Is It Activism or Simply a Performance?
Cute photos on the beach, images of friends enjoying warm weather; this is what one would expect to see on their Instagram feed during the summer. Rather than posting snapshots of life without a care in the world, people in summer 2020 were posting infographics. When you opened up the app, you would be flooded with posts of aesthetically pleasing graphics about police brutality, infographics titled “How Not To Be Racist 101”, lists of Black-owned businesses to shop from, and other content addressing the Black Lives Matter Movement. Instagram was a clear example of Luciano Floridi’s concept of a “frictionless infosphere.”
At first glance, I saw no issue with these types of posts. In fact, shouldn’t they be considered a good thing? As someone who has posted these types of posts to my Instagram story and feed, and as a graphic designer who appreciates the design qualities and intention put into the posts, I originally fell victim to the performative activism these digital posts encouraged.
During a global pandemic, having an application that allowed for others and me to stand up for what we believe in without leaving our beds was super convenient. Floridi states in the first chapter of Ethics After The Information Revolution, “ICTs [Information and Communications Technologies] are making humanity increasingly responsible, morally speaking, for the way the world is, will and should be.” Though ICTs are allowing us to be more aware of the way the world is, they are consequently giving us a space to feel a false sense of accomplishment. Politicians can share a post addressing a problem and move on rather than make real policy change, and everyday-people can feel like a social justice warrior with the click of a button.
After sharing countless posts and contributing to the overwhelming Instagram space, I realized some of the problems with what I had done. Like all too many people, I was making my activism performative and not doing any of the real work that would make concrete change. How can we use ICTs and their ability to share information quickly to turn performative activism into more active performance?
