After our group discussion in class, my views had changed on slacktivism and the use of Twitter or Facebook to post normal life events, that normally would seem useless to post. Coming into class, I thought very lowly of slacktivism. Having never done it myself, and being a person who rarely uses social media, I thought that slacktivism, or people making posts to spread awareness for certain causes, but not actually doing anything in real life seemed useless to me. How could someone pretend to be am activist, but no actually do anything to support their cause and make change? After our discussion in class my views had changed because I realized that just because someone does not physically have to do something to spread awareness about certain issues. Sometimes all it takes is signing a petition online, and just getting people talking about issues in order to make change. I do still believe, however, if someone is going to call themselves an activist they should do something physical and not just digital in order to support their causes, otherwise they are just a slacktivist, which is not an entirely bad thing.
On the topic of using Facebook or Twitter to vent normal day situations, before I did not really know why people posted mundane things that no one is going to read. However, after our discussion in class, I realized that most people make these types of posts not for attention, but just to vent their feelings. They sort of use it like a public journal or diary. Having said this, I do not suddenly have the urge to go make 20 posts on twitter about how my teacher gives too much homework. I am the type of person who like to be vocal and vent my feelings through my physical voice. For me, using social media to vent does not seem like it would do any good, but I can now see why others use it in such a way.
No comments:
Post a Comment