Essay Example on Internet Activism: Leveraging Social Media for Social Change

The internet and particularly social media have grown in the past half a decade while offering the global community a platform to express their concerns on issues affecting them. Many organizations among other social institutions have also advanced their use of social media, an aspect that has granted them a chance to condemn, share, and reflect on sensitive issues that affect different individuals or parts of society. Internet activism, which is defined as digital advocacy or the use of new media technology to create awareness in a faster and more effective manner to convey a message to a large and specific audience of society, is a crucial tool through which people from all over the globe have come up to express their feelings pertaining to certain issues while offering their opinions in current time. In other terms, the advent and growth of social media have revolutionized how people and organizations interact and engage online by facilitating the communication of a localized issue to a global audience. This essay discusses internet activism as more effective than onsite protesting.

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Traditionally, onsite protesting is the immediate way of communicating the dissatisfaction of the global community pertaining to certain issues as expressed in society. While the method is somewhat effective in conveying the message and advocating for a change of operational terms, its use only creates awareness to a smaller audience than internet activism. The effectiveness of internet activism has been demonstrated through a series of online movements that have played a critical role to not only create awareness but also raise funds that have then been channelled to a worthy course. The Ice Bucket Challenge and Me Too are some of the recent and popular online campaigns that went viral (Brown, 2018). While both campaigns reflected issues affecting individuals from a specific society, the rest of the world overwhelmingly took part in the initiatives to show their concern and more importantly, their support.

Internet activism is helpful and consequently adds value to raised issues as compared to offline activism. The importance and uniqueness of online activism are exhibited through the ice bucket challenge that shifted focus and attention from a specific society to being a global challenge that facilitated the creation of awareness pertaining to the ALS condition (ALS, n.d). Through online activism, the organization that initiated the movement collected funds from all over the world to fund and support people living with ALS (ALS, n.d). Normally, the creation of such awareness would not have been possible without the use of the internet, not to mention that the ALS organization could have collected limited funds to facilitate the campaign.

Also, internet activism is effective as compared to offline activism in the sense that it mobilizes people who share a common goal or have, at some point been a victim of a certain issue. The mobilization aspect is demonstrated through the Me Too campaign that united individuals that had been sexually harassed not only in Hollywood or by Harvey Weinstein from all over the globe (Brown, 2018). Creation of such an awareness enabled people and different organization to condemn sexual harassment against women while demanding a through action against those involved in such cases (Carlson, 2018). Unlike offline activism, internet activism creates the need for immediate action and more importantly pushes the agenda until the respective authorities show their commitment to resolving the addressed issues as requested by the public. Therefore, internet activism has proven to be the future of communication and more organizations should embrace it as a model for not only creating awareness but also raising funds for critical issues and conditions affecting humanity.

Conclusion

Overall, internet activism is a crucial tool that is made possible with the advent and growth of social media. Through online activism, people and organizations from different parts of the globe can express their concerns pertaining to a particular issue while calling for love and support. Owing to its effectiveness in conveying information to a large and specific audience, internet activism should be an everyday tool for most organizations to create awareness, inform, and fundraise, if need be.

References

ALS. You can make the impossible happen...AGAIN. Retrieved 5 February 2020, from http://www.alsa.org/fight-als/ice-bucket-challenge.html

Brown, D. (2018). Retrieved 5 February 2020, from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/10/13/metoo-impact-hashtag-made-online/1633570002/

Carlson, G. (2018). Retrieved 5 February 2020, from https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2018/09/25/me-too-anniversary-women-sexual-harassment-gretchen-carlson-column/1381126002/