Thanks for sharing your ideas, Carol! You raise an excellent point: people
aren’t simply saying all they want to do is click a button and think they’ve
made change; instead, organizations and campaigns that only ask for that
much action are telling the participants that it’s all that’s needed to make
real change! We are communicating and supporting slacktivism ourselves.

I love your statement that, “we don’t know hot to organize solutions.” I’m
going to reflect on that and see if I can’t come up with some approaches to
talk about!

Thanks again,
a

sorry typo error; i mean ‘”history repeating itself'”

” but watch for opportunities to jump in to elevate the slacktivism into activism”

That’s exactly how I feel about it. A lot of friends have been saying things like “this has nothing to do with the NSPCC”. Well, they didn’t start it, but do they have to? JG and other sites like it have proved time and time again that the supporters do an incredible job on their own, even without a specific campaign to work to. The NSPCC rightly recognised the effort being made in its name and the recognition factor the name has. What the team there now knows is that there is a dedicated group of passionate people who think their cause is important. Now if they can just harness that in an interesting way they can get funds / volunteers / specific awareness (whatever it is they decide is important and best gained through social media). Of course they have to do it before this kind of thing becomes old hat and people want to show their support a different way…

Even slacktivists get bored with the same old, same old!

These don’t have to be mutually exclusive, but when being used to complement one another they should work together to achieve a shared objective. In addition, there should be defined ownership and clear messaging that can help to further inform anyone who chooses to participate – or join in the fun. Honestly, I originally thought that the cartoon avatar was simply a purposeless meme until I did some additional digging.

There were many people participating without knowledge of the issue. Does that mean enhanced awareness or even “slacktivism”? It might have been fun, but did we also miss the chance to cultivate commitment or support of the bigger cause?

Play can be powerful – it can help to make scary issues less scary and offer context that makes the issues more tangible to more people, but it should also be relevant.

I’m really left with more questions, than answers or insight: How do we migrate from awareness online to real action and support offline? Are we seeking validation through participation and enjoyment of the meme not the cause. It’s ‘cute’, but where is the action or measurable outcome to support that it was worth it? Maybe most importantly, is this the type of campaign behavior we want other NPOs modeling?

I enjoyed and really appreciated Tom Watson’s post and opinion, “If Scooby Doo or Top Cat or Stimpy can bring even a sliver of new activists to this cause, I’m for it.”

Awareness is important, but I struggle with whether or not this type of participation made any real impact and what the cause could of achieved if executed differently. Did the act of showing off our new avatars distract from what they were supposed to represent? I felt like there was more conversations about cartoons from the past and finding new avatar photos for Facebook, than about the issue of child abuse.

Perhaps the primary question is what do we want the take away to be from this situation? I think an opportunity is being missed and potentially a poor precedent being set for both potential supporters of a cause and the organizations looking to promote them. Are we addicted to ‘slacktivism’? Personally, I hope not.

Thanks for joining in, Damien! I doubt that you are a “facebook grump” but am curious about your point that you want to see a bit more clearly how participation will make an impact. Do you have a good example of “slacktivism” on facebook or elsewhere that you thought did this well and you participated in?

I didn’t change my picture although alot of my friends did. I think it was more due the current cultural obsession with the 1980’s from people of my generation in the UK rather than to raise awareness about child abuse.

I do consider myself a slacktivist but maybe I need a clear call to action whereby I can see how my action can make a difference. Or perhaps I have become a Facebook grump only supporting non mainstream campaigns, I am which one made me not change my picture but I am pretty sure it is one of them reasons.

@damienclarkson

Anna – you are totally still fun in my book even though you did not change your picture! I didn’t change mine, and I hope I’m still fun 🙂 Though to me, obviously I wrote this post about how I was feeling and why I didn’t participate – but even on a more basic level, I don’t think I really had cartoons that I watched and loved enough to put a picture up about!

I completely agree with your point that when the community is excited, having fun, and clearly influencing large numbers, that’s a huge opportunity and open door for organizations to join in – note that I said “join in” and not “take over” too. Will be watching for the next example of this to see if organizations start joining or continue standing by.