Slacktivism (a blend of slacker and activism) is the practice of supporting a political or social cause by means such as social media or online petitions, characterized as involving very little effort or commitment. Additional forms of slacktivism include engaging in online activities such as liking, sharing or tweeting about a cause on social media, signing an Internet petition, copying and pasting a status or message in support of the cause, sharing specific hashtags associated with the cause, or altering one's profile photo or avatar on social network services to indicate solidarity.
Critics of slacktivism suggest that it fails to make a meaningful contribution to an overall cause because a low-stakes show of support, whether online or offline, is superficial, ineffective, draws off energy that might be used more constructively, and serves as a substitute for more substantive forms of activism rather than supplementing them, and might, in fact, be counter-productive. As groups increasingly use social media to facilitate civic engagement and collective action, proponents of slacktivism have pointed out that it can lead to engagement and help generate support for lesser-known causes.
Use of the term The term was coined by Dwight Ozard and Fred Clark in 1995 at the Cornerstone Festival. The term was meant to shorten the phrase slacker activism, which refers to bottom-up activities by young people to affect society on a small, personal scale (such as planting a tree, as opposed to participating in a protest). The term originally had a positive connotation.
Monty Phan, staff writer for Newsday, was an early user of the term in his 2001 article titled, "On the Net, 'Slacktivism'/Do-Gooders Flood In-Boxes."
An early example of using the term "slacktivism" appeared in Barnaby Feder's article in The New York Times called "They Weren't Careful What They Hoped For." Feder quoted anti-scam crusader Barbara Mikkelson of Snopes, who described activities such as those listed above. "It's all fed by slacktivism ... the desire people have to do something good without getting out of their chair."
Another example of the term "Slacktivism" appeared in Evgeny Morozov's book, Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (2011). In it, Morozov relates slacktivism to the Colding-Jørgensen experiment. In 2009, a Danish psychologist named Anders Colding-Jørgensen created a fictitious Facebook group as part of his research. On the page, he posted an announcement suggesting that the Copenhagen city authorities would be demolishing the historical Stork Fountain. Within the first day, 125 Facebook members joined Colding-Jørgensen's. The number of fans began to grow at a staggering rate, eventually reaching 27,500. Morozov argues the Colding-Jørgensen experiment reveals a key component of slacktivism: "When communication costs are low, groups can easily spring into action." Clay Shirky similarly characterized slacktivism as "ridiculously easy group forming".
Criticism of slacktivism Various people and groups express doubts about the value and effectiveness of slacktivism. Particularly, some skeptics argue that it entails an underlying assumption that all problems can be seamlessly fixed using social media, and while this may be true for local issues, slacktivism could prove ineffective for solving global predicaments. A 2009 NPR piece by Morozov asked whether "the publicity gains gained through this greater reliance on new media [are] worth the organizational losses that traditional activist entities are likely to suffer, as ordinary people would begin to turn away from conventional (and proven) forms of activism."
Criticism of slacktivism often involves the idea that internet activities are ineffective, and/or that they prevent or lessen political participation in real life. However, as many studies on slacktivism relate only to a specific case or campaign, it is difficult to find an exact percentage of slacktivist actions that reach a stated goal. Furthermore, many studies also focus on such activism in democratic or open contexts, whereas the act of publicly liking, RSVPing or adopting an avatar or slogan as one's profile picture can be a defiant act in authoritarian or repressive countries.
Micah White has argued that although slacktivism is typically the easiest route to participation in movements and changes, the novelty of online activism wears off as people begin to realize that their participation created virtually no effect, leading people to lose hope in all forms of activism.
Canadian journalist Malcolm Gladwell, in his October 2010 New Yorker article, lambasted those who compare social media "revolutions" with actual activism that challenges the status quo ante. He argued that today's social media campaigns cannot compare with activism that takes place on the ground, using the Greensboro sit-ins as an example of what real, high-risk activism looks like.
A 2011 study looking at college students found only a small positive correlation between those who engage online in politics on Facebook with those who engage off of it. Those who did engage only did so by posting comments and other low forms of political participation, helping to confirm the slacktivism theoretical model.
The New Statesman has analyzed the outcomes of ten most-shared petitions and listed all of them as unsuccessful.
Brian Dunning, in his 2014 podcast, Slacktivism: Raising Awareness, argues that the internet activities that slacktivism is associated with are a waste of time at their best and at their worst are ways to "steal millions of dollars from armchair activists who are persuaded to donate actual money to what they're told is some useful cause." He says that most slacktivism campaigns are "based on bad information, bad science, and are hoaxes as often as not".
He uses the Kony 2012 campaign as an example of how slacktivism can be used as a way to exploit others. The movie asked viewers to send money to the filmmakers rather than African law enforcement. Four months after the movie was released, Invisible Children, the charity who created the film, reported $31.9 million of gross receipts. The money in the end was not used to stop Kony, but rather to make another movie about stopping Kony. Dunning goes as far as to say that raising awareness of Kony was not even useful, as law enforcement groups had been after him for years.
Dunning does state that today, however, slacktivism is generally more benign. He cites Change.org as an example. The site is full of hundreds of thousands of petitions. A person signing one of these online petitions may feel good about himself, but these petitions are generally not binding nor do they lead to any major change. Dunning suggests that before donating, or even "liking" a cause, one should research the issue and the organization to ensure nothing is misattributed, exaggerated, or wrong.
An example of a campaign against slacktivism is the advertisement series "Liking Isn't Helping" created by the international advertisement company Publicis Singapore for a relief organization, Crisis Relief Singapore (CRS). This campaign features images of people struggling or in need, surrounded by many people giving a thumbs up with the caption "Liking isn't helping". Though the campaign lacked critical components that would generate success, it made viewers stop and think about their activism habits and question the effect that slacktivism really has.
Defense of slacktivism In response to Gladwell's criticism of slacktivism in the New Yorker (see above), journalist Leo Mirani argues that he might be right if activism is defined only as sit-ins, taking direct action, and confrontations on the streets. However, if activism is about arousing awareness of people, changing people's minds, and influencing opinions across the world, then the revolution will indeed be "tweeted", "hashtagged", and "YouTubed." In a March 2012 Financial Times article, referring to efforts to address the ongoing violence related to the Lord's Resistance Army, Matthew Green wrote that the slacktivists behind the Kony 2012 video had "achieved more with their 30-minute video than battalions of diplomats, NGO workers and journalists have since the conflict began 26 years ago."
Although slacktivism has often been used pejoratively, some scholars point out that activism within the digital space is a reality. These scholars suggest that slacktivism may have its deficiencies, but it can be a positive contributor to activism, and it is inescapable in the current digital climate. A 2011 correlational study conducted by Georgetown University entitled "The Dynamics of Cause Engagement" determined that so-called slacktivists are indeed "more likely to take meaningful actions". Notably, "slacktivists participate in more than twice as many activities as people who don't engage in slacktivism, and their actions "have a higher potential to influence others". Cited benefits of slacktivism in achieving clear objectives include creating a secure, low-cost, effective means of organizing that is environmentally friendly. These "social champions" have the ability to directly link social media engagement with responsiveness, leveraging their transparent dialogue into economic, social or political action. Going along this mindset is Andrew Leonard, a staff writer at Salon, who published an article on the ethics of smartphones and how we use them. Though the means of producing these products go against ethical human rights standards, Leonard encourages the use of smartphones on the basis that the technology they provide can be utilized as a means of changing the problematic situation of their manufacture. The ability to communicate quickly and on a global scale enables the spread of knowledge, such as the conditions that corporations provide to the workers they employ, and the result their widespread manufacturing has on globalization. Leonard argues that phones and tablets can be effective tools in bringing about change through slacktivism, because they allow us to spread knowledge, donate money, and more effectively speak our opinions on important matters.
Others keep a slightly optimistic outlook on the possibilities of slacktivism while still acknowledging the pitfalls that come with this digital form of protest. Zeynep Tufekci analyzed the capacity of slacktivism to influence collective group action in a variety of different social movements in a segment of the Berkman Luncheon Series. She acknowledges that digital activism is a great enabler of rising social and political movements, and it is an effective means of enabling differential capacity building for protest. A 2015 study describes how slacktivism can contribute to a quicker growth of social protests, by propagation of information through peripheral nodes in social networks. The authors note that although slacktivists are less active than committed minorities, their power lies in their numbers: "their aggregate contribution to the spread of protest messages is comparable in magnitude to that of core participants". However, Tufekci argues that the enhanced ability to rally protest is accompanied by a weakened ability to actually make an impact, as slacktivism can fail to reach the level of protest required in order to bring about change.
The Black Lives Matter movement calls for the end of systemic racism. The movement has been inextricably linked with social media since 2014, in particular to Twitter with the hashtags #blacklivesmatter and #BLM. Much of the support and awareness of this movement has been made possible through social media. Studies show that the slacktivism commonly present within the movement has been linked with a positive effect on active participation in it. The fact that participants in this movement were able to contribute from their phones increased awareness and participation of the public, particularly in the United States.