SPONSOR
Today’s post is brought to you by The Sample
Discover the best independent writers.
Each morning, The Sample sends you one article from a random blog or newsletter that matches up with your interests. When you get one you like, you can subscribe to the writer with one click.
Living in the Age of Hyper-Activism
In the age of internet and social media, every cause seems to be dire, and every voice seems concerned. It takes too little to get tempers high and drive trends in favour or against any subject - ideology, person, event or entity. When we see such large number of people or rather accounts coming together posting their opinions - mostly outraged, it is hard to deny that we are living in the age of hyper-activism.
Social activism as a tool to protest against authorities and push forward the will of people is a hallmark of free society. As the societies matured and adopted rights based liberal & democratic system, people became freer to assert their wants. To represent those wants, the social leaders came forward. Across the globe, at different stages in the human history we saw social movements changing the world for better. Since past century, as the imperialism and colonialism declined, the access to education increased and more people made their path upward the power structure; avenues for civic representation increased and along with them activism. With changing times, news ideas and new awareness came along, which demanded that people rose against the old system. It did a lot of good.
But in last decade or so, if you notice, suddenly the quantum of activism seems to have increased whereas the change expected to come through them seem to have declined. What has changed? Why it seems so? Is it even true? Let’s Explore.
Public Protest in the Past Century
Activism has risen dramatically in past years, and it continues to rise. A growing percentage of youth believe more in the protest politics than the formal political participation as the older generation did. From #BlackLivesMatter to #ClimateStrike, the hashtags trends have created much larger public mobilization than most movements we had seen in the preceding couple of decades.
The current rise in the ‘activism culture’ also seem amplified because towards the end of the last century we saw a bit of dip. The dip in political activism towards the end of last century had a couple of reasons behind it. First, and the fundamental one was the fatigue. The last century was the century of political transformation across the globe. The world remained on edge for most part of it and by the time cold war ended, a level of fatigue had set in. At the same time free markets were expanding and new range of ‘capitalistic products’ were reaching to a larger part of the world. To some extent the generation politically active earlier took a bit of time out after the century of turmoil. Second reason is that the nature of cause was shifting in this time and was still to capture critical mass. For the much of last century, the civil movements largely focused on freedom from oppressive form of governments - colonialism, monarchy and communism. As the century was closing, more nuanced and mature causes came to foray – equality, climate, free-speech etc which had yet not gained momentum with larger mass.
As the millennium turned, and a new generation was adulting, this new range of civil causes started to become more mainstream. They captured the public psyche as freedom of speech, expression and demonstration became available to larger number of people across the globe, and now were being exercised with help of much more available & accessible mass media. Although, there was an ease of access and higher availability, the media, in terms of technology, being utilized for these civil agitations were largely same as earlier.
But there was something else which was still in its nascent stage, that would change the game completely within a decade – internet and social media. While the internet had become available towards the end of last millennium, its usage by a large number of people to organize together hadn’t not become mainstream. Civic bodies and activists had certainly built a presence, but it was still a niche group utilizing technology. In a few years, Facebook & twitter turned everyone in to an activist.
Activism in the age of social media
With advent of social media and rapidly growing penetration of internet, the power to opine, organize and agitate became universally available. The cause, the causer and the casualty became borderless. You didn’t need to belong to any organization, nation or even continent, to become a participant in a civil agitation. It essentially was a good thing; to support a valid cause – let’s say gender equality, anti-racism or climate change – you do not need to belong to a specific demography. We saw a lot of platforms coming up, such as Change.org, providing people a medium to petition for cause they wished to raise support for. We also saw governments and authorities moving to set up channels of communication over social media for users to register their views, complaints and protests.
But then, the water started getting muddied. As people learnt to use technology, some also learnt to manipulate it. Some fell prey to algorithmic manipulation of thought and behaviour by the platforms themselves. And, we started seeing a storm of manufactured agitation taking place on internet. Fast forward to now, you wouldn’t find a single day when there isn’t a twitter trend protesting or boycotting one thing or another. The number of activists and activism events have sky rocketed; yet, the value of activism seems to be going down. There are essentially three reasons behind this.
Ease of Organizing & Communicating
In the era before the internet, taking a cause to a critical mass took a lot of effort. Serious organizations spend a lot of time, money and effort to reach a large number of people and make petition to the authorities. A lot of cause – which may or may not have had extremely serious impact on the life of people – got side-lined simply because the advocates couldn’t put together the cost required to organize. While internet solved for this, it also removed any filter that checked for seriousness or the legitimacy of the cause. Today, anyone at any point of time with enough time at hand and a certain level of internet savviness can generate enough traction for any cause to make it look legitimate to a large number of people. Once they cross the critical mass, the snowballing effect makes the agitation trend. On top of that, add the ease of creating and circulating propaganda material to a large number of people. There is little to no entry barrier when it comes to someone becoming a social activist. The correct music and a clip of right length donning the trending move can take your cause across the world in no time.
In an ideal world, all of it would have been a good thing. But we do not live in an ideal world.
Low Cost of Participation
Before internet, if someone truly believed in a cause they would volunteer, attend gatherings or donate. The participation for a large part was active and put a real cost on the supporter in terms of time, money and effort.
Social media made the cost of participation zero. All you need to do, is click a button –like, share or sign a petition. Passive participation has grown exponentially. Nowadays when you come across a digital agitation backed by a million people, it is practically impossible to tell how many have actually even given it a thought. Infinite scroll, double tapping like and the tendency to align with peer group means that millions of users are sharing, resharing and lending their support to civil causes without even being consciously aware of it.
Such passive participation has completely taken away credibility from any kind of civil mobilization that happens on internet. And, because of this reason we see gems like #NotMyPresident trending in Mumbai, India when Donald Trump swears in as President at Washington DC, USA. Yes, he is not your president, you live in an entirely different country.
Now, add another layer of fake accounts and bot farms on top of all this. The numbers that we see become completely immaterial. Have you ever wondered why someone pulling millions of traction on social media, fail to raise even a few thousands when they go out asking for donations? Yes, that happened. A group of prominent social activists when asked their millions of supporters and followers in India to donate, they couldn’t even raise $1000.
Then comes another emerging trend of cause influencers. It has started paying to be a supporter of a cause. So now we have social media influencers broadcasting causes to their followers which neither they nor their followers have any real awareness or interest in. As opposed to activist who fail to raise donations; these ‘activist influencers’ are actually raking in a lot of money to support their ‘activist lifestyle’ and as a compensation for stress that being active causes them.
All of it put together, social media activism has created a mirage of huge mobilization whereas the real impact of such activism rarely yields much.
Cumulative Effect
Even if, for a minute, we forget about all the motivated and manipulated online agitation along with their passive or fake participants, there is still much larger number of activism events that we come across on the internet which are genuine and have real backers. They also seem much higher than many of us would have seen in preceding decades. This can be attributed to cumulative effect.
Internet is a borderless place. Events happening anywhere in the world become available to us. This is true about content, trends, crime and even about causes. If not for internet, a child sitting outside her school for climate would at max be replicated in a couple of global cities and feature on the fifth page of some newspapers in a bunch of countries followed by a discussion in a non-prime slot on a few news channels. Most people would never find out that such an agitation ever took place. Internet makes everything visible. We end up seeing some sort of civil protest going on everyday in some part of world for some cause and cumulatively it seems that world is in turmoil all the time. This is aided by the algorithmic design of social media platforms which feed us with more of what we see. Together the impact lead us in to believing the scale of an event to be much larger than what it actually is.
Over all internet has changed the way social activism happened and was perceived. We are in an age where the serious civic issues are being treated in the same manner as any other social media post. The messaging is reductive, the engagement is momentary, and churn is short. A phenomenon, which can be defined as the ‘tiktokization’ of activism.
Downside of ‘Tiktokization’ of Activism
While the internet had helped in bringing a lot of very serious issues to the foray and have mainstreamed many a cause which earlier found it extremely difficult to gain critical engagement; it has also come with a lot of downside.
A continuous stream of protests, agitation and boycotts results in a level of fatigue among the larger mass not personally invested or directly impacted by the cause. Over time, they become immune to the issues being discussed not only on internet but in real life as well. Over exposure in an extremely reductive manner on social media dilutes the seriousness of topics being discussed. The leadership, representation and expected outcomes, all become contested even among the supporters of the cause. And then as if on cue, as the support had surged for the cause an equally prominent opposition also builds up. If you have followed trending issues on social media, you would recognize this pattern too often. Many extremely serious issues are now just ending up being a trend war.
Then there is the issue of false expectations of immediate outcome. In the world of social media users, the expectation of turn around and the attention span is too short to match with how things work in real world. When no significant movement on the issues happen in real life, a lot of supporters either simply get disappointed or a bunch of conspiracy theory start rising. Neither helps in maintaining the seriousness and integrity of the cause. A cause reduced to internet trend gets the same lifespan as any other trend, and then all those who paid attention to it simply move on to a newer trending issue.
But biggest adverse impact of this phenomenon is the false sense of righteousness that barrage of manipulated communication and seemingly millions of supporters can result in. Internet does spill in to real life, and off late we have seen real violence resulting in loss of life and property caused by set of people taking moral high ground following agitations spurred on internet. Internet activism is becoming a breeding ground for radicalization. It has become almost too easy to whip up issues, raise temper and encourage individuals to break law, all in the name of a ‘good cause’.
How to separate wheat from the chaff?
It is not easy. There are two layers here. First, to keep yourself rooted and not give in the temptation that internet creates to raise your self-value by climbing on the moral high ground. Rise for a cause that you are invested in, have understood on your own and willing to bear a real cost for. Second layer is when you have found your own bearing within those issues also identify who you lend your voice to and who you give your ear to.
Imagine four quadrants made by two axis – one going from passive to active and another seeking to discovering. The first one is the spectrum for participation, whether you are a passive participant in a cause or an active one. The other axis is about how you came across the issue. Were you actively seeking it, or just happened to randomly discover it?
Now put this all together. If you are a passive participant in a discovered cause, you have nuisance value. It is even worse, if you have discovered it from another passive participant. Either start seeking more information or if you really care then show more active participation, bear a cost. If you are a passive participant in a cause that you were seeking out, at least your interest is genuine, but your participation is not very productive. Either you are still not convinced or do not have the risk appetite to put you name on it. Then the quadrant of discovered and active. It is a dangerous place, and you need to be extremely careful. If you are putting in real cost, you might want to spend time in understanding the source from whom you discovered the cause and ensure you are not being manipulated either by platform algorithm or cause marketing by influencers. Seek more information before you get more invested. The causes you genuinely believe in will fall in the quadrant of Seeking and Active.
The temptation on internet is too high to be part of most trending issues and say things which is expected to be received well by peer and aspirational groups. But at scale such motivated behaviour by people do not help anyone. We end up living in and showcasing a make believe world which in the end results in disappointment and delusion. Civil movement are the foundation of societal growth; the weakening, manipulation, commercialization – the ‘tiktokization’ of it, is bad for everyone.
RECOMMENDATIONS
1440 Media - Fastest way to an impartial point of view
The Average Joe - Stock market insights for you
Chartr - Free newsletter with visual insights
SPONSOR
2.6 million people wake up to this newsletter every morning
There's a reason over 2.6 million people start their day with Morning Brew - the daily email that delivers the latest news from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. Business news doesn't have to be dry and dense...make your mornings more enjoyable, for free.
Living in the Age of Hyper-Activism