Slacktivism and Activism

Social Media plays an important role in spreading the news and its significance towards the communities. Especially Facebook or Twitter, and other social media, in only one minute, a post from someone living in nowhere can be passed on and on from this continent to another continent and eventually to all over the world. By utilizing the spreading speed on social media, some campaigns are made to spread awareness among people and sometimes to raise donations for charities. It seems like social media MAKES OUR WORLD A BETTER PLACE, but who knows exactly what behind the scene is! We may list some widespread campaigns that are most posted including #PrayForParis, #LoveWins, #IceBucketChallenge, etc. Honestly, those are the only 3 campaigns that I know. Other campaigns..."Nah, I don't care."

The very first campaign that I noticed was The Ice Bucket Challenge, hashtag: #IceBucketChallenge. What I knew about this campaign though was pouring icy water over your head. Done!
I was pretty sure that I would get an A if that was the answer to the question: "Outline the Ice Bucket Challenge campaign." Unfortunately, I just got back my test yesterday and found out that I got a D because I knew nothing about it. In fact, the first time I knew what ALS is was when I was writing this blog. Funny, hey! So I can say that the purpose of this campaign hasn't been carried with the "action of wasting water during the summer time". In my opinion, it's definitely slacktivist and it fails to communicate to the audience. I'm very surprised to the fact that I'm more ignorant than what I think I am!

The second campaign was known by the effect of changing RAINBOW avatar, hashtag: #LoveWins. Yes, I'm talking about the fight for a true love and equality for the LGBT community. I guess the reason why I didn't know that before because my Facebook was full of Vietnamese news, therefore, it lacked of the world famous news. Even though it came to my ears very late, I could still join to the pace of the campaign. I love when people talk about love, because it's a fun thing to discuss about and it is essential to our lives. Without love, people are disunited and hateful. So why don't we just accept the true meaning of love despite the misunderstanding of same-sex love, which is allegedly seen as" unnatural?" I'm very happy that people start to think differently about LGBT community. People are more open towards the Human Rights, which is what supposed to be our right, but not a governmental legislation. The campaign did a very good job in raising the awareness globally and certainly it's received and accepted. It is totally an activism.


The last campaign that has the same "marketing" propaganda is that to colour your avatar with the Flag of France, hashtag: #PrayForParis. Paris was attacked by the terrorist on November 13th, 2015. It was then well-known not only in Europe and America, but also in Asia in just a few days after the incident; or I can say that it was known in all over the world! Everyone started talking about in on social media every single second. It's totally an activism, however, another situation arose from the incident. Much sooner than that, there were a lot of wars in the Middle East but there wasn't any form of protest significantly. In a positive way, the campaign was created as an example of "the world is hurt by persistent wars". However in a negative way, the campaign was thought to be created by a "white men" so it was noticed whereas the wars in Middle East were like "not as important as" this terrorism. #AllLivesMatter #PrayForTheWorld.