Why Social Media Is Reinventing Activism

Why Social Media Is Reinventing Activism

The argument that social media fosters feel-good clicking rather than actual change began long before Malcolm Gladwell brought it up in the New Yorker — long enough to generate its own derogatory term. “Slacktivism,” as defined by Urban Dictionary, is “the act of participating in obviously pointless activities as an expedient alternative to actually expending effort to fix a problem.”

If you only measure donations, social media is no champion. The national chapter of the Red Cross, for instance, has 208,500 “likes” on Facebook, more than 200,000 followers on Twitter, and a thriving blog. But according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, online donations accounted for just 3.6% of private donations made to the organization in 2009.

But social good is a movement still in its infancy. Facebook launched in 2004, YouTube in 2005 and Twitter in 2006. Let’s give the tools a little while to grow up before we start judging them.

All of that virtual liking, following, joining, signing, forwarding, and, yes, clicking, has a lot of potential to grow into big change. Here’s why:

The Power of One

full-text (large):
Why Social Media Is Reinventing Activism


SocialMediaToolkit_BM.pdf (Objeto application/pdf)
SocialMediaToolkit_BM.pdf (Objeto application/pdf)