Around
July 15th 2014, an
internet craze surfaced on social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter and
Instagram promoting the #ALSIceBucketChallenge. You’ve all probably seen it, or
maybe even participated in dumping buckets of ice cold water on your head and
recording it to raise awareness for ALS, and afterwards donating to the foundation. Let’s
take a step back and consider how many participants actually knew what they were doing it for… and actually donated towards the cause… probably a
small percentage.
Upon
doing some research, I discovered the ALS ice bucket challenge is a social
movement in place to raise awareness of amyotriphic lateral sclerosis, and
reports to TIME magazine claim over 1.2
million videos were posted to Facebook and the topic/hashtag had been discussed
15 million times between June 1st and August 13th. TIME Magazine also states that
$5.5 million donations have been received to the ALS Association national
office in 2014 which is much greater than previous years.
The
ice bucket challenge has been successful in accomplishing the goal of raising
awareness of ALS and attempting to find a cure. ALS patients did benefit by the
donations and awareness made however, intentions of the ice bucket throwers got
lost among the million other people that participated simply just to continue
on with the recent trend showing off their figure and allowing people to have a
good laugh at their reactions. The intentions of the ice bucket challenge show
similar characteristics of slacktivism. Don’t get me wrong, the
ice bucket challenge has raised a substantial amount of donations compared to
previous years without it, however people go out, buy a bag of ice, record it,
post the video, and never get around to donating… Think for a second, imagine
the thousands of people that spent money on ice and actually donated it… the numbers would sky
rocket.
Slacktivism
in a nutshell, is instead of actually following through and donating money to
the ALS foundation, you consider the social media post as being your form of
donation. AKA instead of donating x amount of dollars to the ALS foundation
(activism), slacktivism suggests you make a Facebook post claiming how much you
support the cause and thus you’re raising awareness about it, but not actually doing anything about it. The ice bucket challenge
generated immediate hype and awareness about ALS but the long term effects lie
within the semi-concerned population. Slacktivism is used to describe actions
with no real effect that provide people with the feeling of contributing.
Society
has become infatuated with online profiles and the reflections it can make on
you. So often in every-day life we feel the need to prove how much fun we are having or how
exciting our lives are, so we document it and share it with our friends on
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. There is a sense of time and effort that goes
into making each post on social media because it is a direct reflection of you…
but what if we used this social platform to take action and further a cause by
actually participating/donating in it. The results would be outstanding. There
is a limit that can be reached when considering posts on social media… a cap
sort of say, and this can prohibit the campaign in long-term ways. The
substitution in this case, of donations for Facebook posts hinders the
campaigns success due to the lack of funds received to further the treatment
and develop a cure for ALS.
In
one way or another, we participate in hashtags like #IceBucketChallenge to show
people we care, or wanting to feel like you have contributed to a cause, or to
promote a social platform. Often intentions are blurred and people participate
because it’s simply the current trend.
Have you ever participated in a
hash-tag and actually contributed to the campaign by donating or other measures
of actively raising awareness?
The only hash-tag that I have participated in is the ice bucket challenge. When I participated in the challenge I did do the video portion as well as donated to the campaign. I do know of a few people who also created a video for the ice bucket challenge however, they did not donate and money to the cause. While the AlS ice bucket challenge was a great way to create awareness for the cause, I do think it is still a form of slacktivism. I think this is the case because the actual challenge itself may have come to the forefront rather than the actual information of ALS. Because of this people who participated in the challenge may lack knowledge about ALS. The challenge does little to spread information about ALS. Therefore, many people may still lack knowledge on the topic.
ReplyDeleteIt’s great that you participated in the hash-tag and also donated, I can only say I know a few people that did so too. I agree with your comment regarding the challenge over powering the actual cause because there are still a lot of people unaware about the main concerns regarding ALS.
ReplyDeleteUpon creating a hash-tag, users must prepare for the possibility of it becoming viral because living in such an interconnected digital world, media has the ability to circulate quickly and to mass audiences. The ice bucket challenge did make a few mistakes along the way, the main one being the lack of preparation done to consider the chance of the video going viral, initially creators did not think it would become a success however the inclusion of celebrity figures increased interest from the public. For example, water is an essential component for the challenge, the campaign could have paired up with another one (that focuses on providing clean water), share the earnings, and thus reaching even more audiences that can potentially be passionate about both components (ALS and providing clean drinking water).