Most things in life become trends, fashion, music, food, even pets, but social media has introduced a new type of trend, the humanitarian crisis trend. In the internet age that we live in it's easy to let social media dictate how we live our everyday lives, but for social media to have an impact on how we react to tragedy is ethically questionable. The simple idea of a digital platform being able to control your emotions should worry you.
As nations descend into chaos, and others go into civil war, social media users view each tragedy as a temporary hype. A trend that they can jump on the bandwagon of for no longer than a few weeks. Take the recent attacks on Palestine at the hands of Israel, the violence ended less than a few weeks ago, and the question still remains on how safe Palestinians truly are. This is a conflict that has gone on for decades, and thus is volatile to continuous violence, yet social media users have already moved on as if thanks to their #savepalestine tweets and cute Instagram graphics overnight ended a brutal conflict between two nations.
This month the new social media act of activism is in the name of Pride Month, nothing more than a PR stunt by big business to further fuel capitalism through the exploitation of marginalised communities, but that is another argument for another time.
With each humanitarian crisis or global tragedy comes a new set of rules to follow on how to placard your solidarity on social media. Whether that be black boxes on your Instagram feed for Black Lives Matter or putting hashtag #Gazaunderattack in your social media bios for two weeks, all of these forms of ‘activism’ come under one umbrella, ‘performative activism'. Performative activism is the idea of standing up for a cause only in the public eye, to essentially make yourself seem like a better person than you really are.
Performative activism enables people to claim the glory and praise that comes with doing good, without paying the price that comes along with it. As stated by Dionne Sims, owner of Black Garnet Bookshop, a Black, woman-owned bookstore located in Minnesota, "Reactionary activism doesn't require any internal work. All it requires is a feeling and then action, and then nothing's changed within you.”
While many people are under the impression that their acts of half-hearted involvement help to spread awareness on the matter, it quite often damages the movement. Take, for example, the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, a time when reposting videos and images from protests were pivotal to the progress of the movement. However, instead, the #blacklivesmatter was very quickly dominated by black squares across social media platforms, all because some wannabe ‘woke’ person wanted to make themselves feel better about failing to stand up in the name of human rights.
This fabricated sense of solidarity not only dilutes the intensity of these movements but also enables a fake narrative to form. A narrative where all things come to a happy ending, one that is not truly representative of what is happening across the world. For example, the social media narrative in February was focused solely on the military coup in Myanmar, #Myanmar coup was trending and social media graphics were made to spread awareness. But by mid-February, the focus of the narrative had shifted to the 2021 Winter storms that were devastating US states, and just like that the digital world forgot about Myanmar. Yet, 4 months down the line and the people of Myanmar remain under a military siege. So just because a crisis is no longer trending on social media does not mean it has been resolved.
It seems as though our generations’ don’t have the capacity to focus on more than one crisis at a time. Hence our eagerness to jump from one global issue to the next. A serious problem in today’s digital age as each crisis is an opportunity for brands to transform social consciousness into social capital. With big business exploiting every social media trend, regardless of how heartbreaking it may be. Thus our reluctance to stick to one cause at a time, works in the favour of these brands, as not only do they have to pretend to care about the cause, but also we are providing them with countless business opportunities, from BLM to PRIDE to Save Palestine and so on.
Social media is an ideal starting point for our activism, however, many see it as an ending point in their journey to making the world a better place. It is just a stepping stone in bringing about social change, it is not the deciding factor. Social media’s role when it comes to international disasters is to raise awareness and spread information. However, many people see it as the sole tool necessary in overthrowing governments and putting corruption to a halt. Many think that enough angry tweets and trending hashtags have more of an impact than they do.
While social media can rally up mass amounts of support, support alone is not enough to enforce reform, this support then needs to be concentrated on a particular cause. Through concentrated solidarity and organised opposition, change can be achieved.
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