#Activism: Hashtivism or Slacktivism?

How powerful can a hashtag really be, anyway? (Source)

My project focuses on “hashtivist” engagement with #GenderEquality on Twitter. A hashtivist (blend of hashtag activist) is someone who blogs, tweets, or otherwise posts information and opinions about social, political, and other issues on social media, either using popular hashtags to reach their desired audience or creating new hashtags to enrich or undermine existing discourses surrounding other hashtags and activist campaigns. There is significant debate over whether this practice is significant, whether social media campaigns count as “real” activism or if they should just be dismissed as mere “slacktivism.” Although my analysis will be more descriptive than argumentative, I think it’s worthwhile to discuss the ongoing debate over hashtivism itself - after all, the relevance of my research hinges on whether or not hashtivism can be considered a meaningful social practice.

In an editorial on the subject written for the UK International Justice Mission, Holly Burkhalter asserts that, although “[s]ocial media can be shallow, vulgar and ridiculous - and often is[,] …  it can also joyfully rip through the shadows and fling the truth far and wide." She describes those opposed to hashtivism and hashtivists as “fashionable cynics,” a fitting term for the reactionaries who tend to consider any pop culture phenomenon automatically passe and useless. These cynics range from people who think hashtivism contributes little or nothing to debates and other types of discourses over social issues to those who consider it harmful, lulling people into thinking that issues can be and are being solved with a simple click of a button or post of a tweet. Burkhalter argues, though, that silence, ignorance, and indifference are actually the most harmful things in instances of social injustice and inequality. Hashtivism in social media is just one of the ways of counteracting these things: it is definitely a powerful method of “fling[ing] the truth far and wide” and, hopefully, of raising awareness not only of injustice, but the need for empathy and critical thinking, for learning how to care and for being able to distinguish truth from fiction in a society constantly bombarded with conflicting information.

It is by no means an original observation that social media breaks down barriers by facilitating mass communication among groups and individuals with varying levels of authority and from different socio-cultural backgrounds and geographical locations. According to this infographic (which, unfortunately, is a bit too large to include in this post), there are 100 million active users on Twitter every day, 80% of world leaders use Twitter, and 44% of Americans are exposed to tweets on other forms of media. Clearly, the power of social media and its facilitation of hashtivism cannot and should not be dismissed.

Academics, and linguists in particular, have recognized the social and semiotic power of the hashtag for years. In a recent example, Innocent Chiluwa and Presley Ifukor’s Systemic Functional Linguistic analysis of #BringBackOurGirls campaign discourse demonstrates the scholarly relevance of hashtivism and the ways in which such campaigns may help further our understanding of how significant social action can evolve out of a simple string of symbols on a computer screen. Chiluwa and Ifukor, like virtually everyone else in favor of hashtivism, conclude their study with the condition that social media campaigns can be useful and effective, but, unless they are accompanied by “practical offline actions,” they do run the risk of ending up as “mere slacktivism” (267).