#21stCenturyActivist
A comparison of activism before and after social media
When I opened my email inbox this morning, I had an email from Change.org with a list of petitions I might be interested in signing. I only started receiving these emails because I saw on Facebook that someone had put together a petition to remove the xenophobic senator and Australian politician Fraser Anning from Parliament and I wanted to help. It took me less than five minutes to ‘sign’ the petition, which now has almost 1.5 million digital ‘signatures’.
For as long as there has been politics, there have been activists promoting, impeding, and raising awareness of political, economic, or environmental reform. However, with the introduction of social media platforms and hashtags, a new type of activism was born: digital activism (or hack-tivism). By examining how digital media affects the different ways that contemporary protests and demonstrations differ from traditional forms of activism, ‘Are we really making a difference by simply sitting behind our computers?’ ‘Tweeting #metoo in solidarity but not actually showing up to a march?’ ‘How much are our digital actions really affecting change?’
Digital activism, also known as cyber activism, can be defined as ‘a form of activism that uses the Internet and digital media as key platforms for mass mobilisation and political action.’ Initially, people used the Internet to spread messages faster and communicate across borders, but now it seems that people are using the Internet to spread their own personal agendas. I agree that the internet can be worthwhile in that it is a transparent source of information. For example, the recent shooting and bombing footage circulating online from Iraq shows tragedies that are happening in real time. Before social media, the only source of current affairs we received were from the news shown on our televisions and the events written about in newspapers — there is every chance that before the internet, we may never have seen that footage.
The Greensboro Sit-Ins
The Greensboro Sit-Ins are one of the most well-known acts of non-violent racial activism in history. On February 1st 1960, a group of African Americans staged a ‘sit-in’ at a segregated Woolworths lunch counter in which they refused to move from their stools until the store closed. The white Americans in the Woolworths proceeded to make their entire protest a living hell by throwing food at them, showering them in mustard and ketchup, and even blowing pepper into their faces, but still, they sat.
This sparked one of the largest stands against racial segregation that the United States had ever seen. More than 50,000 other African Americans in 70 US cities began to stage their own ‘sit-ins’ to protest the prejudicial and racially discriminatory laws. Woolworths was forced to desegregate in the July of that same year.
Greensboro vs. Virtual Sit-Ins
In this age of social media exists a similar (albeit slightly easier) form of the Greensboro Sit-Ins, now commonly known as Virtual Sit-Ins. This involves a number of users loading a website at the same time so that the high increase in traffic either slows down the website or causes it to shut down completely. The popularity of these Virtual Sit-Ins stem from the fact that the only action required by ‘activists’ is to visit a website — it is very effective and also very easy to participate in. A real-life example of a Virtual Sit-In happened last year when a number of hack-tivists targeted official online Government forums discussing Brexit. This prevented citizens of the United Kingdom from actively participating in and sharing their opinions with the UK Government on the pressing political decision.
I often wonder if it is fair that we should be placing these two ‘protests’ in the same category. If I were to participate in a ‘Virtual Sit-in’, all I would need to do is click on a website at the same time as everyone else, behind a screen and from the safety of my own home. I am not risking my life and my pride like the people who started the Greensboro Sit-Ins, who were humiliated for hours on end. And I also wonder whether the Brexit Virtual Sit-in actually had any real lasting impact on the decision for the UK to leave the European Union. Social media is an important tool that has truly transformed how we live our lives, but I often feel guilty about how easy we have it compared to generations before us. The digital sphere has provided a set of platforms to spread awareness of issues using a particular type of hashtag or taking five minutes to digitally ‘sign’ a petition.
We are the future of this planet and we need to take advantage of the incredible tools that we’ve been given. It might not take me very long to retweet a hashtag or sign a petition, but at least I can form my own unbiased opinions and contribute to more causes than my ancestors could have possibly dreamed about. They might have had to pick their battles, but we can end them. After all, with great hashtags comes great responsibility.
