#slacktivism/activism

What did you remember for the year of 2015?
you probably will not forget this,
ICE BUKET CHALLENGE for ALS !
Have you participate in the challenge? Did you nominate anyone? You did this for fun or you really pay attention to ALS！
On August 1th 2015,Ice bucket challenge is like the epidemic, this active becomes popular around the world very quickly. The initiator holds the activity to hope people can experience the ALS patients’ pain. In the activity, people need to pour the ice water down from their heads, and then nominate another three people, they can choose to accept the challenge, or donate the 100 dollar, or do the both.
This quickly persuade people around the world
because celebrities were doing this!! And they post videos on the social media (Instagram, Facebook...)

                                          (Kim Kardashian on Ellen show)

By using the technique of pathos, target audiences of  ice bucket challenge around the world start to follow the trend by fun or emotion appeal from the videos they saw.   With the use of logos, the campaign kept showing statistic of the money that celebrities donate to ALS.

However do all the participants really understand the purpose of this challenge?

Do they really care about ALS?

How many people know it is for donation?

How many people care about the water wasting?

How many people donate money to the icebucket challenge?

Icebucket challenge is not a game 

it is a social media campaign!

But with no actual awareness from the participants.

This is slacktivism!

Slacktivism:

Anyone who does something in support of an issue on cause that requires minimal personal effort!

• Mostly on social media

     Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, website.... etc.

Purpose:

    In order to spread information in more broad way, the target audience will easily access and get more attention to the world.

• Share video about a cause

Filming a video relate to the cause of the social media campaign

Purpose: get people's attention, make awareness the issue, encourage engagement and action on the issue. 

• wear bracelet

spread and share the cause, in order to help popularize from people to people which is a kind of "straight it forward" way of sharing.

 For example, when one person have the bracelet, he/she will share it to his/her friends, then their friends will share to their friends. And more and more people will focus on the issue.

• sign online participation form

Sign a participation form in some activities, any activities that will bring more people focus on the campaign.

• donation

Donation is the most common way to keep a campaign ongoing. All the sharing on social media is a way to let people trust and raise awareness to the cause. When people notice the importance the campaign and they really have no idea how to deal with the issue, the only way to HELP is to donate money to the organization or specific campaign.

• purchase related merchandise

purchase is also the way of donation, the money they collect will runs the system of the campaign and keep it running.

 example 2 #Shareyourears

Here is a typical slacktivism social campaign!
   The purpose of this campaign is not bring awareness to Make-a-wish foundation but also use donation to support kids with life-threatening medical conditions will have their life change. 
    #shareyourears is a donation party for make a wish foundation, Disneyland is only the medium of this campaign. It use its fame to attract more children and parents to make awareness of the campaign.
   #shareyourears programme is a prototype of slacktivism, which means that people only commit into a campaign with money and other seemingly passive activities that are not actually helping(donating money), too much depending on the company but with devoid of engagements. 
Same as ice bucket challenge, most people do it just for fun.

Activism:

The practice of using action to achieve a result!!
Mostly not on social media, more actions in real life
like protest, promotion.... the aim of activism is to bring about change. Not just saying but put effort in action and bring improvement.

Slacktivism or activism?

Basically the difference between slacktivism and activism is slacktivism only have action on social media but no result to deal with the specific issue. Activism has both action in real life and result.

So how to differentiate slacktivism and activism?
Slacktivism: speak out but no action and changes （MOSTLY ON SOCIAL MEDIA）
activism: speak out and has changes
 We care about this world, we want to change the world however, to engage this we only have opportunity to donate. No actions we can really take, like kony 2015, I feel sad when I watched the film they took, however, after all these years, after all these platforms, all these goals, and plans, have we captured Kony? Is the donation, bracelet, merchandise and video really get us attention? YES! But did we really put effort in it? How are all these sharing and "make kony famous" on social media  help capture kony!

Please stop slacktivism! Take more actions!