Around this time last year, I began tracking my small organization’s statistics on social media—who “shared” what, how many people “liked” our Facebook page, etc. We hoped to promote the adoption of several motherless, ailing kittens our group had found on campus. Our organization had only a handful of active members, and just a few of those members were capable of getting their hands dirty with the work involved in our animal welfare advocacy.
The handling of animals—especially stray, injured cats in need of immediate help on campus—would require the appropriate anti-rabies vaccinations and former experience dealing with rescuing and nurturing non-human animals. This alone already poses restrictions to the availability of student volunteers and animal welfare activists in school.
There is also the matter of time and money. Balancing academic work and co-curricular activities is a challenge for most students, even without the occasional animal rescue missions in between. There are also students who possess compassion for non-human animals, but are financially incapable of providing rescues with food and proper veterinary care. So what do people do if they desperately feel the need to contribute to their advocacy, but do not have the “traditional” means to do so?
They take their advocacy online. The problem is that clicktivism (sometimes referred to as “slacktivism”), the promotion of a cause online or through social media, gets a bad rap. Clicktivism is normally viewed as significantly inferior to “traditional” activism; a person marching with fellow protesters on an avenue is seen as more productive and more helpful to the cause than a man expressing his support for the same cause online.
People who “post”, “like”, “share”, and “retweet” statements about their preferred cause more than they participate in “traditional” methods of activism are, more often than not, looked down on because of the medium that they use. Clicktivists are accused of merely banking on their online involvement in such advocacies to improve their social media image, when this is not always the case. One does not need to have a hidden agenda to promote an advocacy online or in real life.
However, even if all of the accusations against them were true, clicktivists would still able to somehow contribute to their advocacies. We were able to adopt out at least 15 Ateneo kittens last academic year, almost solely on the kindness of clicktivists and their “shares”, “likes”, and “retweets” of the kittens’ posters every other night.
Still, it is not yet certain exactly what clicktivism is capable of. Clicktivism relies on clicktivists’ access to the Internet, but it is arguable whether what occurs online can ever fully translate to reality. It is too early to tell if clicktivism can ever beat “traditional” activism, if petitions online will ever compare to rallies on the streets.
But there is no denying that those seated in front of their screens and clicking their mousepads have a hand in the creation and development of movements all over the world, no matter how small or large their impact is, and whether or not we know or acknowledge their work.
