WASHINGTON — In a world dominated by endless RSS feeds and “share” buttons and in which hacker collectives like Anonymous can declare tangible wars on allegedly unethical individuals and institutions, total political non-involvement may seem like an utter impossibility.
Reddit threads, Buzzfeed lists and memetic commentaries have made politics a new cultural currency, and “slacktivism” has become an indelible addition to household dictionaries.
But according to Mark M. Gray, a research associate professor and political-participation expert at Georgetown University, the rise of technology and new media is making it easier for individuals to completely shut themselves off from political involvement.
“Social scientists have always found that there’s a segment of the population that’s politically disengaged – not registered to vote, not necessarily having a partisan identity and not following political news,”
Gray said in a phone interview. “That’s definitely a measurable segment of the population, and it’s not unique to the United States.”
Gray explained that the recent influx of media choices made available to consumers via the Internet and cable, alike, have made it easier for them to hone in on what they’re interested in and, consequently, to block out everything else – politics potentially included.
“That’s really what you see is people casting themselves into their interests and spending time with media and content and joining other groups, social networks that… have similar interests to their own,” Gray said. “You can kind of wall yourself off from politics in a way that you couldn’t in the 1980s or 70s or 60s or before that.”
Rather than viewing it as an isolating force, Gray views this media surge as being a force whereby consumers are matched with content aligned to their own interests more efficiently.
University of Chicago political-psychology expert and professor John Brehm sees things slightly differently.
Although Brehm acknowledged that Generation Facebook could be “incredibly selective about political involvement,” he said that he didn’t think its complete political noninvolvement was possible.
Additionally, he said, the demographic in question has actually stepped up to the political plate.
“The turnout rates for the most recent cohorts are much higher than for any previous cohorts, including the… famed Baby-Boomer surges,” Brehm said.
According to Brehm, Generation Facebook has a higher likelihood of going to rallies, of paying “attention to news stories, even if the news stories come from somewhat selective sources” and of being generally politically active.
So, despite the fact that modern technology and media have made it easier for Generation Facebook to engage in politics selectively, experts say that when it chooses to get involved – namely, through so-called “slacktivism” — the ramifications can be felt across the globe.
Gray said that despite the opt-out nature of modern media and technology,“slacktivism, a term coined by the children of social media to refer to Internet- and social-media-based activism and/or political involvement, is shaping global politics, for better or for worse. “It’s probably a positive thing politically, and it can be negative as well,” he said.
Gray likened the value judgment of slacktivism to that of democracy, with the good-versus-evil debate being rooted in the way the mechanism is used on a case-by-case basis.
“Democracy doesn’t create sort of good automatically,” he said. “It can be used for negative, antisocial,… morally negative, bad purposes.” Gray said that slacktivism “has a lot of benefit” when used in the humanitarian sphere, using crisis relief and the ability of people to “donate and connect” to illustrate his point.
Despite slacktivism’s ability to spearhead humanitarian involvement, however, Gray said that its impact transcends charity, having the potential to challenge the power of standing political regimes.“There’s a whole literature about how does an authoritarian regime retain control when you have things like Twitter and Facebook,” Gray said. “There’s certainly an increasing wave of democratization in recent decades. This new social media and internet world is going to make maintaining an authoritarian regime much more difficult.”
Brehm agreed that the movement had the potential to impact global political affairs, but said that slacktivism has some pertinent geographical limitations.
“There’s a clear role for some internet connections – Twitter in particular – in the Middle East, in European politics, but beyond those two particular areas of the world, I don’t know that we’ve seen a special rise in political activity in South America, Africa, Asia – most of the globe,” he said in a phone interview.
Brehm also expressed concern about the longevity of slacktivism’s impact.
“There’s again a question of how enduring the effect would be,” Brehm said.
Likewise, Gray emphasized that slacktivism isn’t a “golden egg” that can solve everything in the aforementioned political situations.
But he still expressed optimism about the potential for slacktivism to increase grassroots public awareness.
“It certainly can help these individuals, rather than the press, bring news and information to the masses,” Gray said.
