Top down or bottom up? Can networked activism succeed?
If technology doesn’t inspire activism, then it might at least play a significant role in the way that activism can be organised. Social media creates networks of people connected either by a mutual interest or acquaintance. What is significant about these networks is their horizontal nature - there may be an originator of a group but there is no way of creating a leader. Whether or not these networks are effective or sustainable is debatable.
One of the major criticisms of online activism is the level of commitment required by participants. In The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell writes, “Activism that challenges the status quo – that attacks deeply rooted problems – is not for the faint of heart.” (Gladwell, 2010) He uses, as an example, the high profile Greensboro protests by young Black Americans in February 1960. Four students, who were refused service at the Woolworths lunch counter, staged a day-long sit-in protest. They came back the next day with 20 more people, and by day four, 300 students had participated in sit-ins in the town’s two Woolworths stores. Over the five months that followed, sit-ins took place in dozens of towns and eventually in July 1960, Woolworths changed its segregation policy. Gladwell’s point is that with the threat of the Klu Klux Klan and with racial tensions running high these actions took effort and they took risk.
With so many online petitions and Facebook charity groups, you might argue that ‘clicktivism’ is replacing true activism. Morozov suggests the reason why some people choose to “like” a cause on Facebook may be to construct an image of themselves (as the sort of person who, for example, wants to save the rainforests) or because a friend has asked them to –not because they are committed to the cause. As an example he uses the Facebook group “Saving the Children of Africa” which “does look impressive with over 1.7 million members, until you discover that they have raised about $12,000 (less than one-hundredth of a penny per person.” You would probably get a more impressive return from a collection box on the counter of a shop. Additionally, with so many seemingly worthy causes out there, Morozov suggests there is too much competition for people’s charitable dollar or charitable time/tolerance.
Another issue is commitment to the cause. “Thanks to its granularity,” says Morozov, “digital activism provides too many ways out” (2011, p. 190). He suggests that if, as some psychologists claim, helping a charitable cause makes people feel happier, then signing an online petition is likely to be a less effective way of acquiring that happiness than writing a personal letter to their MP or volunteering in a soup kitchen. He argues that Facebook activism might “nudge activists toward embracing some kind of group fetishism, in which they opt for a group solution to problems that could be solved much faster and better by solo artists.” He cites the 1882 Ringelmann experiment in which four individuals were asked to pull a bell rope and the pull force was measured. He then compared that to the pull force exerted when all four participants pulled in a collective effort. “The total pull force of the group was consistently less than the sum of the individual pull forces.” This, he argues, is the opposite of synergy, it is evidence that in group situations when you can slack off (because you assume others will compensate), you will. Therefore if you and your 1.7 million friends are asked to donate to a cause, the assumption that everyone else will means you don’t have to. So ridiculously easy group forming means ridiculously easy slacking-off. Morozov coins the phrase ‘slacktivism’ to describe this phenomenon.
Clicktivism/slacktivism is also criticised by Micah White, a contributing editor to anti-consumerist AdBusters magazine. He criticises the way that online campaigns adopt the ideology of marketing,
“Clicktivists dilute their messages for mass appeal and make calls to action that are easy, insignificant and impotent. Their sole campaign objective is to inflate participation percentages, not to overthrow the status quo. In the end, social change is marketed like a brand of toilet paper.” (White, 2010)
So perhaps authentic activism needs to eschew the models of capitalism and hierarchy to be able to succeed. Gladwell disagrees, claiming that social networking sites create disorganised networks linked by weak ties. He cites a study by Doug McAdam, a Stanford sociologist who studied the participants involved in the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project – a civil rights education program that saw three of its white volunteer educators kidnapped and killed. Consequently, many other volunteers dropped out. McAdam compared those who stayed and those who didn’t and found that the key factor was not how vehemently they supported the cause. “What mattered more,” suggests Gladwell, “was an applicant’s degree of personal connection to the civil rights movement – participants were far more likely than drop outs to have close friends who were going to Mississippi.” High-risk activism, McAdam concluded, is a “Strong-tie” phenomenon.”
Gladwell implies two things here: one that networks created through social networking sites do not have at their core a strong enough bond between members and that many activists these days don’t really know what high-risk activism is.
Perhaps there is an element of truth in this. But, unlike 1960s America, modern British society respects equality, free-speech, human rights; to most of us growing up in this country these privileges are what we have come to expect – any infringement of these rights (being kettled for hours in Millbank Square; being crushed in a kettle in the centre of Westminster bridge – the sides of which are approximately 3 ft high – or arrested for eating a packed lunch in a department store) is shocking. A criminal record for aggravated trespass and criminal damage will close a lot of doors to young people in this country, so protest is contextually high risk, but that did not deter students who turned out in increasingly large numbers to protest in the winter of 2010.
The feeling that activism in the 21st century is not as heartfelt or risky as it used to be is perhaps the fault of capitalism. In The Guardian, Ellie-Mae O’Hagan recently reported on the latest slogan t-shirt available in Topshop. It reads The Students are Revolting. “By putting the student movement on a T-shirt,” O’Hagan writes, “Topshop is continuing an ignoble tradition of capitalism: that of forcing dissent into a glittered-up package and selling it back to the masses.” Perhaps this smart move is based on the assumption that our young people are more likely to be shopping online than re-grouping their efforts, ready to make another attack on corporations who are not paying enough taxes. But it also plays on the Marxian??? concept of ‘hegemony’, where a certain type of resistance becomes mainstream and therefore less effective. Perhaps this accounts for the failure of the Stop The War protest which followed the traditional and legal process of marching from a mutually agreed point A to a mutually agreed point B and had almost no impact on the government’s decision to go to war. If capitalism has the power to commercialise and therefore neutralise traditional activism, then activists need to revolutionise the way that revolutions happen.
Joss Hands suggests that digital activism is unique because it is more democratic. In the chapter “Towards a definition of Activism: Dissent, resistance and rebellion” (2011, p. 3) he identifies a key problem with traditional activism using as an example a quote from Ulrike Meinhof first published in 1968 in the journal Konkret: ”Protest is when I say I don’t like this and that. Resistance is when I see to it that things that I don’t like no longer occur. Protest is when I say I will no longer go along with it. Resistance is when I see to it that no one else goes along with it anymore either.” (Hands, 2011, p. 3). Hands’ criticism is that this type of revolution with a focus on “I” seeks to replace one hierarchy with another. He cites the sociologist, John Holloway’s notion of “anti-power.” Holloway states that “if we revolt against capitalism, it is not because we want a different system of power but because we want a society in which power relations can be dissolved . . . The aim of revolution is to dissolve relations of relations.” Perhaps in 2011, in a progressive Western society that isn’t concerned with bringing down a regime, activism can be something much gentler and more horizontal in its structure.
UK Uncut is an organisation that fits this democratic, autonomous model. It stands for one simple principle: it opposes corporate tax avoidance and public spending cuts. The first action was organised by a group of friends in a North London pub who planned to stage a sit-in in Vodaphone’s flagship store on Oxford Street in London. They rallied a crowd of 70 and set up the hash tag #ukuncut on Twitter the night before the protest. Since then, the campaign has gone viral: hundreds of actions of varying sizes have taken place across the country, all of which have been organised by different people. The website states: “UK Uncut is your movement. There are no centrally planned actions. If you have an idea for an action, or want one on your high street, it's up to you to make it happen” (http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/actions/organise). Underneath this statement is a video explaining how anyone can set up an action. In the “About Us” section of their website there are no founders listed – the people in the pub are never named. This organisation belongs to the people, or rather, it is the people. This ethos came across very clearly in two Newsnight broadcasts featuring UK Uncut activists: in December 2010 Daniel Garvin, when asked who he represents, said “I represent myself and hundreds if not thousand of other people across Twitter and across the social media are also representing themselves.” (Newsnight, 2010) On March 27th, following the TUC March and Fortnum and Mason arrests, Lucy Annson, asked by Emily Maitlis to talk us through her position on the violence carried out by the black bloc the day before, responded, “We are a network of people who are growing, we are a group of people who self-organise, we don’t have a position on things, what we do is share resources . . . its very much about empowering the individual” (Newsnight, 2011). Later she was clear to delineate her role (or not) as a spokesperson – “I’m a spokesperson for myself” – and when asked, “Do you condemn the violence?” she “reject[ed] the premise of the question.” Although criticised by many (Martin Bright of The Spectator accused her of “undermining her movement’s credibility in one ill-advised utterance”), by refusing to even take a position on the violence of other individuals she deliberately subverted the systems of autocracy, blame and corporate responsibility and showed the genuine democratic horizontalism of this network.
UK Uncut is still a fledgling network but so far it avoids the majority of criticisms flung at online activist organisations. It uses online tools to effectively coordinate offline actions – a technique that Aaron Peters, an activist and PhD candidate at Royal Holloway University defines as “online inspiration, offline perspiration.” It allows democratic participation towards a clear objective; its use of web 2.0 technologies allowing people to be prosumers of activism, simultaneously “producing dissent, mobilizing and facilitating it, while also participating in actions facilitated by others.” The bail-ins organised, such as setting up a library in Barclays or a hospital in Vodaphone, are not as risqué as Gladwell might like but this creative approach might more effectively garner support and positive public attention.
The debate here is whether technology has the capacity to inspire or devalue social action. The answer is probably both. Williams, writing (as before) about television says “In the young radical underground, and even more in the young cultural underground, there is a familiarity with media, and an eager sense of experiment and practice, which is as much an effect as the more widely publicised and predicted passivity” a statement which acknowledges the power of media to inspire creativity and action (for example, UK Uncut) or suppress it (“slacktivism”).
The main benefit of hierarchical organisations is that people know what their role is and what their aim is – perhaps in more complex political situations such as those in Iran and Palestine, this structure is preferable for making long term change and progress. But the simple objective of UK Uncut, and the fact that their aims is to raise public awareness and simply make a point, means that networked activism can work – they are not trying to drive change, they are trying to be heard and shift some power back to the people. There is a long history of younger generations appropriating technologies for their own uses. Whether or not this is sustainable remains to be seen – in July 2011 Jonathan May-Bowles, who is known to be active in the UK Uncut network, attacked Rupert Murdoch with a custard pie. Such renegade actions by UK Uncut protestors threaten to pollute their clear objective.
