Something deep inside tells me I should apologise for the pun-tastic title. I silence this inner voice with gusto.
One of many things that irks me about journalism are the buzzwords that writers create to try and essentialise an issue. Here are two portmanteaus that have infiltrated the media lexicon: The first, ‘churnalism’, I can abide by; if I hear or read the second, ‘clicktivism’, I have to excuse myself from present company and gouge my eyes out with a spoon.
What does this have to do with war criminal de jour Joseph Kony? Column inches, I would suggest.
Churnalism first. Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign goes viral, transcends viral, becomes a permanent feature of ones facebook feed, appearing more than misspelt descriptions of peoples dinners. A phenomenon indeed. The media pick up on this and they write of the video’s impact; it is not their responsibility to scrutinise the content, the producers, the history of Uganda. The story is, essentially, ‘people watch something, are moved to care’. As encouraging it is to know that people care, Kony is relatively old news; is a man six years in exile more important than Sudanese elections, a coup in Mali, or Somalia’s unabated civil conflict?
Will it take a video with high production values and a skillfully coordinated PR campaign to make people care? Churnalism, by definition, is the regurgitation of press release material in the media. As important as the message which Kony 2012 communicates is, for it to dominate media discourse on African politics is counter-productive; there is so much more happening that demands our attention.
Attention is not action, however, which brings me onto the abomination of the English language that is clicktivism.*
Clicktivism inhabits facebook and appears to provide the same satisfaction as popping a zit: What does liking a humanitarian cause on a social network have to do with activism? It’s akin to giving a crying, hungry child a fruit pastille; it changes nothing, except perhaps the perception of you held by some of your more ‘gullible’ friends. There is nothing active about clicking, at best the combined power of millions of ‘clicktivists’ can penetrate the media, which can then influence political approaches to a situation, which results in more humanitarian aid, in the form of finance or food. African governments, Uganda included, have terrible records for hoarding aid money for personal use and restricting the dissemination of food on tribal or economic grounds. This flawed cycle continues irrespective of what you like or watch on the internet.
‘Clicktivism’ is not active, therefore it is anathema. Furthermore, because people think that they’ve done something, they then shy away from real activism (read: Actually Doing Something) and the movement, as a whole, is weakened. The concept of social ‘awereness’ to me is a part of the political lexicon: You know something is going on, you can talk about it, form an opinion. Clicktivism is the very base notion of awareness.
Churnalism expands awareness, which is only the beginning of contribution. Clicktivism implies that it is also the end… not so.
*It doesn’t even work as a portmanteau, the assonance isn’t consistent!
Think on this:
Target Aquired | Mission Aborted 