Are you a clicktivist?

Or perhaps a slacktivist?

If you are like me, you open your e-mail and get all excited to see that there are a dozen new messages, then discover that 11 of them are requests for your signature on a petition and the suggestion that you pass the message on in Facebook or Twitter. I know about political and environmental petitions; I’m sure there are others.

This use of social media to promote a cause is defined in the

Oxford English Dictionary as Clicktivism, and is the subject of hot debate these days. The two opposing camps are quite volatile, with the clicktivists pointing to the enormous audience reachable through e-mail, Facebook or Twitter. The anti group accuses the clicktivists of being “slacktivists”, feeling good about themselves because they signed a petition, but who did nothing beyond that. The clicktivists are accused of identifying with marketing ploys, in which counting the number of clicks becomes a measure of the success of social change

It is important to distinguish between clicktivism and digital activism. The latter was what fueled the Arab spring. Volatile unrest already present in Egypt was sparked by a Facebook page, created by an anonymous activist, which featured the murder by Egyptian police of Khaled Said. He had apparently uncovered a case of police corruption and was murdered by policemen. Cellphone photos from the morgue and YouTube videos helped to get 130,000 people to join the Facebook page. Another page was soon created and the two pages together announced demonstrations. Faced with a country-wide protest

movement, pro-Mubarak got into the discussion but failed to deter the activists. Facebook and YouTube made it possible for ordinary people to join human rights advocates in organizing and mobilizing protest. They served as information sources in a country that practices news blackouts otherwise. Social media are instant and flexible. And – it is important to note – in this case they led to real concrete action.

This is a far cry from the armchair activism of those of us who click and then forget about the cause, who don’t even have to go to the trouble of calling our Congressmen. But once our click joins thousands of others, doesn’t the aggregate sum have an effect? Opinion is mixed. Sometimes the number of clicks is staggering, but apparently only individual messages – the modern equivalent of writing to your Congressman – really have an effect. Clicks that apparently lead to corporate contributions to a particular

cause are another example of action follow-ons. greatergood.com is one example, and you can click once a day for the rainforest, breast cancer, hunger, animals and a host of other  causes. The site sponsors will then contribute money to that cause. Another site is freerice.com, on which you play a game of identifying the correct meaning of words, with every correct answer 10 grains of rice are donated through the U.N. World Food Programme. You can choose categories of words and it’s a fun way to build vocabulary.

So how about it, are you a clicktivist? A slacktivist? Or perhaps you belong to the sheeple, people who agree to do something without thinking it through or doing any research on it. if you are into programming, you can be a hacktivist. If you donate money through the Internet, you may be part of crowdfunding. Just keep in mind that to click is not enough; either you or someone else has to follow through with real, honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned action.