Activism or Slacktivism? Discuss the Role of Social Media in Political Campaigns
Introduction
Recent events of political activism such as the 2011 Arab Spring revolution underscored the growing popularity of social media as a platform for political activism. In particular, we learned that social networking and social media is a powerful tools for political mobilisation towards pro-democracy movements and change of regime. Accordingly, a growing number of academics, journalists, and political pundits have embraced social media in its various forms, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, as an indisputable force for good. According to Flanagan et al. (2011), the explosion of social media has lowered many of the barriers that hinder people from partaking in social movements, while Mukherjee (2010) is of the view that social networks have enhanced individuals’ political effectiveness. While there are various forms of civic engagement, such social networking sites as Twitter and Facebook are among the most popular tools. Organisers and activists endeavour to capitalise on their impact, with the internet offering one such possibility. Besides giving voices to the voiceless, social media are also effective tools for recruiting and harnessing the powers of new volunteers to existing social movements (Gonzales-Bailon et al., 2011). To the doubters of political activity, Christensen (2011) opines that the term “slacktivism” depicts the substitution of useful real-world activism with futile online activism. On the other hand, slacktivism is usually viewed as a derogatory term in reference to the actions of people providing token support for a certain cause, with no intention to partake in meaningful support in the form of money, donations, or time. An example of slacktivism is “liking” a social cause or issue on Facebook but with no practical or limited effect besides the “feel-good” experience of the individual. While there is no doubt about the prolific nature of online civic activity, its effects are, however, doubtful. This essay seeks to examine the role of social media in political campaigns. In a bid to better comprehend the real-world effects of online civic activity, the paper shall examine two cases of activist groups that have been seen in recent years embracing social media as a platform for pursuing democracy. The first case entails the 2009 “Green” Revolution in Iran, which relied on Twitter as a platform to recruit protestors, organise rallies and propagate information across the globe. The second case involves the use of social media in Egypt especially Facebook to facilitate political mobilization during the 2011 Arab Spring movement.
Case Study 1: The use of Twitter to mobilize protestors in the Iranian revolution of 2009
In the summer of 2009, Iran went to the polls that were marred by street protests. By partaking in the protests, Iranians were registering their displeasure with their government over claims of a corrupt election. These protests were, by and large, relatively peaceful. However, the protestors employed various strategies that included parades, demonstrations, and even hacking. In response, the government resorted to the use of force in a bid to try and contain the protests. As a result of the retaliatory action by the government, at least 72 citizens lost their lives (AFP, 2009). The revolution lasted for a whole seven months and while the protestors failed in their bid to oust President Ahmadinejad from power, they, nonetheless, succeeded in winning international support and attention. More importantly, this revolution acted as a stimulant for the much bigger “Green Movement” whose focus was on ensuring that free, fair, and transparent elections took place in Iran.
During the Iranian Revolution, protestors relied on Twitter to organise protests and disseminate information. In addition, protestors also relied on Twitter as a platform for coordinating hacks. Furthermore, Iranians turned to Twitter as a tool for sharing videos and pictures of the various forms of human rights abuse that were taking place in the country during this time, with their supporters and sympathizers across the globe. To some analysts, the Green Movement remains by far the most significant political event to have happened in Iran in over three decades (Aslan, 2010; Cole, 2010). Such considerations underscore the significance of the “Green Movement”, and that it should not be undervalued.
According to Shirly (2011), the publicity gained by revolutionaries acted as a source of inspiration for the other protests that engulfed the Middle East in 2011, Starting in Tunisia and Egypt. A key event in the Iranian Revolution was a video of the violent death of a 26-year-old university student by the name of Neda Agha-Soltan. She was shot and killed violently, and this was recorded via three different protestors on their phones and circulated on Twitter. It caused uproar instantly across the globe, with the hashtag #Neda trending the entire day (Mottahedeh, 2015).
During the Iranian Movement, participants relied on such new media technologies as Twitter, Facebook, text messaging, and YouTube. Giroux (2009) has highlighted the significant role that the new communication and media technologies played in this particular movement. He accentuates that the democratic protests held in the country following the corrupt elections of 2009 helped to regenerate questions regarding the association between the new media on the one hand, and the conditions under which politics operate, on the other hand. According to Giroux (2009), the new media has the potential to rejuvenate the public sphere. Elsewhere, Lim and Kann (2008) describe the Internet as a “convivial medium with greater scope for freedom, autonomy, creativity, and collaboration than previous media” (p. 77). Nonetheless, the authors are quick to caution us that “there is nothing inherent in internet technology that automatically achieves this potential” (Lim and Kann, 2008, p. 78).
Hacktivists play a crucial role in promoting citizen rights, especially among suppressive regimes. While states are charged with the responsibility of ensuring that their people are secure, we have numerous examples of cases where the state has been shown to put the lives of its citizens in danger. Under these circumstances, hacktivists step in to provide the support needed by oppressed citizens. As such, hacktivism acts as a platform for individuals outside a state to directly ensure the safety of its citizens in a transnational context (Carafano, 2009). In this way, inter-governmental organisations and states can also combine efforts and offer protection to the citizens of a country whose government is not willing to do so. In such endevours, Anonymous has played a crucial role it providing the security of citizens in a big way. In the case of Iran, Anonymous Iran offered activists in the country the tools needed to make their protests a success, in addition to directing them to avoid detection by the Iranian government by remaining anonymous. Moreover, the site offered Iranian protestors discussion forums which was necessary in order to assist with the coordination of activities as well as maintaining communication with not only other protestors but also with their supporters across the border.
Twitter is usually distributed via SMS and the internet and during the entire conflict in Iran the government reacted by trying to block network traffic and cellular signals across the country. According to the Washington Post (2009), taking advantage of this vulnerability had the impact of hindering the organisation of protests and dissemination of information, albeit temporarily. However, following the end of the Iranian Revolution, study findings revealed that the vast majority of Twitter traffic relating to the Iranian Revolution was actually from European countries and the United States, as opposed to Iran (Gaffney, 2010). Following these damning findings, skeptics developed an argument that the role of Twitter along with other social media like Facebook in social activism is usually exaggerated.
Twitter aided in the realisation of two goals during the Iranian Revolution. First, it helped to organise protestors quickly secondly, it was useful in petitioning for support across the globe. While an analysis of Twitter traffic in Iran during the revolution makes the broad assumption that the huge Twitter traffic from European countries and the United States may not have been useful in terms of facilitating the organisation of supporters, it was however very useful in soliciting support from outside Iran. The effect of support from outside Iran differed and included giving encouragement to Iranian supporters, pushing for political pressure on the Iranian government from various democratic governments across the globe, including diplomatic support (Batty, 2011).
Case Study 2: Role of Social Media in the 2011 Egyptian Uprising
The 2011 Arab Spring started in Tunisia following the self-amortization of Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old graduate student turned fruit vendor, following harassment by the police. However, the underlying causes of the revolution that soon spread to Egypt shared a common trajectory. Tunisians and Egyptians were tired of high levels of unemployment, corruption, and an oppressive regime (Bakr, 2010). In the case of Egypt, the youth constituted the largest demographic group and unemployment was very high, especially among university graduates. The young people were tired of being ruled by an aging autocratic leader, not to mention that the ruling regime had lost touch with the needs of ordinary Egyptians (Chebib and Sohail, 2011). Consequently, this disenfranchised group started to mobilize. Social media especially Facebook provided the perfect platform for protestors to engage in political activism.
The Egyptian Revolution started on 25 January 2011, with about 50,000 people taking part in protests held in Cairo. However, this quickly spread to other major towns across the country in the coming days, including Suez, Alexandria, and Ismallia. However, the gathering that happened at Tahrir Square was the turning point of the protest, with the number of protestors growing to more than 2 million (Teti and Gervasio, 2011.). However, police brutality led to the deaths of Egyptians, and others were injured, as the Egyptian government turned to the use of a brutal police force to contain the largely peaceful protests. In particular, the killing of Khaled Said in Alexandria after he purportedly admitted to owning a video circulated on social media showing the involvement of the police in narcotics sparked outrage across the country. This led to the creation of the “We are all Khaled Said” Facebook group. This event and other related events led to a considerable increase in the usage of social media across Egypt (Tufekci and Wilson, 2012). Facebook acted as a platform for demonstrating solidarity with other activists, especially those who were either killed or met with the resistance to police brutality. Social media also helped to accelerate the pace at which the protests were organised. For example, Wael Ghonim, an Egyptian activist used his Facebook page as a platform for enabling other protestors to organise protests.
Social sites like Twitter and Facebook helped to accelerate the effect of the revolution. In particular, social media enable protestors to communicate with reporters on television stations like Al Jaazira, have discussions, and respond to questions (Mainwaring, 2011). In this way, the local citizens who had for years been restricted from exercising their freedom of expression by an autocratic regime that had been in power for more than three decades finally found their voice through social media. Besides empowering them to express their views on the issues facing them, social media also acted as a platform for regular citizens to take part in a movement (Suarez, 2011). Although the Egyptian government reigned in on the protests by blocking mobile phone networks and social media sites, the protestors had anticipated this development of the event. Some had already organised protest events on Facebook days in advance of the imminent blockade, which was attended by tens of thousands of protestors and supporters. Organisers of the events had also posted a Google document to various Facebook groups aimed at collecting their email addresses prior to the blockade. As such, trying to prevent further protests proved futile.
While protestors turned to social media to communicate with one another and organise protests, the ruling regime tried to use social media to win political mileage. They used propaganda to promote the image of the president by trying to create a picture of a calm Egypt, contrary to what was actually happening on the ground. Thousands of “pro” Mubarak texts were sent to millions of Egyptians across the country in a bid to spell out the positive contributions that President Mubarak had made during his tenure in office (Suarez, 2011). Moreover, the government endeavoured to convince its citizens that these protests had been stimulated by individuals who wished to bring the interests of Americans, Israelis, and Iranians into Egypt. However, this did little in the way of convincing the protestors, and fuelled by the success of the revolution in Tunisia, managed to have Mubarak removed from office. What this appears to suggest is that social media due to its ease of use, low entry barriers, readily availability, and low communication barriers, can be a powerful tool for achieving social and political change. Conclusion
Based on the case studies discussed above on the Green Movement in Iran and the Egyptian uprising in 2011, it is quite evident that social media networks platforms like Facebook and Twitter can be powerful tools for activism, as opposed to just being seen as another type of slacktivism. In these two cases, people did not just give lip service to social events in Iran and Egypt on social media, they took to Twitter and Facebook to organize demonstrations and mobilise support. While the two cases were characterized by varying levels of success, they each in their own way display the capability of social media to revolutionalise offline political and social actions to such a scale as we have never witnessed before. The two cases are also a learning lesson for future social movements who wish to exploit the power of social media. In particular, the cases demonstrate that even where a repressive regime is concerned, social media can solicit support among democratic governments across the globe and humanitarian groups to seek a lasting solution to the social issues at play.
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