Slacktivism

Kony 2012 is an example of slacktivism. It was a 28-minute video created by children and circulated on the internet. The children on the video hid their identity. The video was made to talk about the dangerous situation of children of Uganda in the hands of Joseph Kony who was the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army that was seeking to oust Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni out of power. The boys were made child soldiers while girls were made sex slaves. Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping by Boko Haram also elicited a slaktivist movement. The hashtag #BringBackOurGirls trended on twitter following the kidnapping of the girls. The then first lady of the US was also part of the slacktivist movement as she tweeted a photo of herself carrying a sign displaying the hashtag. Another example of slacktivism is the cat cruelty picture that went viral on twitter with the caption, “Retweet if you say No to animal testing.” More than 5000 people spread the message. The examples listed are obtained from Wikipedia.com

            All the examples listed alerts people on an injustice taking place and also calls on people to stand up and act on the respective issues. The examples bring forth commanding voices from the slacktivists who feel that a right is being undermined and therefore a call for justice is necessary.

            In the days leading to the 2016 elections, my friend Tommy changed his profile pic and put a selfie he took wearing a hat written, “Make America Great Again”. This was social activism as he was trying to get people to help spread his belief that America was on the decline and therefore needed to made great again by voting Donald Trump as president.

            Slacktivism is effective when there is urgency to pursue a particular issue for instance, the Chibok Girls’ issue. When there is a rising momentum of campaign online about a particular issue, public opinion changes and builds a sense of emergency and the feeling that this must be done now.  Slacktivism employs the principle of operant conditioning where retweets and continuous spread of the message acts reinforcements.