Navigating Social Media Activism

There is a lot of content on social media these days, and sometimes it can be overwhelming.

If I’m being honest, I’ve always had a vacillating opinion on social media activism. It can be effective in spreading overarching messages, kick starting movements, and getting people to donate money, but after a certain point, it becomes a bunch of people sharing the same 100 posts to the same 100 followers who believe in the same things (more or less). I’m not saying that it is all bad, #meToo and Black Lives Matter would not have happened without social media. However, I think that social media should be a supplementary tool to real education, critical thinking, and taking action.

Over the past month, I’ve seen more social media activism than I have seen in my entire life combined. For the first week or so, I found myself mindlessly flipping through Instagram stories and retaining several large pieces of information: Black Lives Matter, Police Abolition and Reform, and Arresting George Floyd’s Officers.

What I noticed in the first week was that I was “engaging” with this content on Instagram, but barely made an effort to look outside of the platform. I would read some articles here and there about the big topics, but failed to better understand the history and the nuances behind the movement as well as look deeper inside of myself for the biases I might have. This is when I realized I needed to change my strategy for engaging with the movement.

Critically Engaging with Content

I knew I needed to read more books, and not just read, but critically engage. I realized pretty quickly that critically engaging is time consuming, difficult, and often leaves you with a headache. It is like doing schoolwork, except this time, there are no grades or teacher to hold you accountable. In order to critically engage with content, whether it be on Instagram or in a book, I felt like I needed to set some guidelines.

1. If there was a concept I didn’t understand, or the author glossed over — look it up and read about it until I understood.
2. If there was something I didn’t agree with — talk to someone about it, and get their opinion. (Even better, if I could talk to someone who was knowledgeable in the field).
3. Don’t rush through it — take your time and digest every single word.
4. Set aside time in your day to do this — usually, Instagram is a platform I use mindlessly, but now, there is actual content being posted. This change meant that if I actually wanted to look through this content, I couldn’t be using the same mindless tactics I was using before.
5. Incorporate critical thinking into my everyday routine — activism is not a fad, it needs to be continually practiced.

I used these guidelines not only for reading books, but also to navigate Instagram and other social media. Simply saving posts and reading them later was not really doing enough for me —it honestly left me feeling more hopeless than before. Without social media activism, I definitely would not have heard about terms like environmental racism, or police abolition. However, if I had solely read about these terms on Instagram, I would have a very narrow view of a topic that spanned hundreds of years and layers of complexity. I can sometimes barely fit an entire picture on my Instagram, how can we expect people to fit hundreds of layers of history into one post?

I also found that when I started reading about topics outside of Instagram, I found authors who had spent their entire lives dedicated to these topics and who provided actionable goals that were incredibly positive and gave me a more optimistic view that things could actually change.

Who is telling the truth?

Apart from critically engaging with content, I found it difficult to understand what was actually good content and what was just click-bait, uninformed or frankly, inaccurate. It is really easy to believe something is true if you start seeing it posted several times by people in your close friend circle, without even watching it or seeing who made it. It is really important to look at who posted something, where they got the information from, and why they might be posting it. If there is a very eye catching statistic being shared or a very emotional video being played, is there more to it? I’m not saying that anything with these “red signals” is inherently wrong, but it is worth looking into before re-sharing.

A side note — I feel like it is very difficult to figure out who is telling the truth these days on the internet and I wish that at some point in my education I was taught how to effectively navigate all of these tools. In the same way we are taught to cite multiple sources for essays, we should be taught how to check multiple sources for social media posts and articles on the internet.

Re-posting and using your voice

After reading and critically thinking outside of my Instagram bubble, I started re-posting about several topics that I thought I had a better understanding of, and topics that I felt like were not being shared at all. It is also really important to share a little more than just a post itself. BIPOC voices need to be amplified, and part of that includes writing about why this post is being shared. It forces people to have a conversation with themselves and think one level deeper than just the words on a page. Obviously, there are some posts that are quotes or art that don’t informational content, and not everything needs a why, but it is important to consider why you are sharing something in the first place.

Reflect

I feel like every Medium article I’ve ever written ends with a part about reflection. Over the past month, I’ve been trying to understand the bigger picture of social media and how it fits into my life as a whole. A lot of social media is inherently performative. As a user, you get to pick and choose what version of yourself you put on the platform. In our day to day lives, we also get to pick and choose what we say to each other, but social media magnifies this “natural” ability. In many ways, it can be dangerous, but I think it is more dangerous if we fail to recognize that social media is inherently performative. I’ve found that accepting this basis has made me more aware of how I can use my platform to do better because I know that social media is not real life.

A Final Note

After rereading what I have written — I would like to note that I think social media activism is important, especially if you are BIPOC. Posting and amplifying voices is necessary, but it needs to be supported by everyone critically thinking and engaging with content outside of social media.