Due to the rise of Social Media, Facebook, twitter, Tumblr and YouTube and many more we have seen many spreads of massive ethical issues raised in the media follow through with a lot of activism through social media as social media becomes a massive part of society’s lives. A good example of this #Kony2012 which was run by and organisation called invisible children.
The video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc
In 2012 a video of Joseph Kony who was a militant leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda reached 100 million views in the first 6 months of its release with people sharing it all over Facebook or just social media. The viral video directed by Jason Russel, got people to sign petitions, buy action kits and donate to the invisible children organisation.
It’s not just everyday people who share these Medias all over social media celebrities even jumped onto the bandwagon against Kony. Although the campaign was shared all over social media, by celebrities and non-celebrities not much was done besides clicktivism. The organisation ‘Invisible children’ almost $20 million for the campaign against Kony.
But was this campaign had it downs, many of its supporters were slacktivist just doing the simple measures. Evan Bailyn writer for the Huffington post for the article ‘The Difference between Slacktivism and Activism: How ‘Kony 2012’ Is Narrowing The Gap’ Explains that volunteering in a warzone and volunteering in a warzone on Facebook are, completely different and that slacktivist for the Kony2012 campaign are lazy.
My Conclusion is that clicktivism is positive and negative it has its ups and down the with this, it has created an awareness of ethical issues that are needed to be looked at and people should jump on the bandwagon but also this create slacktivism with people just sharing this on social media but not actually “Volunteering in the warzone”.
References
Evan, B. (2012). ‘The Difference between Slacktivism and Activism: How ‘Kony 2012′ Is Narrowing The Gap’ Available: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/evan-bailyn/kony-2012-activism_b_1361791.html Last accessed 13th May 2014.
NEWS.com ‘Remember Kony 2012? Well, it’s 2013. What happened?’ Available: http://www.news.com.au/world/remember-kony-2012-well-its-2013-what-happened/story-fndir2ev-1226550575923 Last accessed 13th May 2014
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