ABSTRACT
Activism has long taken place in digital spaces, from the 1990s hacktivism of the Zapatistas to Edward Snowden’s digital leaks and modern-day online petitions. In contemporary digital culture, online activism is often characterized as clicktivism, or dismissed as slacktivism, and defined as “low-risk, low-cost activity via social media whose purpose is to raise awareness, produce change, or grant satisfaction to the person engaged in the activity”. Criticisms of clicktivism fall into two main themes. First, many consider it inferior and counterproductive to “real world” activism which is characterized by actions such as street demonstrations. Second, critics argue that motivations for clicktivism are murky because of the slippery slope between genuine activism and mediated virtue-signalling. Within the dichotomy of “real-world activism” versus clicktivism, the concept of moral balancing commonly informs arguments for the counterproductivity of clicktivism.
