Online activism can be affective in many ways but also can not be affective. A huge factor that most look at before seeing if they want to partake to make a change is whats being protested or discussed. Being apart of an era that takes online activism not as serious as the earlier generations ; It is not affective. Theres a bunch of problems world wide that 9/10 gets brought to light over social media before any other platform. Taking that there are billions of people with online accounts that comment and see these (sometimes graphic) issues. People would say it’s easy to click on links about serious issues and keep scrolling, not really giving it the time of day to look over and spread it to others.:There are People that are just sharing or changing their profile pictures online to make themselves feel good, but sometimes these peopke are usually already activists in their own worlds. They are likely participants in the cause or organization and research shows that this sharing on social media doesn’t actually make a change.
Georgetown University (2011) researched the correlation between social media sharing of a cause and the participation of people in the cause offline. They actually found that those who are sharing a cause on social media are twice as likely to engage in the cause in an offline environment, but they are typically already active in the organization and that is why they are sharing it (Georgetown University, 2011). Therefore, creating online movements does not spark any others to take up in their cause .https://medium.com/@madison.v.pilling/slacktivism-how-activism-has-changed-with-social-media-18cb770f0df4
Think about when you have seen a collegue or family member share something they’re apart of online. Did you join that group? or see other family members join? or did you just keep scrolling after skimming the organization and details on it? This is what most people do online causing online activism to not be as affective as it can be. Online tools can be important but when not used in the right way and consistently little to nothing will be done to make a change on what youre advocating for.
J's World 