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Oxford Dictionaries included slacktivism on its Word of the Year 2014 shortlist, so we invited several experts to comment on this Internet activism phenomenon.

Slacktivism is a portmanteau, bridging slacker and activism. It is usually not intended as a compliment.

The term is born out of frustration with the current state of public discourse: signing an e-petition, retweeting a message, or “liking” something on Facebook seems too easy. When people engage in these simple digital acts around social causes, we wonder: are they fooling themselves into believing they can make a difference? What can these clicks actually accomplish? Do they degrade “real” social activism, or make citizens less likely to take more substantial steps?

But if we examine these digital acts a little more closely, it turns out that slacktivism is a bit of an optical illusion. Simple digital acts of participation can be wispy or powerful. They can be a dead end for social engagement, or Act 1 in a grand narrative of social mobilization. It all depends on the context and the intended purpose of these digital actions, and on how committed, organized groups of citizens make use of them.

Three features are particularly important when deciding whether an act of online participation should be dismissed as “just slacktivism.”

First is what Andrew Chadwick (2013) calls “the hybrid media system.” One major goal of most citizen activism is to attract media attention. Mainstream media still help to set the agenda for the national conversation – whether CNN and USA Today are covering Ebola or the national debt helps to magnify attention to each of those issues. In the pre-digital era, activist groups would stage rallies and send press releases to attract the attention of the media. Today, journalists and their editors often turn to digital media in order to pick out potential stories worth covering. So online petitions, likes, and hashtags can be more than just slacktivism if they are strategically used to attract media attention.

Second is the target of the digital action. All activist tactics – digital or offline – should be viewed within their strategic context. Who is being targeted, and why would the target listen? Marshall Ganz (2010) writes that “Strategy is how we turn what we have into what we need to get what we want.” Digital petitions, by this logic, can be tremendously effective or a complete waste of time. A petition to “stop animal cruelty,” aimed at no one in particular, is guaranteed to make no difference. But a recent wave of online petitions aimed at Boy Scout Troops resulted in the Boy Scouts of America officially changing its position and allowing openly gay youths to participate in the organization. Likewise, when online “slackers” submit millions of online comments to the FCC in support of net neutrality, those comments carry the force of demonstrated public opinion. When online citizens tweet or post their displeasure at corporations, reputation-conscious companies have been known to change their policies and practices.

Third, is the organizational context. Some simple acts of digital engagement can indeed leave people less likely to engage in larger-scale activism. In particular, researchers have found that initial acts of token support can relieve psychological pressure that would otherwise push an individual to engage more deeply. But these same acts can also operate as the first step in a “ladder of engagement.” You start by retweeting a news article, and then signing a petition. In the process, you are added to the member rolls of a “netroots” advocacy organization. And that organization then reaches out to you, inviting you to a street protest or a local meeting about the issue. As Hahrie Han (2014) demonstrates, organizations develop activists by building relationships with them over time. These initial acts of “slacktivism” can vanish into nothing, or provide a base for civic mobilization.

The complaints we hear today about “slacktivism” are identical to an earlier generation of complaints about “armchair activism.” Where today we hear that actions performed via the Internet are too simple to make a difference, in the 1970s we heard that actions performed via the mail or the telephone were too simple to make a difference. Then, as now, those complaints were an optical illusion: the power of these activist techniques depends on what angle you observe them from. The medium through which we engage in politics matters less than the networks, relationships, and strategies we employ along the way.

Headline image credit: Large crowd of small symbolic 3d figures, over white. © higyou via iStock.

The post Slacktivism as optical illusion appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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By David Karpf

Last week, MoveOn.org announced its opposition to President Obama’s proposed military strikes in Syria. MoveOn will now begin mobilizing its eight million+ members to speak out against the Syrian action, and is already planning rallies around the country. As an early organizational supporter of Obama (MoveOn first endorsed him for President on 1 February 2008, back when most Democrats expected Hillary Clinton to become the nominee) this comes as a particularly important signal of progressive discontent with bombing the Assad military regime.

MoveOn did not reach this decision lightly. The organization has a longstanding record as an anti-war organization. Much of its early membership growth occurred in 2002-2003, as an outlet for protests against the Iraq War. Yet its opposition to limited bombings within Syria were not reached lightly. They came after a long cycle of member engagement and discussion. The most interesting element of this decision is likely what it tells us about how new political organizations use digital technologies to listen in novel ways.

Most political associations have taken no stance on the Syria debate. That’s understandable. International conflicts, human rights abuses, and civil wars abroad are outside the expertise of the AARP, NRA, and Environmental Defense Fund. Taking a stance on international conflicts can anger a lot of supporters without furthering the organization’s core goals.

Traditional, single-issue advocacy organizations face a simple choice when facing a complicated new public debate. Option 1: Ignore the topic, remaining focused on your primary area of expertise. Option 2: Rely on senior staff to take a stance and draft a statement. The hallmark of traditional advocacy groups is concentrated expertise. Members write checks. Expert staffers convert those financial resources into political influence within a small sphere of public affairs.

“Netroots” organizations like MoveOn tend to be multi-issue generalists rather than single-issue specialists. They aim to give voice to public sentiment while an issue is receiving public scrutiny. Ignoring a topic like Syria while it is in the center of public debate cuts against the very nature of these digitally-mediated advocacy organizations.

So how does a netroots organization like MoveOn arrive at its policy stance?

They began on 31 August 2013 with a mass email to their membership, titled “Syria.” The message included a link to a “Video teach-in,” where five experts on Middle East politics debated the pros and cons of the proposed limited missile strike. It also encouraged members to make their voices heard, by starting or signing petitions on the organization’s website. The user-generated petition platform allows for a form of deliberative discourse, as petition signatures provide a signal about which arguments and policy options are most preferable. Finally, the message encouraged members to donate to Doctors Without Borders, a nonprofit providing emergency healthcare inside Syria through six field hospitals.

As members visited the video teach-in and signed one another’s petitions, MoveOn staff also sent out surveys to a random subset of MoveOn members, asking for more detailed feedback on what stance and activities they would support.

On 3 September 2013, the staff called for a membership-wide email vote. Over 100,000 members weighed in over the next 24 hours, and 73% urged the organization to actively oppose the use of military force in Syria. Only then did MoveOn make its announcement that it would oppose Obama’s military strikes. Digital technologies provided three strong signals — user-generated petition activity, detailed member surveys, and a full-membership vote — all in the space of a few days.

Some remain skeptical about these digital engagement tools. Micah Sifry, of Personal Democracy Forum, offers an insightful challenge with his article “You Can’t A/B Test Your Response to Syria.” He writes:

“…while the e-groups are best equipped to move quickly in response to breaking events compared to their older forbears, Syria isn’t an issue like, say, the crackdown on labor rights in Wisconsin, or the Trayvon Martin killing, or the Texas abortion rights fight, where the progressive response was fairly clear and the main thing the managers of these groups had to do was fine-tune their calls to action.

To put it in a sentence, the answer to Syria can’t be A/B tested. But unfortunately for online activists, that’s the only really good tool in their toolbox. And now, to mangle metaphors, they’re playing a weaker hand than they might because of how that tool shapes their work. That is, they’re either admitting their ‘membership’ is divided or confused, or they’re papering over those issues with snap surveys.”

Sifry’s main point is a good one: after 10-15 years of netroots advocacy, one could hope for even better platforms for online deliberation than the ones we see on display from MoveOn and its ilk. Indeed, many digital advocacy professionals seem to agree that tools currently on display for online member deliberation pale in comparison to the tools they would one day like to build. Sifry’s argument is, in essence, that we aren’t getting there nearly fast enough.

But these new tools of online sentiment analysis (what I call “passive democratic feedback”) nonetheless represent a remarkable shift in how political associations make decisions. Gone are the days when major issues of public importance are blithely ignored by our leading advocacy organizations. Gone are the days when a select few senior staff dictate all of the decisions from on high. MoveOn’s Syria announcement is based in massive, careful efforts to use technology for digital listening.

Despite the commonplace accusations is rendering activism light, fleeting, and ineffectual, a deeper look at netroots advocacy groups reveals that our new, digital organizations are, in fact, the best representative.

David Karpf is an Assistant Professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. He is the author of The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy. His research focuses on the Internet’s disruptive effect on organized political advocacy. He blogs at shoutingloudly.com and tweets at @davekarpf.

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By David Karpf

Clint Eastwood took the stage at the Republican convention last week and gave a… well, let’s call it a memorable performance. I’m not sure if there’s ever been such a bizarre prime time address given at a national convention. The celebrated actor/director spent eleven minutes in a mumbling debate with an empty chair representing President Obama. Political conventions are highly-scripted events. Eastwood’s extended, failed ad lib was anything but scripted.

In years past, such a performance would have provided fodder for late-night comedians, but little more. Saturday Night Live and Letterman could weigh in, while you and I were left to passively chuckle. Living in the age of social media, events unfolded at a different pace and among different participants.

Within minutes, an anonymous Twitter user registered the name @InvisibleObama. Conjuring shades of @MayorEmanuel, the participatory features of the hybrid news environment allowed formerly-passive members of the audience to swap jokes. That evening, Twitter users launched a new hashtag, “#eastwooding,” wherein individuals post pictures of themselves pointing at empty chairs. Thusly a new “meme” was born.

Within less than a day, @InvisibleObama has attracted over 55,000 Twitter followers. Newsweek/DailyBeast has posted an #Eastwooding “best of” list. CNN covered it as well. Participatory engagement with Eastwood’s odd performance made itself became the subject of news.

The President himself even weighed in, tweeting “This Seat’s Taken.”

This is all in good fun, of course. Twitter during national events adopts the texture of a giant Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode. But in the course of this distraction, one might wonder, does it actually make any difference?

I would argue that political memes and twitter games like #eastwooding have a very specific, but very limited, effect.

Let’s start with the obvious limitations: @InvisibleObama and #Eastwooding will have no direct impact on the outcome of the 2012 election. These are games played by the already-politically-engaged. 55,000 Twitter followers is a drop the ocean compared to the ~38 million total viewers of the Republican National Convention, or the 100 million+ citizens who will cast a vote in the November election. Individuals who #Eastwood are among the most attentive segments of the populace. They’re also more likely to be liberal. Conservatives have taken to defending Eastwood’s display as counter-intuitively good for Romney. #Eastwood’ers have already made up their minds, and they each only have one vote.

Secondary effects are also pretty limited. Politically-aware Twitter users tend to be connected to one another (social network theorists call this phenomenon “homophily”). We should not expect individuals who chose to ignore the RNC convention to pick up on it after-the-fact due to social media chatter.

Furthermore, memes of this sort have a pretty brief half-life. With the Democratic National Convention scheduled for this week, the hybrid media system will quickly turn its attention to a new set of images and statements. One impact of new media on political news is that the “churn” of the news cycle has sped up. Congressman Todd Akin’s outlandish claims about female biology already seem part of the distant past. By the time of the October Presidential debates, #Eastwooding will have been replaced a half-dozen times. We shouldn’t expect it to be on anyone’s mind when they enter the voting booth.

That said, the limited size and duration of these Twitter memes doesn’t render them useless. In very particular ways, this participatory nature of the new media system has an important effect on media and politics today.

Consider this post as an example:

BuzzFeedBen is Ben Smith, formerly of Politico.com, current editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed.com. Ryan Lizza is an accomplished political journalist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Atlantic, and Vanity Fair. Other journalists, such as Slate’s Dave Weigel, also joined in the fun.

These journalists aren’t revealing some hidden liberal bias through their actions; they are revealing a participatory bias. A small segment of the US population pays a lot of attention to politics. The hybrid media environment allows journalists to engage with these attentive citizens. The interactions can help shape news coverage, or (in cases where the media runs stories on #Eastwooding) become the subject of news coverage. Rather than writing about the policy details (or lack thereof) in Romney’s acceptance speech, many news outlets turned instead to Eastwood’s odd performance, and the global audience’s playful reaction. This changes the texture and content of media coverage.

The Internet didn’t cause this merger of news and entertainment. It began in the 1980s, as newsrooms sought higher ratings and larger profits. Political communication scholars raised concerns about “infotainment” before the average citizen owned a modem. Twitter isn’t the cause of this merger; it is merely the latest iteration.

The limitations of these incidents are likewise nothing new. Everyday political gaffes don’t determine the outcome of a national election. Today’s media environment churns faster, so we see more of the gaffes. It is also more segmented, so those of us who aren’t interested in seeing them can tune out more easily.

Cases like #Eastwooding provide a variation on these longstanding trends. American politics has accepted the blurring of political news and political entertainment. Social media provides a participatory element, making the entertainment aspects much more entertaining.

David Karpf is an Assistant Professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. He is the author of The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy. His research focuses on the Internet’s disruptive effect on organized political advocacy. He blogs at shoutingloudly.com and tweets at @davekarpf.

Oxford University Press USA is putting together a series of articles on a political topic each week for four weeks as the United States discusses the upcoming American presidential election, and Republican and Democratic National Conventions. Our scholars previously tackled the issues of money and politics, and the role of political conventions. This week we turn to the role of media in politics. Read the previous article in this series: “Networked politics in 2008 and 2012.” And you can see OUP’s contribution to #Eastwooding on Google Plus.

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Image credits: Both screencaps were taken on 4 September 2012 at 11:11 am ET.