James Boardman
Seth Graves
Writing 2150
4/3/2019
Does social media help or hurt activism?
Social media gave 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 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.
According to it’s definition, “activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct, or intervene in social, political, or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society.” In other words, 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, people can collectivize with other people who feel the same as them from behind their phone screen. 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 through the use 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. With so many possibilities opened through social media, it almost seems unquestionable that social media has a positive influence on activism, and in most cases, it does.
Throughout the past decade, a time where social media has grown exponentially in popularity, it has had positive effects on activism efforts across the globe. One major example of this is the 2011 revolution in Egypt, where protestors met and spread information and organized protests on Facebook. 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 during the revolution and over 6,000 were injured according to a government-led fact-finding mission in 2011.
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.
What this data shows us is while social media wasn’t the primary source of information where people initially heard of the protests, it was the main method used to spread information about the protests while they took place. It played a major role in documenting the protests and bringing awareness of the events taking place at the time. 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. While social media use proved to be influential in the success of a revolution in Egypt, it’s necessary to view a scenario where social media’s role in another protest, specifically the Kony 2012 movement, couldn’t help a movement succeed.
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 Pheonix, 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 most of it’s goals 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.
This brings up the question: why did it fail? With such tremendous support on social media from millions of people around the world, and the recent success of protests in places like Egypt, it seemed the movement 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. Why? The answer may be in the comparison between the Kony 2012 movement and the Egyptian Revolution. In Egypt, the people were protesting against issues in their own country, whereas the Kony 2012 movement was trying to get people to protest for something in a country across the world from them. This could show that no matter the perceived support on social media, without the issue directly affecting the audience, social media support alone cannot motivate people into activism. Another reason could lie within the act of supporting a movement on social media. Whether it be the act of blogging your support for a movement or retweeting something you agree with, posting your support for a movement could make people feel like they’re supporting and making a difference. This feeling of making a difference makes people feel like they’ve done their part and don’t need to do anything more, but that isn’t the case. Spreading the word about a movement is supporting, but without mobilization or any physical 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. All in all, social media has the potential to support a movement and help spread the movements information, though not the power to motivate people to act on issues on right in front of them, even if massive support on social media is shown