “frictionless infosphere” that has “re-ontologized” activism.
At first glance, I saw no issue with the posts this summer. In fact, shouldn’t they be considered positive?
The posts were created and shared with good intentions as they educated people on the struggle Black Americans face due to an extreme lack of equity.
As someone who shared these types of posts, and as a graphic designer who appreciated the design qualities of them, I initially fell victim to the performative activism these digital posts encouraged. During a global pandemic, having an application that allowed me to stand up for my beliefs and spread important information without leaving my bed was extremely convenient.
Though Floridi states in the first chapter of Ethics After The Information Revolution that “ICTs [Information and Communications Technologies] are making humanity increasingly responsible, morally speaking, for the way the world is, will and should be,” ICTs also give us a space to feel a false sense of accomplishment.
People were mindlessly sharing posts to signal that they are not racist and to feel better about themselves, and the posts were being regurgitated back in an echo chamber. If you dared question the validity of a post, you would be seen as denying the existence of racism.
This summer proved that ICTs are, what Floridi would say, “re-ontologizing” activism. Though I may have impacted a few people with my sharing over the summer, my activism was performative because I stayed comfortable and avoided work that would make concrete change.
Instagram puts information out quickly, but we can’t stop there. To turn performative activism into real change, Instagram should simply be the first step. We must have hard conversations with family members, speak up for others, attend protests, donate to those in need, and always strive for greater equality.
