James Boardman
Seth Graves
Writing 2150
4/3/2019
There shouldn’t be a doubt that social media has an immense amount of potential to be very influential in the process of activism, let alone any act of gathering, communicating, or forming connections with others. Social media gives the opportunity nearly for the entire world to be connected without ever having to physically be with each other. Through the tap of a phone screen or click of a computer’s mouse, you have the ability to communicate with a wide array of people in any country. And as time goes on, more and more people are gaining access to the internet and various social media platforms, adding onto the already-large portion of the human population that’s on social media already. Facebook reported that as of December 2018, there has been 2.32 billion monthly active users on the platform (Zephoria 2019). That’s over 36% of the entire planet on 1 platform out of many. VK, Russia’s dominant social media platform reported 500 million users as of August 2018, Twitter claimed 321 million monthly users, and WeChat, China’s prominent social media platform, reported over 1.08 billion users in 2018. With such gargantuan amounts of people on social media, it opens up new possibilities for meeting with people you’ve met online, especially in the aspect of activism.
Activism is a collected effort by people to bring about change by protesting against something they don’t agree with. This originally meant people needed to physically group together in designated places and express their disapproval together. However, in the age of the Internet and social media, the need to physically collectivize isn’t necessary anymore. Individuals are now capable to express their opinions with the potential for anyone to see. And through the use of mediums such as hashtags and online groups, it’s easy for people to find others that feel the same as them about particular subjects and subsequently meet and collectivize over a subject. This opens even more possibilities for people to pursue in activism in new ways without the same dangers as the past. For instance, in the past, for information about a protest to spread or for people to collectivize to discuss their dissent, it had to be done physically or through word of mouth. It was difficult to express their dissent while also remaining discrete or anonymous, and in nations with controlling governments or authority, this puts people in a lot of danger of persecution or other harm. However, now with the help of social media, people can express their dissatisfaction while also remaining hidden from authoritative powers. This could be through the use of private groups on a platform or accounts not connected to yourself. Governments don’t have the power or resources to see everything posted on the Internet, so people can fly under their under the radar of their governments.
Although, this undoubtful potential for a great influence raises the question if social media is always a positive influence across all scenarios. If there were a great need for activism in a particular area, where people are protesting for issues that affect their everyday life or play a vital role in their lives, whether it be because of a corrupt government needing an ole’ overthrowing by the people or a group of people who feel they’re being overlooked and/or walked over, social media could play an important role in these groups in spreading their movement and keeping it going. But if the need for activism in another area isn’t as great, where the people are protesting for their own benefit and/or beliefs and not something that plays a major role in their lives, how much of a role does social media play in their movement? Does it help them reach their goal, or does it distract them for their goal through the illusion of “helping”? I believe that social media plays an effective role in the aiding early phases of activism, i.e. organizing a protest or spreading word about an upcoming movement, however this is mostly the extent of it’s support. While social media may work magically to bring widespread attention to a movement, protest, etc., attention is only temporary, and once the attention dies down, as it inevitably will as all things do, the support social media has to offer to a movement/protest dies down as well. This is seen across several examples of activism, spanning from Egypt, to Chile, to the USA.
Throughout the past decade, a time where social media has grown exponentially in popularity, it has had positive effects on major activism efforts across the globe. One prime example of this is the 2011 revolution against a corrupt Egypt government, where protestors met and spread information and organized protests on Facebook. In this case of a protest against an issue that played a major role in the lives of many Egyptians, social media had a great positive influence. But first, a little backstory:
In 2010, authoritative regimes in the Middle East and Northern Africa started facing large protests against poverty, corruption, and political repression (Britannica 2011). This started in Tunisia with the “Jasmine Revolution”. In December of that year when a young man self-immolated himself as protest to the governments corruption and increasingly high unemployment rates. This led to large protests for the president of Tunisia, Zine al-Abdine Ben Ali, to step down from office in order to restore a proper democracy, something the people felt they didn’t have. As the protests gained momentum and size, Ben Ali struggled to control the mass amounts of protestors through means such as police brutality. Ben-Ali continued to introduce new laws and reforms as an attempt to heal the wounds and end protesting, though this immediately failed to “fix” anything, and Ben-Ali was subsequently forced to leave the country. The revolution was a success, and word got around to other countries nearby who were also struggling with corrupt governments and inspired more revolutions in countries including Libya, Yemen, and our focus, Egypt.
At the time, Egypt was also dealing with issues similar to Tunisia, including high rates of unemployment, government suppression, and corrupt government officials. One of these corrupt officials was the nation’s president, Hosni Mubarak, who was in the 30th year of his presidency at the time of the protesting, many of which of those years were uncontested victories swarmed with beliefs of election rigging and other corruption. Similarly to Tunisia, the movement against Mubarak began with a man self-immolating outside of the Egyptian parliament building as protest to the government’s corruption and other issues mentioned previously in January of 2011. A week later, thousands began to gather in Cairo as protest against the government. Amid violence between protestors and police in the weeks to follow, Mubarak stepped down as president in mid-February and power was handed over to the military as the government was restructured, who subsequently set up an interim cabinet to run the country in the 6-month period before the next election. However, this wasn’t the last of Mubarak’s influence on Egypt, as several members of the cabinet were appointed by Mubarak to pursue his interests. Throughout 2011 and into 2012, major protests against the government continued as the people felt the government was failing them. Protests persisted, though with diminishing strength, until a new president, Mohammed Morsi, was elected in June of 2012. However, the effect of these protests still remains, as at least 846 people were killed and over 6,000 injured in the revolution
The relevant portion of this story of Egypt’s revolution, to this paper at least, is how the protestors organized and gathered prior to the major protests: on Facebook. Facebook and other platforms played an essential role in the organization of the protests, the spread of the information regarding the protest, and in convincing people to participate in the protests. Following the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, the Facebook page “We are all Khalid Said” started to gain popularity among the population in Egypt, and eventually a protest date was set for January 25th at Tahrir Square. The influence of social media continued as the protests took place, as many people at Tahrir Square uploaded new videos and shared new information as the protests went on. According to Zeynep Tufecki, who interviewed Egyptians who participated in the protests, 52% of the interviewees had a Facebook account and nearly all of them, (51% of the interviewees), used Facebook to spread information about the protests, and 13% used Twitter for the spreading of information. This shows social media played a key role in supporting/ enhancing the Egypt protests, as a majority of the protestors used it to spread information and awareness of the event. Additionally, according to Tufecki, 28.3% of the protestors interviewed first heard of the protests through Facebook. This wasn’t the dominate medium of which people heard of the protests, as nearly half of the interviewees heard of the event through face-to-face communication, though it still was the second most common source of information.
This data gives an idea of the type of support social media offered in the case of this protest. The data shows that social media was the most dominant tool used to spread information about the protest, suggesting social media is effective in bring in attention. Additionally, social media played a major role in the documentation of the protests while they took place. This suggests social media supports movements by acting as a sort of scribe, recording what’s happening at each protest everyday. Documenting events like this is essential to keeping them in memory and history. Lastly, this data informs us that social media wasn’t the primary source of information where people heard about the protests. This shows how social media still isn’t the source of information for everybody, or at least not yet.And a major factor of this is the fact that Facebook had only been made available in Arabic in 2009, Arabic being the official language of Egypt. This means Facebook had only been available to the majority of the population for just under 2 years by the time the Tahrir Square protests took place. Social media could’ve played a more influential role had it been available to the majority of the Arabic speaking Egyptians, though that is merely speculation.
The revolution that occurred in Egypt is a prime example of social media being used effectively as a tool for a movement that achieve their goal. While the change they protested for may not have lasted in the long run, their ultimate goal was to replace their corrupt government with something better and less corrupt, and it’s important that the protesting they did led to them achieving their goal. And, shockingly, Egypt isn’t the only example of social media being used as an effective tool. Another instance of this is the Chilean students protests that started in 2011. Students protested against Chile’s education system and desired a new system that’d allow the less fortunate to afford to achieve higher education. According to an article out of the Journal of Communication, a majority of the youth that participated in the protests used social media, specifically Facebook, for the use of spreading information, and the use of social media also led to an increase in protest behavior and demonstrations. Additionally, Facebook and other social media platforms were the dominant method the youth used to get their news. While the protests didn’t bring about all the change and goals the activists aspired for, they still brought about change in the government. New people were appointed into higher-government cabinets, new proposals were brought forth that aspired to introduce new funding for education, and more.
The effect of social media in these two examples of activism share many similarities. In both situations, social media was predominantly used as a tool of spreading information about their respective movements. Protestors were able to share how the protest is going in real-time and show to the world what’s happening, how people are feeling, and record any use of violence from their opposition. Social media’s efficiency at spreading information and gaining attention to in both movements proves it’s potential to support activist movements and protest in their early stages. By providing large amounts of media and updates about a protest, you keep the protest in the news and relevant on the national, or global, stage. Social media also proved to be a widely used source of news in both examples as well. A sizeable portion of each of the movements said they used Facebook to view the news they took in on the regular. And the combination of protests being on the news because of social media and social media acting as a platform for news brings a lot of attention to a movement and thus keeps the fire going.
While social media use proved to be very influential in the success protests in Egypt and Chile, it’s necessary to view a scenario where social media’s role in other protests regarding less important issues that don’t have such an effect on the lives of the people. One prime example of this is the Kony 2012 movement that occurred worldwide, though mostly in the United States, in 2012.
The Kony 2012 movement was started by the organization Invisible Children. In March 2012, Invisible Children released a short documentary video to bring awareness to African war lord Joseph Kony who used children soldiers in his militia, in hopes of having him arrested by the end of the 2012. The video was posted on YouTube and Vimeo and immediately became a viral phenomenon, gaining over 120 million views on both platforms since it’s release. Invisible Children also had the support of many famous celebrities, including Oprah Winfrey, Angelina Jolie, Ryan Seacrest and more. This celebrity support brought large amounts of attention and support to the movement. On top of this, Invisible Children worked to gain support of American lawmakers in the hope to strengthen America’s presence in African countries in the hope of capturing Kony. On social media, the Kony2012 hashtag gained a lot of momentum, as it became the most trending hashtag and most talked about discussion on Twitter. However, this massive support on social media did not last long.
As days went by, people started to forget about the Kony 2012 movement. The hashtags #Kony2012 and #StopKony were spreading much slower, and it seemed people were moving on from the movement. However, Invisible Children didn’t give up on their movement regardless of the diminishing support. The organization released another short documentary on YouTube and Vimeo posing as a part two to the first video, however this video failed to meet any standard of the first video. The video gained only 1.7 million views within 11 days of it’s release, which was less than 2% of the views the first video gained within 5 days. The organization also planned an event they called “Cover The Night”, where they called for people to collectivize on the night of April 20th and put up posters around their town in support of the Kony 2012 movement. While they planned the date and what to do, Invisible Children didn’t set up any official meeting locations. This didn’t seem to matter, as social media groups for their respective cities were formed by people planning to participate as a means to group together. Thousands and thousands of people pledged their participation on social media for this Cover The Night event, but this didn’t translate when the night of April 20th came. Meet ups organized in cities like Phoenix, Vancouver, and Brisbane only ended up resulting in anywhere from 3 people to less than 50.
The Kony 2012 movement ended up failing to meet the goals it established. Cover The Night received barely any participation around the world, with most cities lacking any posters put up at all. In Congress, a resolution offering to back efforts in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan in order to stop Kony and his militia was introduced later in March of 2012. This resolution only ended up gaining support from 34 senators and never ended up passing at all. Additionally, the main goal of the movement, to stop Kony and his militia, was never met as Kony is still at large to this day. Even despite it’s immense popularity on social media and mainstream media, the Kony2012 movement was still ultimately a failure. This further proves my point that social media has it’s most effective support in the early stages of movements and protests; in this case, the whole movement was brought to national and worldwide attention solely because it was trending on Twitter and YouTube. The movement rode with the massive levels of support, however this support ultimately died down as time went on and so did people. In the end, the movement failed to maintain the support it had and needed in order to reach any of the goals it set forth.
The Occupy Wall Street movement as an organized protest against economic inequality in America. The movement was first started by the organization Adbusters with a post entitled “A Million Man March on Wall Street” in February of 2011, and later with the creation of the OccupyWallStreet.com website. Adbusters organized for a protest to take place in Zuccotti Park on September 17th, 2011, in New York. They also came up with a slogan, “We are the 99%” to represent their message of economic inequality, and this along with some mainstream media coverage as well as the circulation of the #OccupyWallStreet hashtag on Twitter and the blogs centered around “We Are the 99%” on Tumblr, the movement soon gained widespread attention going into the protest day. 20,000 people had signed up to participate in the protest on it’s opening day. Although, when September 17th came around, only 300 people showed up to protest in Zuccotti Park. This number grew in the coming weeks as information about the protest and updates from within the protest started spreading on social media. While the movement gained many more protestors in the coming months, they were ultimately forced out of Zuccotti Park by authorities and the movement began to lose momentum. More protests that aligned with Occupy Wall Street occurred in it’s wake, though none of them had the same level of attention and participation.
Social media’s role in the Occupy Wall Street movement was mainly “as a means for a choreography of assembly, setting the scene for public protest, and often became more of a kind of channel for the reverberation of events taking place on the ground.”, according to Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism author Paolo Gerbaudo. This is different to the role it played in the other movements I’ve mentioned; in Kony2012, social media brought mainstream attention to the movement while Occupy gained most of it’s attention from mainstream media itself. Although, it’s also very similar to the role social media played in the Egyptian revolution and Chilean protests. In these cases, social media was used as a means of organizing a protest and spreading information about the protest, before it took place and while it was happening. So if it bears similarities to successful protests, why did it fail in the case of Occupy Wall Street? And why did massive support on social media fail to help the Kony2012 movement achieve it’s goal? With such tremendous support on social media from millions of people and the recent success of protests in places like Egypt, it seemed the Kony2012 and Occupy Wall Street movements couldn’t fail, though ultimately that wasn’t the case. The Kony 2012 movement proved that tremendous social media support wasn’t enough to inspire mass activism, or at least enough activism to bring about change, and Occupy Wall Street’s failure showed that the support of social media to spread information regarding the protest as it took place wasn’t enough to keep the movement alive. Why? There could be several major factors in this
A major aspect could be in the comparison between the stability of the nations as the protests took place. In Egypt’s case, the people were protesting against important issues in their country that had a major affect on their lives. In Chile, the terrible education system had a major influence on the lives of the students who had little chance of a higher education. On the other hand, the Kony 2012 movement was trying to get people to protest for something in a country across the world from them. Whatever was happening in the jungles of Africa had little to no affect on the everyday lives of people in America. And in the Occupy Wall Street movement, the economy was bouncing back from a terrible financial crisis that occurred a few years earlier. Things were starting to stabilize and look better for the nations financial situation. The issue of financial inequality wasn’t as important and affluential to the lives of the protestors and other citizens to keep the movement alive.
Another aspect could be the effect social media has on you when you post something. When you see a hashtag or a Facebook group that supports an issue or subject that you believe, you can post in that group or use that hashtag to show your support. Just this little demonstration of support is enough for some people to believe they’re contributing to the cause and making a change. Although, if everyone just posted their support on social media and nothing else, there wouldn’t be any change. Without the mobilization of a movement or the physical act of activism, no change will ever come forth. Reform rarely ever comes about from social media support alone. The Kony 2012 resolution brought forth to Congress seemingly had the support of tens of millions of Americans on social media, but the resolution failed in Congress in the end.
Social media undeniably has the potential to have a positive influence on activist movements. It plays an important role in the spreading of information about respective movements, keeping widespread attention on the movement and it’s issue, and as a source for learning about movements. Although, this support doesn’t always help bring about the change a movement aspired to achieve. Without the issue playing a major role in the life of the people or having a large affect on their lives, no amount of support on social media will be enough to make people mobilize for something that doesn’t affect them. The potential for gaining support for a movement is there, but not always the potential for helping a movement succeed, that is dependent on the magnitude of the issue and the effect it has on the lives of the people. Social media support alone isn’t enough to carry a movement to achieve it’s goal.
This research could be helpful to a topically relevant cultural artifact because it addresses the current state of activism and the factors that influence it today. In comparison to 50 years ago, the process and idea of activism has completely changed. Social media now plays a major role in activism and has both the potential to help a movement succeed and hurt it by giving it’s supporters on social media the illusion that they’re helping and bringing about change. This could bring up more questions as to how living in a largely inter-connected world could have potential indirect negative effects on not only activism, but many aspects of our lives.
References
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Gerbaudo, Paolo. Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism. Pluto, 2015, pp. 102-133. Web
Dana Rotman, Sarah Vieweg, Sarita Yardi, Ed Chi, Jenny Preece, Ben Shneiderman, Peter Pirolli, Tom Glaisyer. “From slacktivism to activism: participatory culture in the age of social media” CHI EA ’11 CHI ’11 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, May 2011, Pages 819-822.
Tufekci, Zeynep, and Christopher Wilson. “Social Media and the Decision to Participate in Political Protest: Observations From Tahrir Square.” Journal of Communication, vol. 62, no. 2, 2012, pp. 363–379.
Valenzuela, Sebastian. Unpacking the Use of Social Media for Protest Behavior: the Roles of Information, Opinion Expression, and Activism.(Author Abstract). American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 57, no. 7, 2013, pp. 899–919.
Sebastián Valenzuela, Arturo Arriagada, Andrés Scherman, The Social Media Basis of Youth Protest Behavior: The Case of Chile, Journal of Communication, Volume 62, Issue 2, April 2012, Pages 299–314.