The world is now waking up to the scenario of heightened social interaction powered by a breakthrough in technology that has seen the emergence of social media platforms. On these platforms are classes of people identified as slacktivists who basically contribute to various issues by either sharing...
As the old West African proverb goes “we have not inherited this land from our
forbearers; we have borrowed it from our children.” This wise saying exemplifies the essence of
people focusing more on making the world a better place, if nothing else, for the sake of
generations to come. Incidentally, the world is now waking up to the scenario of heightened
social interaction powered by breakthrough in technology that has seen the emergence of social
media platforms. On these platforms are classes of people identified as slacktivists who basically
contribute to various issues by either sharing information already available to the users; they do
this by hitting the ‘like’ or ‘share’ buttons or by retweeting posts. While slactivism has benefitted
the society through connectivity and meaningful engagement, it has also become a platform for
distortion of information and the creation of false consciousness, which reiterates the need for
people to be more circumspect in what they do behind a computer desk. It is therefore important
that as we progress as a human species so does our understanding of various dynamics of
communication.
By definition, slacktivists are people who use the façade of being resourceful members of
a certain group to make it appear that they have meaningful contributions to the larger agenda. In
the current landscape of global interaction, the World Wide Web has significantly eased the
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spread of information amongst users through popular social media sites. This phenomenon has,
in turn, created a network of slackers who primarily lurk on these platforms to perpetuate
information through sharing posts on Facebook and Twitter. Considering that most social media
users are usually idle, nobody really takes the time to verify the source of the information they
are getting or the reliability of the facts thus presented. Slacktivism has therefore been widely
criticized for propagating situations in which lies are peddled by users sitting anonymously
behind a computer desk to further their agenda. It has become a powerful tool for political
mobilization in the age of technology. As the Pfeifle explains “From Cairo to Tripoli to Wall
Street’s Zuccotti Park, social media has reduced the cost and complexity of organizing mass
numbers of individuals into a single, cohesive, political force” (Pfeifle 605). This way, terrorists
and other extremist groups can share tweets to their followers inciting them to rebel against
democratically established governments or to cause chaos as was witnessed during the Arab
Spring of 2011 loosely referred as the Twitter Revolution
One of the most compelling bases for criticizing Slacktivism is the problem of
anonymity. As Julie Zhuo explains, the idea of sitting behind a computer screen or a mobile
phone device incognito is very unsettling considering the potential damage that can result from
the spread of uncorroborated claims. Zhuo’s concern epitomizes the unethical side of anonymity,
which is that people do not take responsibility for the kind of information they spread on popular
quasi media outlets (89). It is easy for someone to create a website to which they post
information anonymously without any credible verification. Such moves usually create fallout
depending on the sensitivity of the message conveyed yet there is no particular person who is
responsible for the fallout that culminates. Worst still, in the recent breakthrough in computer
science, the art of photography has been prone to clever and systematic editing that
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