By: Shreya Joshi, Carter Jones, Emily Le, Hla Paing, Chandana Kodavatiganti, Janna Noori. Drake Luong is spreading awareness enough?When was the last time you reposted or retweeted something about a cause sweeping the nation? Shared some pressing facts about climate change or police brutality? Or even posted on instagram so everyone knew your socio- political stance? If you have, you’re not alone. Many people engage in raising awareness as a method of activism, but don’t do anything more. They feel good about themselves for simply hitting a button forgetting that it doesn’t always translate materially. And make no mistake, while raising awareness is important, alone, it is insufficient to produce lasting change. This new year, let’s become new activists, and explore why raising awareness isn’t enough and how we can transform to become better activists for ourselves and our communities. Raising awareness comes in many forms. From awareness days to PSA’s to social media posts, information and awareness campaigns are everywhere. However, simply giving someone information doesn’t mean that they’ll change. Too many people fall into this trap of “slacktivism” which is supporting a cause on social media with little effort or commitment other than simply posting. This makes us feel like activists when in reality we haven’t actually made any effort to be. Solely raising awareness can also have direct negative effects. It can actually legitimize the opposite of what you’re trying to do, since people begin to feel the problem in question is so prevalent they adopt a pessimistic attitude. Only by providing material solutions do people feel motivated enough to help solve the problem rather than simply acknowledge its existence. Acknowledging a problem doesn’t solve it. Acknowledgment and performative support alone are seen as virtue signaling. Some examples of virtue signaling include radical chicness which is supporting a movement that is deemed fashionable and then forgetting about it later (which happened with BLM in the Summer of 2020) and hypocrisy (where you pretend to be an ally for increased social status but don’t practice what you preach). To create measurable change, we need more than acknowledgement even if it’s genuine. Specifically for sexual violence and gender-based violence, despite the statistics people are aware of, measurable change isn’t always seen. More than 10% of women and gender minorities experience gender-based violence and these numbers increase drastically for POC (The Good Men Project). While education about sexual violence is a critical step to starting the conversation, the conversation should correlate to action taken too. And too many times virtue signaling has masked it. This virtue signaling can become a problem for other causes as well. Back in 2020 when the George Floyd protests were going on people took to social media and posted a black square to symbolize support for George Floyd. This trend dubbed “BlackOutTuesday” was supposed to amplify black voices but it had the opposite effect. While their intentions were good, this flooded Instagram with black squared posts that ended up blocking important information that needed to be shared. This blocking out of critical information can have a negative impact on raising awareness. In addition, sharing false information also blocks out important information. Many times we share on social media thoughtlessly, just by clicking a button. When this happens people can accidentally share misinformation that doesn’t help the cause in question at all.
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Year ARchive
February 2023
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