Click Activists of the New Era, Slacktivists: An Exploratory Research to Define Slacktivist Typologies

Abstract

Most of the events which have taken place in the last decade prove that thinking independently of the 21st century activism apart from internet and social media isn't possible. This digital era provides people joining online signature campaigns, changing profile pictures to promote an idea or campaign and sharing content on social media. All these practices cause a rise of a concept called "slacktivism" which combines the words "slacker" (lazy) and "activism" has a meaning as to support a cause with minimum performance or without action. Generally, concept of slacktivism takes part in the literature as a negative word which has no or little effect on social issues. In another respect, recent studies show that perhaps not a single slacktivist, but the collective power arisen by the combination of slacktivists have the potential to show a significant presence. Therefore, slacktivists play an important role in promoting awareness and support of campaigns which aim to raise social welfare or wellbeing of society. However, studies in the literature on slacktivism or slacktivists are still very limited although those have the main roles in the spread of social messages. From this point of view, this research aims to describe the main subject of slacktivism, who is slacktivist, and slacktivists' profiles. In addition to present typological features of the slacktivists in terms of differences and motivations, it will be tried to understand what the slacktivists think about impacts and effectiveness of their slacktivist behaviors. In-depth interviews with 10 participants from 4 different generations (Baby Boomers, X,Y and Z generations) are conducted to collect data. Miles and Huberman model is used to analyze qualitative data to explore the main codes related to the typological features of slactivists. Different motivations and values are determined that differentiates various types of slacktivists. Participants are seperated from each others such as motivation of using social media platforms, their feelings after slacktivist behaviours or the effect of these behaviours on their activist practices. On the other hand, participants' point of view about slacktivist behaviours mostly resembles each other.