There is a lot to be said about how social media influences social change, facilitating it by chirping calls for revolution on Twitter as well as hindering it by serving as a tool for government surveillance. But apart from influencing entire revolutions, there are other, less sweeping ways by which social media shapes social change.
Opportunities seem to abound for speaking out against the injustices of the world by showing virtual support. Making a difference is easy in the digital age, advocates of “clicktivism” say.
At the most basic level, there are all those pictures and posts on Facebook, drawing attention to some issue, imploring their audiences for shares or likes, and aiding the cause either through some (highly doubtful) financial transaction that automatically proceeds from the share/like, or simply by spreading awareness. At the next level, there are Facebook applications such as Causes. Or, taking the URL beyond Facebook, there are websites like Change.org, though the base for information-sharing remains social media.
Change.org is a petition website. Anyone can create a petition for some cause, and people can support this cause by submitting an online signature. After reaching the desired number of signatures, the petition is sent to the relevant authority which would hopefully be affected by the public concern and do something about the matter. The point of these online petitions is to let normal people, who have neither the time nor the inclination to become full-time activists, contribute to issues they feel strongly about.
But this phenomenon of Internet users “doing their bit” without actually spending any money or time is quite complex. From one perspective, this online “activism” is a manifestation of the promises regarding democracy made by the digital age — it’s easy for anyone to reach out to everyone and defend the values of democracy in virtualized civil society, it appears.
However, the case can be made that these opportunities for virtual mobilization, such as online petitions, are a curse in disguise. What if the great challenges facing our society cannot be solved by people going about life as usual with the same 9-to-5-working, copiously-television-gawking lifestyles? What if preventing catastrophic climate change – or gross violations of international peace treaties – requires people to deal punches stronger than mouse clicks? What if the real world is still what life’s really about, and the virtualization of democratic participation is just a dangerous illusion of empowerment?
What if these online petitions are merely relievers of guilt, tailor-made for a society of active consumers and passive citizens, excuses to not step into the fire and fight the real, vital fights?
Regardless of the validity of such questions though, these petitions do undeniably have some immediate benefits, with many meeting their objectives.
One such strikingly successful petition was created last February to urge members of Congress to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline. This pipeline, transporting oil from the tar sands of Alberta to refineries all the way down to Texas, has widely been denounced as what could be the final nail in our climate’s coffin.
Despite a seemingly successful battle against it, garnering even President Obama’s disapproval for the pipeline, it had been resurrected by being hitched to a transportation bill that Congress was set to vote on.
In response to this, numerous environmental organizations came together with a petition. Their goal: to amass 500,000 signatures in 24 hours. They met this goal in just seven hours, collecting 800,000 signatures in one day, and delivered the petition the following morning before the vote. Congress ultimately voted against the legislation, due at least in some part to the pressure exerted by the signatures.
With success stories like this on one hand and persuasive arguments against the long-term value of online advocacy on the other, this issue reflects an important truth about social media and technology, one that could be drowned out in the debate as to whether they are good or bad. This truth is that like most things, its value cannot be judged in terms of absolutes. Is social media a boon or a bane? As the example of online petitioning shows, the answer is a noncommittal question mark, and a gray one at that.
