Slacktivism this new term vividly summarizes the era of social networking, people are keen to follow forward and share hot topics online. Initiatives on the Internet make people feel good.
March 24, 2021, 12:33 p.m.
The era of social media has shaped society and its struggles differently. Thanks to the internet, thousands of people have been able to make their struggles visible and promote their causes. You know, we are so glad that everything was just a click away? Click to buy plane tickets, click to get fruits and vegetables from the market, click to watch movies, click to listen to music, and now you can click to vote for someone to run the country. You are one click away from everything happening in our society So why should we not have the click word for activism? There we have. It’s called.‘Clicktivism’, and those who use only click for activism are called ‘clicktivists’
Clicktivism refers to the act or habit of using the internet as a primary means of influencing public opinion on matters of politics, religion, or other social concerns. Methods may include websites, online petitions, and mass email campaigns. The term was used for the first time in 1995 by Dwight Ozard and Fred Clark at the Cornerstone Festival. This optimization is intended to increase user engagement and maximize page views for a campaign. Activism has never been this comfortable with Clicktivism.
Whether it is Nirmala pant or any other incident we have in Nepal Clicktivism plays a vital role in activism besides gathering in MANDALA. The wave of indignation spreads day after day in our society. Protest used to be hard back in the old days but now with Clicktivism you can Support or protest a cause without moving from your chair.
Slacktivism this new term vividly summarizes the era of social networking, people are keen to follow forward and share hot topics online. Initiatives on the Internet make people feel good. Slactivists generally participate in a number of petition campaigns, groups, and congregations, and they communicate, try to spread ideas, support, share the keyboards, and what their supporters stand on the screen. They copy and paste the news, articles, sensations, photos, videos about the events and spread them on social media. They participate in the idea and the case they believe, through digital channels.
Derived from the words Slacker (lazy.) and activism (activism) Slaktism – The concept of Slactivism is for those who do not physically participate in protests but write, comment, like, share in the cloud in the social networking channels.
Slacktivism is often a low-cost, low-risk, and highly personal activity that makes many people think, “I can get involved”. Furthermore, with social media, activities can make an impact on society.
Social media use continues to grow too, with global users reaching 4.20 billion in January 2021. There were 13.00 million social media users in Nepal in January 2021 which counts for 44.2% of the total population.
In the midst of the digital age, the scale of social concerns online makes it difficult for political organizations to respond in a timely manner. Digital citizens are eager to reinvent the political system and will do so from their devices, showing more and more cruelly the politicians.
But this potential audience, which is growing every day, still does not receive valuable information from the Government and they find out from those who are using these virtual platforms to inform, misinform, revile or simply criticize. With that power that virtual content has, we are not far from witnessing the fall of political actors from citizen pressure from cybernetic platforms.
With Artificial Intelligence, the future of humans will be different. Citizens are turning into netizens now. Politics does not only belong to the elites. Nowadays, politics has become the subject of everyday conversation. Especially after social media allows us to access a lot of information. Can one click change your society? Yes, if it is a right-click.
(The author is a lecturer and IT consultant. He also writes fiction under the name of Kapeed Joshi. He can be reached by email at [email protected].)
This article is originally published at spotlight Nepal. https://www.spotlightnepal.com/2021/03/24/clicktivism-slacktivism/
