Slacktivist Movement Analysis

With the use of social media, individuals are likely to learn out about a slacktivist movement through friends. Individuals’ existing values and relationships with friends “are key in translating social media participation into further action…” (Yorke and Blake). They tend to pay more attention to what their friends say rather than strangers. If individuals are hesitant to participate in a movement, knowing friends who are participating can influence them to join in. The ALS ice bucket challenge is an example of an activist movement promoted by friends through social media. Individuals would be “nominated by personal friends to participate and donate, aligning the goals of the campaign with participant’s existing values and relationships” (Yorke …show more content…
Jane-Marie Fatkin and Terry C. Lansdown conducted a study that analyzes the “slacktivism” debate by observing the increase of supporters and their actions. The two slacktivist movements analyzed are Giving Tuesday 2013 and SnowedOutAtlanta 2014. Established in 2012 in the United States, Giving Tuesday’s goal is to support charitable organizations during the holiday season. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are usually the days where many people spend their time shopping for themselves. This activist group advocates for people to spend their time donating to others rather than spending their money for themselves. Primarily using Twitter to raise awareness, the movement spread through two trends: #GivingTuesday and #Unselfie. SnowedOutAtlanta began as a Facebook group created by Michelle Sollicito. Her intention is to raise awareness that the two inches of snow in Atlanta caused traffic jams, which resulted in children stuck in school, drivers struggling to get out of their cars, and many without a place to sleep. SnowedOutAtlanta ended up trending on Facebook for two separate days: January 29, 2014 and February 13, 2014. In order to study the impact of social media for both movements, Fatkin and Lansdown developed …show more content…
Arguments can be made that these events can’t be used to generalize that social media would be beneficial to any other activist movements. However, Fatkin and Lansdown believe that their study paves the way for further research, where the demographics and variables of the participants are compared to online activism. Also, stronger statistical analysis would pinpoint some variables that contribute to online activism. The facts of this study are that two activist movements created in an online environment were analyzed and participants helped these movements achieve their goals. Without social media, individuals may not be aware of these movements; thus, they wouldn’t participate and the movements would’ve become