Week 10 Blog Post

This reading touches on how Madison and Klang aim to highlight the importance of digital activism and argue against the term "slacktivism". They bring up the mention of criticism of people who use social media as a means to achieve social change, labeling it as "slacktivism": "Slacktivism refers to the idea that by attempting to carry out political acts online the individual is not participating politically but rather engaging in a form of meaningless, self-serving, and narcissistic acts. The use of the term 'slacker' in slacktivism is intended to denigrate the user, and through this, the term slacktivism is intended to discriminate against technology-based activism". They argue that even without digital technology, there have been attempts and efforts to implement monetary transactions into activism, such as creating pink ribbons for breast cancer or Time's Up pins that were worn by celebrities at the 2018 Golden Globes: "The introduction of technology into the mix did not create slacktivism; rather, it allowed for a renewed and louder criticism of those attempting to participate in low levels of political and civic process".

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It can be hard to cause social change in general, so by using the internet as a tool of achieving this social change, it can be proven to be very effective. The Me Too Movement as a whole is a great example of this. Having this movement be carried out as a internet phenomenon has allowed it to gain a lot of publicity, even being brought up by influential celebrities such as Reese Witherspoon and Ashley Judd. Multiple people online sharing their stories and sharing the stories of others have caused evoked a widespread response, seeing how it has affected the careers of many influential people who have committed acts of sexual misconduct. By simply raising awareness of a movement or a statement, especially with the accelerations of information online, social and even political change can indeed be achieved.