“Why is no one talking about some niche social justice topic that you’ve never heard of?”
This is a common subject line for social media posts from activism-based creators and accounts. Regardless of format or platform, it demands attention and asks the viewer why exactly an issue is being ignored.
As more people join more social media platforms, hundreds of millions of people are being connected.
Social media can do a lot of good for users. Supportive community, cross-cultural interactions and knowledge of resources are some examples.
Internet activism has been around for years and has only grown with increased use of social media. Social justice movements have both originated from and grown exponentially on online networks.
However, there are still negative aspects to activism on social media. My social media feeds are flooded with informative posts about current events. In bold typeface and bright colors, local and global issues are put on display for me to read about. Retweeted or shared to stories, I see the current headlines deemed most important by those I follow.
Limited to 10 slides in an Instagram carousel post, 180 seconds in a TikTok or 280 characters in a Tweet, I wonder if the full picture of any issue is ever truly portrayed on social media. The human attention span is not great. This is why post limits exist; short form videos outperform video essays and headlines outperform full stories.
For surface-level social media use, this isn’t an issue. However, as an entry point to activism, I worry that social media posts can’t sufficiently advance social justice efforts.Context matters, especially in relation to social justice issues. Data and statistics don’t always translate to lived experiences, especially if they’re selected for confirmation bias and the aestheticization of the issue.
I see more and more activism-based accounts including reference slides and citations in their posts or captions, but the facts don’t tell the whole story. Checking the context of information is just as important as checking the facts.
Even with citations, social media misinformation is a problem. Not all misinformation is created with nefarious intent, but the impact is still negative. Misleading content, shared intentionally or not, is increasingly concerning as more people use social media as a news source.
Fact-checkers can’t keep up with confirmation bias and financial incentives for content engagement. Social media users lose out on vital details while creators can be both oblivious to the problem and better off because of it.
Another issue is guilt associated with social media activism. If someone’s first interaction with a topic is guilt or shame for not having heard about it, they may feel underqualified to engage in discussion and discouraged from learning more. In reality, any level of knowledge and any action taken can do good. Social media should be used to encourage knowledge development rather than compete between issues.
By demanding to know why so few people are aware of their topic of choice, a creator can seemingly guarantee engagement.There’s a reward associated with shaming people into engagement, making this type of content all too common.
Internet activism is credited with making social justice more accessible for its users. Connecting with those affected by various global events is made possible through social media. Basic information is easier to find when collected, designed and distributed to mobile devices. Accessibility to virtually engage with and learn about movements is indisputable.
However, there has to be a way to provide information accessibly while also doing it truthfully. A big part of that is recognizing and sharing that social action can’t be restricted to social media engagement.
Scrolling through social media pages might help me learn more about various things,but without taking action to spread that knowledge beyond my similarly biased followers or materially improve the lives of those around me, I haven’t made the world a better place.
Social media should continue to act as an entry point to learn more about activism and social justice efforts. By no means should engagement be the end goal of social action.
Katie Hettinga can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @katie_hettinga