By Aron Dekker, Master student Political Communication at the University of Amsterdam
The refugee crisis and online activism
Currently Europe has to deal with a huge influx of refugees, who flee from war in their home countries. They are mainly from the Middle East and Africa, and risk their lives by crossing the Mediterranean Sea on small, old boats. This already took the lives of nearly 3000 men, women and children, which make this a huge social and humanitarian crisis.
As in other crises, people use the Internet to show their concerns. Facebook pages are created which can be joined or liked, or you can watch or share content about refugees, colour your profile picture to express thoughts or sign an online petition. These citizens can be considered as ‘online activists’ who contribute to a better world. But although this is very noble, critics say this is not a form of activism but slacktivism. This term is a combination of slacking and activism, which can be defined as someone’s willingness to perform a relatively costless display of support to a social cause, but with the lack of willingness to devote significant effort to enact meaningful change (Kristofferson, White & Peloza, 2014). Meaningful change is joining a protest in the streets, donating money or volunteering for a charity. Critics claim that slacktivism can be a problem when people do show their concerns on the Internet, but due to the ‘feel good factor’ of online activism, do not participate offline anymore. In other words, their urge to take action has been satisfied by the participation in the low-cost online actions. Supporters of slacktivism, on the other hand, believe that online activism will attract people who otherwise would not have taken any action, and the experience of taking action encourage people for further action.
The influence of slacktivism
So does slacktivism affects meaningful change? This is an important question, since the possibilities for online activism are increasing, but meaningful change remains very important to really change the refugee crisis, because money and volunteers are needed.
Lee and Hsieh (2013) investigated whether the decision to sign or not sign an online petition influenced someone’s willingness to donate money to a charity. In an experiment, participants were invited to sign a petition either for banning assault rifles or in support of gun rights. After signing (or not signing) the petition, participants were asked whether they were willing to donate part of their compensation money to a charity either in support or against gun rights, or to a charity for education. They were also asked about their intentions to participate in high cost actions, like attending a protest. The study did not find any negative evidence of slacktivism. Participants who signed the petition donated even more money to a charity related to gun rights than people who decided not to sign the petition. However, participants in the latter group donated more money to the charity for education. This indicates that people who sign a petition are only more willing to donate money to a charity that is related to the topic of the petition they have signed. However, the authors did not find an effect of signing a petition on other high cost actions, such as volunteering or attending a protest.
Kristofferson et al. (2014) also investigated whether slacktivism affected meaningful change. These authors expected that when online activism is high in social observability (publically observable actions), it is less likely that individuals will perform meaningful change. However, when online activism is low in social observabilty (private actions), it is more likely that individuals will act in meaningful change. These expectations are based on impression-management motives, which refers to the tendency for individuals to be motivated by a desire to present themselves in a positive light to others. So people who perform public actions, such as sharing or liking content about refugees on Facebook, do this mainly to communicate positive identities to others. In different experimental set-ups it was investigated whether the observability of someone’s online actions influenced the willingness to perform meaningful change. It was found that the average donation of the participants in the private setting was nearly three times higher than the donation of participants in the public setting. Participants were also asked whether they were willing to volunteer, and 77.8% of participants in the private setting agreed to volunteer, compared to 58.7% of the participants in the public setting. The authors therefore conclude that social observability is the key moderator that determines when slacktivism does or does not lead to meaningful change.
Stay away from social media
Although there is more research on the topic of slacktivism, based on the literature that is discussed above, it is easy to answer the question whether slacktivism hurts activism. The answer is definitely: no. None of the articles found a negative effect of slacktivism on meaningful change. However, not every form of slacktivism contributes to meaningful change either. When someone only joins, shares or likes content on social media about refugees, it is most likely that these individuals will not perform any meaningful change, but only present themselves in a positive light to others. However, when someone signs an online petition, the chance increases that this person will also perform meaningful change. So, if you really want to change the refugee crisis, stay away from social media but continue to be a private slacktivist!