Activism or Slacktivism

Many of us use hashtags, and some of us are guilty of getting a little too carried with them with results in a #hashtagapocalypse.

However, people have now started using these hashtags to raise awareness on issues around the globe. These hashtag campaigns fall under two categories: #slacktivism or #activism

So just is the difference between the two of them?

Slacktivism is where you raise some awareness about a certain campaign, but it is done with minimal effort and no major time investment is needed.

In my opinion, many of these so called hashtag campaigns unfortunately lie under this category.
One that especially stood out in my mind was #prayforparis. On November 13, 113 people were killed by suicide bombers and shooters. Many people showed their support for Paris by simply making a short post saying #prayforparis, and changing their profile picture to have a red, blue, and white filter.

If poster was feeling exceptionally motivated, they would write a short sentence or two followed by the hashtag.

#prayforparis is a case of slacktivism. How many of these people who posted these type of posts actually took a good thirty minutes to pray for the 130 people who died, the 368 injured, and their families? Probably not very many. Thirty minutes wouldn't even be a sufficient amount of time to pray for the people of Paris-that would only be less than 4 seconds of prayers for each victim.

Many people simply just tweeted or posted the #prayforparis hashtag, changed their profile picture, and then moved on with their happy everyday lives.

Although so many people were tweeting and sharing #prayforparis, just a day before, bombings had also occurred in Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon. And back in April, 147 college students in Kenya were killed by al-Shabaab militants.

These stories only received attention after the Paris attacks. Why was it that only after a Western country was attacked did the world move into mourning? Is our compassion only something that reaches out to first world countries? Although many say that its is because those kind of things happen in those countries all the time, I can assure that those citizens in countries such as Kenya and Lebanon are just as deserving of our prayers.

#prayforparis did bring awareness to the fact that bombings did in fact occur on the fated night of November 13, 2015, but this awareness did not help the people of Paris.

However, somtimes, hashtag campaigns can actually bring about change.

Activism is where you actually invest a good deal of time and effort into a movement. People tweet and post the hashtag associated with the certain campaign, but then will also take the extra step forward to do what they can to help the campaign move forward.

One hashtag movement that is would say is activism would be #blacklivesmatter. #blacklivesmatter came about to protest police brutality, and the fact that racism still exists in our modern world. People showed their support for this campaign very strongly, through riots and protests. Although I do not think that the Ferguson riots were the best to go about protesting, people were still fighting for what they believed in even though it came at a great danger.

Another hashtag campaign is #icebucketchallenge. However, with this one, I am not quite sure if it would fit under slacktivism or activism. The ice bucket challenge was to raise awareness about ALS, or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. People would dump a bucket of ice cold water over their head, donate some money, and nominate some of their friends to participate in the movement.

More money than the usual was raised for ALS, which showed that this campaign was a successful, but for some people, it started becoming something that would be cool to do. They would just pour the ice water over their head for the likes but wouldn't donate any money towards the cause, which irks me.

I was nominated to do the ice bucket challenge at the peak of its popularity. I did donate, but I did not do the ice bucket portion. I figured that the water could be better used and than people who were on social media would already know about the ice bucket challenge. So for the ice bucket challenge, I guess that it would be somewhere around the middle of slacktivism and activism, as some people did not invest the effort of donating any money.