As new technologies come about and more and more people see the potential gain in using it, social media will continue to grow at rapid speeds in the coming years. Marketers want to see how they can further manipulate it to continue to exponentially gain consumers, broadcasters and news channels will try and incorporate more multimedia and shared-content, celebrities will continue to accrue as many followers as possible to shadow along with the goings-on in their lives. However an important question to ask is, how will social media activism evolve? It is enormously relevant in our society today, in making marginalized issues heard and mobilizing people to creat
e change. As with most other things, there are critics of social media activism, and rightly so. A major argument is that while hashtag movements and social media increase awareness, often significantly, it does not help to find the root causes of the problem, nor the root solution. For example the topic of my previous post, #BringBackOurGirls. People globally were aware of the problem and calling for actions, yet a year and a half later and hundreds of girls are still missing.
How can we change this so that movements cultivated on social media translate into real, day-to-day life? Also, how can we bring to light the tragedies that occur world wide that we haven’t yet come up with a clever hashtag for? Social media can be one of the most democratic spaces that we have, in the United States at least. We are able to speak freely about topics and opinions, and debate and discuss with others from all over, all through a screen and some buttons. In a democratic system, this should stay that way, a forum and a space run by the people. In a utopian social media system, there would be no advertisements and no corporate gain through its use, just a place for people to speak and post freely. But also in a utopian social media system, activism should always have the URL-IRL connection. Slacktivism is a root cause as to why many of the social media campaigns are not taken to the streets. People believe by changing their profile picture, sharing an image or retweeting a tweet, they have done their duty. But imagine if everyone who participated in each of the movements, every person who liked a post, shared an image, etc., actually went out and did something to try and find a solution? Imagine if every person who poured a bucket of ice over his or her head in the summer of 2014 donated 
just $10 to help fund research, or help pay for medical bills for those with the disease who can’t afford the extensive treatment. 17 million people participated, which would have resulted in over $170 million dollars for the cause, in just a few months. At that rate, we could cure hundreds of diseases in the next few years. Right now, people believe that they are just one small person, and therefore can’t make a difference. I do not believe this to be true, and if we got every person in the world who participates in social media activism not to believe it either, we could be seeing an entirely different world.
LM
social media and activism 