Page 8 - Tina Morlock - How to Avoid Slacktivism

other cities” (Suh et al. 283). While this type of activity can’t be planned for your own cause, it is
something you can rely on to help your cause. In Occupy’s case, it not only provoked protests in
hundreds of cities around the United States, but it also inspired cities in other countries to
organize. This probably wasn’t a planned effect, but it certainly raised the volume on the
message in Figure 2 – “We ARE the 99%.”

And, just like the take-away from the Facebook case study of the Save Darfur movement, we can
also see from the Twitter activists’ efforts for Occupy, that action doesn’t stop with a social
media campaign. In Occupy’s case, it started there, but it continued to grow online and offline
because of a variety of factors.

In an academic article in New Media & Society, researchers outlined several ways Twitter
allowed activists to amplify their voices:
In total, we identified seven overlapping roles: facilitating face-to-face protests via
advertisements and donation solicitations; live reporting from face-to-face protests;
forwarding news links and retweets; expressing personal opinions regarding the
movement; engaging in discussion about the movement; making personal connections
with fellow activists; and facilitating online-based actions. (Penney and Dadas 79)

As you can see from their research, it wasn’t just social media that allowed Occupy to be so
successful, it was what social media was able to facilitate. These activities can be done without
social media, but having all these elements in one location provides an incredibly powerful tool
for an activist.