Be an Activist, Not a Celebrity: The Problem With Social Media-Based Activism
By Leia Neilson
At a climate strike in 2018, I saw a woman stiffly posing in front of the United States Capitol building, holding a sign inscribed with a catchy message about climate change and beaming into the camera. An hour later, I noticed her scrolling through her phone in the middle of a speech meant to encourage action to combat climate change. Though inattentive and seemingly uninterested, she had created the illusion that she was committed to fighting climate change, which her Instagram followers surely believed.
Political Cartoon by Elson Bankoff
This facade of caring about global movements is not uncommon, and has attracted lots of negative attention since the Black Lives Matter protests of the summer of 2020. Many so-called activists at these protests posed in fr...