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Hashtag junkies, Facebook revolutions or alternative tools of change: Making an impact by use of online social campaigns by Oleksandra Kovalenko

Do you check your phone first thing in the morning or after a sip of coffee? Nowadays, a vast part of our daily activities also appear in the digital form of scrolls, shares and emojis. Although having a phone might make activism easier, fast-paced dynamic relationships and buzzing news-feeds are making us immune to the kaleidoscope of campaigns. The golden question is how effective they are. After almost every session, fellows ask: “What can I do as an activist to change the status quo?” The answer is usually spreading what you know and believe to be right. Moreover, it might seem daunting to use social media for social activism, given how much of the audience’s attention is already occupied by commercial advertising and political messaging.

Pro-democracy protesters open their umbrellas for 87 seconds at the Admiralty, Hong Kong on October 28, 2014. EPA/Alex Hoffard.

So-called ‘Facebook revolutions’—for example, in Hong Kong, Turkey, Ukraine, and Egypt—have already demonstrated how anti-government protests can jump from the web to city squares. Protesters in Hong Kong have claimed online media as a creative way of joining in the movement. Facebook also played a major role in consolidating participants during Euromaidan in Ukraine. However, choosing the best way to shape the message is not always easy. In her TEDx talk called Online Social Change: How To Organize, Zeynep Tufekci tells how in 1955, activists in Alabama worked scrupulously through the night, mimeographing posters in order to achieve sustainable results. Today, we have many more options, beyond printed flyers, available to us in our activism. 

New Yorker Illustration by Nishant Choksi 

What is hard to come to terms with is that it takes real people behind those small filtered photo icons to create a critical mass and act for change. As we learned from Marek Dorobisz, strategic copywriter and creative director, being specific and simple is the key. Marek also told us that to reach a wider audience, one has to remember two universal rules: everyone wants to be a good person and have a good life. In order not to be lost in the ocean of campaigns, a real attention-getter has to be bold such as “Fuck the poor” video. After the unusual session with Marek, I was inspired to think that only the proper presentation of information empowers to achieve desired result. In other words, when facing a dissolved reality, it is also possible to make use of it. Attention becomes a product in itself, which makes it harder to get, but worth the effort. 





As relationships online are becoming quicker and more attention-seeking, impulses to share should be backed by sustainable strategies to raise a voice. At the same time, the social media world gives us a real time presence, and thus lowers the risks during protests as the information spreads horizontally from one user to another. It is important to look past empty slogans and focus on targeted, clever, effective uses of online tools to convey messages whilst keeping in mind the advertising dimension on these platforms. The crucial thing for me is to understand the reality we live in, to define the outcome of the campaign and be ready to change it in accordance with the demands of the target audience. Make the phrase catchy and appeal to the audience as much as to the inner creative idea. Make it short and attractive, so that people will be entertained. 

Pinterest

While the audience might be fully plugged in, it will take time to get the current fully running through the wires to turn a campaign into a measurable change. For me, it is eye-opening to reach towards the audience and share a message to which that seems foreign to them, but which they hopefully might come to embrace. Only in this way will we get further in the activism that we can as of yet only imagine. 

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Born in Zaporizhzhia (Ukraine), Oleksandra Kovalenko moved to the capital to study Law at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. During her studies, she participated in the couple of moot court competitions on human rights and international law, volunteering and governance projects. Oleksandra completed her Masters in the Interdisciplinary European Studies at the College of Europe in Natolin, Warsaw. Last autumn she went for an internship at the Parliament of Canada, where she deepened her interest in the advocacy of minorities' rights. Afterwards she started working at the International Organization for Migration in Kyiv. Oleksandra plans to continue her human rights studies, write, create and make projects happen.






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