Showing posts with label slacktivism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label slacktivism. Show all posts

Easy altruism and you

Posted: Thursday, August 26, 2010 by Kathryn McConnachie in Labels: , , , , , , , , ,
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Online activism is often charged with making things too easy for people. Most commentators seem to want to cling to a notion of traditional activism as something that requires people to get their hands dirty, to put in the hours screaming the odds outside the headquarters of multinationals and to actually put a bit of sweat blood and tears into a cause. Being able to contribute to a cause by just a few clicks of a mouse just doesn’t seem to qualify as what many of would still like to believe activism should be.

But so what? Is it really that detrimental to activism as a whole to have some people support a cause without ever leaving their homes or their office?

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It's my birthday and I can make you support a cause if I want to

Posted: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 by Kathryn McConnachie in Labels: , , , , ,
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The Causes application on Facebook knows that it’s my birthday tomorrow. And for the last few weeks it hasn’t stopped asking me to use my birthday to "change the world”.

The application has been contacting me via Facebook and over email in an attempt to remind me that on my birthday my Facebook profile page will be getting a lot me attention than usual – that is of course assuming that all of my “friends” decide to write on my wall or send me a virtual gift.


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Cyber signatures = Social change?

Posted: Tuesday, May 11, 2010 by Kathryn McConnachie in Labels: , , , , , , , ,
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Last week’s post looked at the problem with petitions as a form of digital activism. The issue of perpetuating an ethos of ‘slacktivism’ or armchair activism has come up many times, and so far the picture painted of online activism has been somewhat grim. Surely there are ways in which the online platform can be harnessed successfully to drive social change?

Care2 is one activist website which seems to have the right idea. Founder and CEO of Care2, Randy Paynter, staunchly defends the efficacy of online petitions in particular. Following the spread of email petitions in the late 90’s, Paynter started thePetitionSite.com in 2000 as a way to better channel all the energy and good intentions that were being lost in cyberspace. The website functions as a central repository for signatures with added fraud prevention and the assurance that the petitions will be delivered to the relevant authority figures. Paynter states: “We created a tool that has forced politicians, businesses and organisations large and small to face the power of their constituents”.

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The problem with petitions

Posted: Tuesday, May 4, 2010 by Kathryn McConnachie in Labels: , , , , ,
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We all hate chain emails that threaten to curse us for the next few years if we don’t forward them to 15 friends in the next five minutes. Email petitions are however a form of chain mail that becomes a little harder to ignore. These petitions function by appealing to one’s conscience rather than one’s superstitions.

  
Online petitions that one finds in one’s inbox are often cleverly constructed to pull on the heart strings and spur one on to ‘action’. Action is in inverted commas because while I have sometimes been ‘that friend’ who forwards the email to my entire friend-list, when I’m not overly emotional and feeling helpless about the plight of the whales/ greyhounds/ [insert worthy cause here], I’m skeptical about the efficacy of this form of digital activism.

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