“Slacktivism” is probably the newest word in the dictionary. It is the kind of activism you engage in when you press the button on this or that webpage which (usually hysterically) promotes this or that worthy cause.
As every reader of this blog probably knows, slacktivism isn’t activism because the real activists created the word as a disparaging comment. Also, because it involves no true action, other than pressing a button, maybe occasionally going to the lengths of participating in a poll or posting a comment on this or that website or blog or, even more shockingly and therefore rarely, donating a few cents.
As almost everyone involved in this affair, including many of the speakers in the recent PDFEU forum in Barcelona, agrees, slacktivism is a bad thing. It is also generally considered as ineffective, but that can be misleading. Slacktivism can have a real impact and can also come from far more traditional quarters than many people think, such as the Press or even political discourse.
An example: everyone engaged in EU communications of any form, be it our Facebook page (incidentally, a wake-up call for Messrs Gates and Ballmer: MS Word thinks “Facebook” is a typographical error, and I won’t even mention “slacktivism”) or more formal means of communication is exposed to a very particular kind of slacktivism: the anti-EU kind.
To stay with the Facebook example, we post on this or that issue that has been debated or acted upon by the EP and what normally happens is that the truly engaged fans will post a comment that responds and, indeed, corresponds to the post, often offering ideas or solutions rather than simple commentary.
But the slacktivist is rarely far behind. There are those, for example, who hate certain member states, third countries, peoples or ethnic groups and make sure they say it loud and clear in almost every single post, even if they are ostensibly participating on a discussion on occasional import duties for Aruban pimpled mangoes.
And then there are those who hate the EU pure and simple. They will make their point clear while discussing about the mangoes but they will also always pull one of the great slacktivist coups of modern times: the permanent, unremitting, brain-washing use of the same clichés, over and over again, until they are ingrained in the mind of the reader and become self-evident truths rendering all political discourse essentially impossible. We all know them: the “undemocratic EU”, its “unelected oficials” and assorted “elites”, the “wasteful” EU budget, the “overpaid”, “lazy” and so on “eurocrats” and other “fat-cats”… They may or may not have a point on one or another particular issue, I won’t argue about that here, but this is depressing.
If activism is fighting on the streets for something you believe in and slacktivism is clicking on the web for something that has attracted your attention, in the EU context, this clichéctivism is poison. And it is exactly countering this particular poison that is, directly or indirectly central to the task anyone engaged in communicating Europe.
Its poison for three reasons: it is usually false, it is easy to absorb and transform into an internalised self-evident truth and it is pervasive, deployable in any form of media from the classic written press where it first appeared to the most arcane reaches of Web 2.0 Is it slacktivism though? It is on both counts, “slack” as well as “activism”.
Slack because it is much easier to say “unelected officials” than to enter a full discussion on the EU decision making process and as such it also made that much easier for the unwary reader to digest. It is as easy and as lazy as clicking the proverbial button.
Activism because most of its practitioners, be they journalists or “analysts”, are self-evidently well informed enough to know that pointing out that Institution officials are unelected is ridiculous (how many administration officials are elected in any country in the world?) or that the member state governments in the council and the directly elected EP are the legislators in the EU, while Commissioners are appointed by those same member states and approved by the EP. There are certainly not a few things to criticize in the way the EU works but this isn’t criticism, it’s activism …
And it has stuck. We see this daily, in blogs, website comments and fora such as Facebook, where people who cannot, in good faith, be considered professional propagandists, use exactly the same terminology over and over again destroying whatever political dialogue can be said to exist in such places.
The sound-bite politics of slacktivism preclude thinking, in fact cannot survive thinking and so must ensure there is none involved. And that is, in the end of the day, what makes this and every kind of political slacktivism so dangerous: it doesn’t evolve in the fringes of proper political debate, it replaces it…
Aah, the memories of debates past!
If you click my name, below, you’ll find yourself on “Rebutting EuroCr*p in social media”, written last January in response to an excellent post by Tibo on this blog.
It concludes: “So maybe Tibo and co can do a social media version of the EC’s ‘Get your facts straight’: set out the facts, but rather than hiding them on EUROPA, put them in front of people, right into their conversations? It’s still about the facts, but it’s also engagement.”
We could, in fact, do much better. A dedicated tag on delicious could allow every ‘rebuttal’ post – written by anyone – to be instantly findable by everyone, building up a distributed database of “Get your facts straight” conversations across the blogosphere.
I’d suggest using BloggingPortal, but it would need a technological upgrade to allow multiple-tag browsing a la delicious.com. There are other tools – the problem, as always, is to find someone to curate it.
As for convincing eurosceptics, Kostas, you’re right that it’s possible *occasionally*: see my experience with EUReferendum et al when launching Blogactiv in October 2007 (http://mathew.blogactiv.eu/2008/10/15/hello-world/), where *one* person actually conceded that Blogactiv was *not* an EU covert op to take over the entire blogosphere.
But it was a bruising experience. Being able to link to somewhere else where the debate has already been had would save everyone a fair amount of pain.
Great post and discussion. I agree you have to respond calmly & respectfully as both Matthew and Nosemonkey say. Sadly I only seem to get extemists (dare I say, mad) commentors, who cut and paste their personal thesis into a comment section, I’m not even sure they care if we reply. However thanks to the site stats I am reassured to see that the right audience is coming and returning but chosing not to engage. I feel the internet is being taken over by one-way communication and nutters.
So true nosemonkey…
Always avoid flame wars – they never help anyone. As Mathew says, just calmly, clearly and rationally explain why they are mistaken (assuming that they are) while pointing them to the evidence that proves it.
As for how to pick your fights, it’s certainly tricky. But if I were an official EU communications type coming up with a strategy I know what I’d do – start a site devoted to dispelling euromyths (much like the UK Office of the Commission has done), picking ones as I find them from the press, blogs and other parts of the web.
Gradually, this would build up into a coherent database of euromyths, with all the links and evidence dispelling them plus – by allowing blog-style comments – counter-arguments (and counter-counter arguments if you address those responses as well).
That way you could start to do what I increasingly find myself doing on Twitter – with a bit of low-level media/social media monitoring you could pop up in discussions with a polite “actually, I’m afraid that’s not quite true – see here for why” and a link to a detailed demolition.
The trouble is that currently, bar the UK Commission Office’s rather sparse and incomplete euromyths site, there simply isn’t an obvious searchable equivalent of http://www.snopes.com/ for the EU. But that’s what the EU Comms teams should be looking to create.
It is, of course, right that its the innocent bystanders who might “take something away from it” as the Nosemonkey points out. But how do you achieve that without entering into a flame-war with the ultras? And, honestly, where, from which of 1000 articles, posts, blogs etc, do you start….? I admit I have no answers
After 7+ years trying to convince eurosceptics that they’re wrong through rational, reasoned argument backed up with facts (and even agreeing with them where the facts support their arguments), I can confirm that it’s a lost cause at least 99.99% of the time.
You may convince them on one small point, but rather than concede they’ll swiftly move onto a new one, and you’ll be forced to start all over again. (Not to mention the fact that a lot of the time they won’t even bother reading what you’ve written, and will dismiss any evidence they don’t like as being biased or flawed, despite having no evidence of their own to prove this.)
Mathew is right – it’s the people following the exchange but not taking active part who are most likely to take something away from it.
Well, them and *you* – by being constantly confronted with anti-EU arguments (and constantly rebutting them), you’ll come to understand the many, many ways in which people can misunderstand the EU, and soon be able to predict them in advance, inserting provisos into what you write to head off the anti-EU objections before they even have a chance.
If more EU bodies thought about how their press releases and plans could be (deliberately?) misinterpreted, we’d have a lot fewer euromyths. I hope…
@Mathew You are, of course, right, but still Im not entirely sure trying to convince the (casual) clichectivist that most of what he/she is saying is usualy plain wrong is a lost cause. The EU is a hearts and minds kind of thing after all :)
Here is something that you guys will probably want to support: http://www.Fraternite2020.eu
This is an initiative about holding diversity high and increasing European exchange programmes, such as Erasmus or the European Voluntary Service, in the new Financial Framework of the EU 2014-2020. Check it out!
Nice post. But you miss the opportunity this “chlicactivism” actually provides.
Don’t bother with trying to convince the dogmatist pumping out the cliches – the trust just isn’t there, so they won’t believe you, no matter what you do, no matter what facts you have on your side.
But as I said a long time ago now, don’t think about them. Think of the 99% who are reading the exchange.
If you don’t rebut the eurocr*p, casual readers will believe there’s more truth in it than there is.
But if you do rebut it – clearly, politely, respectfully – chances are your correspondent will go ballistic, froth at the mouth and call you a Nazi.
The casual reader will see two points of view. Someone who’s calm, respectful and seems to have some facts on their side. And someone who froths at the mouth as they snarl and call you names.
Who, do you think, is the casual reader going to believe?