Social media has become a major part in our everyday lives, particularly for those in Generation Y. An Australian study by technology company, Cisco found that 88% of this generation check their smart phones before they leave home every morning. Based on the results of the study, Cisco declared that, “young people depend on internet devices such as smartphones to “drive every facet of their lives”. There is no denying that our generation has a dependence on this technology,
but this is often painted as a negative thing. Whereas, social media has had many positive implications including allowing us to become more frequently connected to those around us, as well as becoming more informed and more vocal about the issues that we are passionate about. In fact, activism on social media has had major effects all over the world. In 2011, several uprisings, protests and rebellions known collectively as The Arab Spring, occurred regarding the political situations in several Middle East nations including Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Although these uprisings were not solely the result of social media activism, many activists used social networking sites as a key tool in expressing their opinions about the then current political situation. By connecting through these websites, activists found each other and together gained enough power to have a massive effect on the political scenes in these nations. Activists also used social n
etworking sites to raise more awareness for their cause and to rally more supporters. As well as this, they used the sites to coordinate and advertise protests all around these nations, resulting in tens of thousands protesting against these governments. For our research assignment, we decided to focus on the rapid development of social media, particularly focusing on the role of social media in activism. Our question that we are seeking to answer through our surveys and focus groups is: what is the role of social media in activism among university students, and what effect does this have on offline activism? We resulted in this decision after brainstorming a list of possible questions to do with activism and social media, eventually deciding that our real interest was in how online activism affects offline activism. After deciding on our focus question, we created a list of questions that would allow us to reach a definitive answer:
- What social media platforms do you use?
- What do you believe ‘clicktivism’ is?
- What do you believe ‘slacktivism’ is?
- How often do you participate in clicktivism?
- In what way do you participate?
- Do you think online activism makes a difference to the cause? How?
- How often do you participate in activism offline?
- What limits you from participating in events offline?
- Do you feel like online activism is the only thing you can do to support a cause?
I interviewed a university student in our target age group which went quite well. Nearly all of the questions were clear and were easy for the participant to respond to. The only questions that I think need to be altered are questions 2 and 3. From this interview, it became clear that these terms are not common terms and therefore many people may have no idea as to their definition. I feel like we could improve these questions by changing them from open ended to closed questions by providing some possible answers that they could choose from. Apart from this, I think the interview was successful and will provide my group with some interesting results once we have collected more surveys and conducted our focus groups.
References
Dobbin, M 2013, ‘Gen Y-Fi Caught in Web Fixation’, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 February, viewed 15 April, <http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/gen-yfi-caught-in-web-fixation-20130214-2efgy.html>. Kassim, S. 2012, Twitter Revolution: How The Arab Spring Was Helped By Social Media, Policy Mic, viewed 15th April 2015, <http://mic.com/articles/10642/twitter-revolution-how-the-arab-spring-was-helped-by-social-media>. Manfreda, P. 2011, Definition of The Arab Spring- Middle East Uprisings in 2011, About News, viewed 15th April 2015,<http://middleeast.about.com/od/humanrightsdemocracy/a/Definition-Of-The-Arab-Spring.htm> . 2011, Middle East and North Africa in Turmoil, The Washington Post, viewed 15th April 2015, <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/world/middle-east-protests/>
Meg Grayson 