Every time I open Twitter, I am hit with a barrage of information about a new international crisis or incident. Sometimes these are big events that take over the whole feed, no matter what niche community you are part of. But most of the time, global events don’t receive the same attention as something like the Capitol riot in Washington, DC.
This dynamic can be frustrating. We can talk for ages about American exceptionalism and how global and Western media has a singular focus on the U.S., as if the rest of the world doesn’t matter enough. Trust me, as a citizen of Sri Lanka — a third world country that is plagued by corruption, discrimination, and violent censorship — who attends college in Iowa, I understand that frustration completely. What I don’t understand is the expectation that ordinary civilians, especially but not limited to Americans, will become passionate activists in response to every global event.
A popular line that gets thrown around: “No one’s talking about this,” in which “this” can mean a lot of different things. In recent months, “this” has been the Uyghur genocide in China, the Israeli air raids in Syria, the farmers' protest in India, and the coup in Myanmar. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems like every country is facing a political reckoning of its own, with civilians and marginalized communities pushed to their limits after loss of income, continued violence, and the threat of a deadly virus.
But what good does it do to merely talk about these events? Do I retweet a thread that has a bunch of petitions and donation links and sleep better at night thinking I’ve done my part? Or do I share a bunch of dubiously sourced infographic slides on my Instagram stories that have become so popular that the design app Canva has its own activism templates for the platform?
It’s not that social media activism isn’t useful, and it can’t always be discounted as performative. In a 2020 paper in the journal Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill professors Deen Freelon, Alice Marwick, and Daniel Kreiss wrote that while one objection to digital activism is that it can’t “substitute for more impactful actions such as voting or offline protest,” it isn’t without its own merit. They cited research that showed social media activism is a complement for offline engagement and that “sharing information about politics on social media predicted offline political activities such as attending political meetings, contacting public officials, and donating money to campaigns.”
Still, this does not mean that everyone needs to be a social media activist. Activists do lifelong work; they train, organize, and constantly face the consequences of their efforts. What good is your activism if you are shoehorned into it? Why do we want every influencer, member of our respective fandoms, and random mutuals to be calling out every instance of injustice in the world?
At the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States last summer, many people of color were urging their white peers to speak up and show up. There was a truth and urgency in that request, and it was more of a push to acknowledge the systemic and institutional racism that every one of them were inadvertently benefitting from. That was about lived-in, everyday experiences. But global activism is rather different, and expecting ordinary people to become familiar with a specific country’s geopolitics overnight isn’t realistic.
To understand and develop an informed opinion about the depth of a crisis in a country, you need to have a grasp of the political, historical, and cultural context of the situation and the place, which is no easy feat. Not to mention, the information you find may be skewed, censored, and altered by various political parties. Take the Arab Spring, for example: While social media was credited for making these uprisings popular, and Twitter played a huge role in the Egyptian revolution, these internet-fueled protests also saw tons of bots spreading propaganda on social media. During the Syrian civil war, anonymous accounts have spread undated photographs and useless information to divert attention and overpower real activists.
(For more in-depth debunking of misconceptions and false information, please follow Syria Untold, an independent, online media platform “advancing critical perspectives on Syria and Syrian[s].” Some general and helpful resources to fact-check information are Snopes and FactCheck.org. Whois is a great resource to find ownership of a website to determine possible bias. Crash Course also has a great series on lateral reading when navigating digital information.)
Another example: The historic mass farmers' protest in India. The weeks-long demonstrations are a response to the passage of controversial new agricultural laws, but they’re the result of years of negligence against farmers by prime minister Narendra Modi’s government. In India propaganda has also proliferated. International petitions and calls for donations have been met with a fierce response from online trolls, Modi loyalists, and even media personalities with millions of followers.
Recently, Rihanna’s tweet about the farmers' protest — which, unsurprisingly, was captioned, “Why aren’t we talking about this?!” — sent the Indian government and its supporters into a frenzy, with many Indian celebrities defending their government and its actions. One could argue that Rihanna’s tweet brought renewed attention to the issue, but a quick look at her replies reveals the extent of hate, anti-Blackness, and threats that can be directed toward someone who decides to speak up.
(To learn more about the farmers' protest, here is a comprehensive guide by PBS; for more progressive-leaning social media sources, some resources to look to are Washington Post journalist Rana Ayyub, South Asian technology organization @equalitylabs, and long-form journalism site Caravan India.)
Does this mean you shouldn’t care about or discuss global issues? It’s not my intention to tell you that you have to stay silent in situations like this, especially if you have the platform and knowledge to make real change. My point is, we shouldn’t expect everyone to take up the baton on every single issue. Time and time again, I see some teen influencer posting some half-hearted, obligatory message about a global event they don’t really seem to care about. All this leaves us with is people posting out of a sense of moral superiority, a culture of shame and guilt, with a complete disregard for the reality that not everyone is cut out to be an activist.
It can be more valuable to devote yourself to a few issues you care most about — educate yourself, invest time and energy, learn from others in the movement — rather than dabbling in every world crisis. As we’ve seen during the pandemic, as mutual aid networks sprang up to provide groceries and support to neighbors, helping the people in your community is often where you can really make a difference.
“Silence is violence” is another phrase often thrown around on social media, accompanied by a quote from an activist that may or may not fit the context of the situation. But what is the definition of silence? What exactly counts as not speaking up? When our lives seem to be surrounded by conflict every day, how is it fair to expect people to possess the kind of knowledge and resources that could empower them to really participate and then deal with the consequences of doing so?
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