The Net Delusion - Evgeny Morozov [107]
A good way to tell whether a digital campaign is serious or “slacktivist” is to look at what it aspires to achieve. Campaigns of the latter kind seem to be premised on the assumption that, given enough tweets, the world’s problems are solvable; in the language of computer geeks, given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. This is precisely what propels so many of these campaigns into gathering signatures, adding new members to their Facebook pages, and asking everyone involved to link to the campaign on blogs and Twitter. This works for some issues, especially those that are geography bound (e.g., performing group community service at a local soup kitchen, campaigning against a resolution passed by a local town council, etc.). But with global issues, whether it’s genocide in Darfur or climate change, there are diminishing returns to awareness raising. At some point one must convert awareness into action, and this is where tools like Twitter and Facebook prove much less successful.
Not surprisingly, many of these Facebook groups find themselves in a “waiting for Godot” predicament: Now that the group has been formed, what comes next? In most cases, what comes next is spam. Most of these campaigns—remember many of them, like the anti-FARC campaign in Colombia, pop up spontaneously without any carefully planned course of action—do not have clear goals beyond awareness raising. Thus, what they settle on is fund-raising. But it’s quite obvious that not every problem can be solved with an injection of funds. If the plight of sub-Saharan Africa or even Afghanistan is anything to judge by, money can only breed more trouble unless endemic political and social problems are sorted out first.
The fact that the Web has made raising money easy may result in making it the primary focus of one’s campaigning, when the real problems lie elsewhere. Asking for money—and receiving it—may also undermine one’s efforts to engage group members in more meaningful real-life activities. The fact that they have already donated some money, no matter how little, makes them feel as if they have already done their bit and should be left alone. Some grassroots campaigns are beginning to realize this. For example, the website of Free Monem, a 2007 pan-Arab initiative to free an Egyptian blogger from jail, featured the message “DON’T DONATE; Take action” and had logos of Visa and MasterCard in a crossed red circle in the background. According to Sami Ben Gharbia, a Tunisian Internet activist and one of the Free Monem organizers, the message on the site was a way to show that their campaign needed more than money as well as to shame numerous local and international NGOs that like to raise money without having any meaningful impact on the situation. In other words, the fact that the technology for raising money is so superb these days may push some movements to pursue monetary objectives when what they really need to be doing is politics and advocacy instead (granted, those cost money, too).
On the Increased Productivity of Lonely Warriors, or Why Some Crowds Are Wise but Lazy
That said, the meager fund-raising results of the Saving the Children of Africa campaign—assuming that money is what they are after, as their “about” page states (“This group need [sic] financial support to be able to