How often do you share news you see on your social media? How do you react to those posts? And how often do you turn those online comments into actual real-life actions?

Social media nowadays is a platform that allows us to do many of the things we cannot do before technology became commonplace. It enables us to shop, communicate and share with a simple touch by our fingertips. With the current ubiquity of technology and social media, digital and online activism has flourished making news travel faster than ever. Today, we see major movements from the Hong Kong democracy protests to Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the US to Youth activism and anti-government movements in Thailand all obtaining a large online presence.

With the introduction of social media, there has never been a more convenient way for people to voice out their opinions especially during the current global pandemic health crisis.

Digital Activism

Before the era of social media, communication channels were only limited to traditional means and mass media such as television, radio and print. Now, anyone with an opinion can share and voice them out online to a global audience instantly. Today, you can protest for any cause, at any time with just the use of smartphones.

For example in the US, the 2013 Black Lives Matter movement returned to both national and international headlines in June 2020 due to the footage of the death of George Floyd being circulated across the social platform. Within only a few days after the incident, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter trended on Twitter bringing out a huge number of approximately 15 to 26 million people to the streets. The movement was also so significant receiving worldwide attention from countries like the UK to South Korea, with people coming in groups echoing the voices of the oppressed Black People.

Today, thousands of young people in Thailand are defying the authorities by gathering onto the streets and calling for change. The government issued an emergency decree banning large gatherings, rallies, and protests in an attempt to suppress the protestors however, the student-led democracy movement continues.

So how does the social media contribute to this new movement led by the youth?

The movement’s ability to continue and escalate to larger scale rallies within a few months is all due to the help of social media. Small “flashmobs” and short, spontaneous gathering type protests are able to form and disperse quickly with communication technology particularly social media as the main facilitator. The country’s political discourse has been increasingly amplified by digital activism.

In October 2020, Thai student activists came to protest against the government demanding reforms to the Thai monarchy as well as the political system. As digital natives, the group of youth protestors creatively optimised social media like Telegram, Twitter and Facebook to their advantage as the main channel of communication. Messaging services that offer end-to-end encryption are hard to spot and are extremely popular among the youth. Visual codes and tools like memes and emojis are also used amongst protestors to communicate with each other while avoiding being opposed by the Thai police.

Where does this lead to?

With digital activism becoming more and more common across the world, some researchers have also said that despite having a strong online presence and a large amount of awareness benefitting the social movements, too much may generate backlash. If too many people support a cause online but do not take any further action or fail to make other meaningful efforts offline, a point of disconnection with certainly be established between the movement’s impacts in the digital world versus the real world we are living in.

This is a trend known as “slacktivism”.

“Slacktivism”

According to Urban Dictionary, slacktivism is defined as “the self-deluded idea that by liking, sharing, or retweeting something you are helping out”. It is basically a way to voice your opinions about a particular cause without going out on the risky streets. A recent study, from the University of British Columbia found that “when people participate in a form of public token support, they aren’t any more likely to participate in a more meaningful form of support in the future”.

The convenience of just sharing a post to your story on Instagram or retweeting on Twitter takes a split second to do so, many believing that this simple act is enough to consider it as activism. Most internet users hop on the “trend” only to show that at least they are doing something.

On June 2, 2020, plain black images filled the Instagram feed in support of the BLM movement. Many log on to post a black square photo joining in the campaign known as “Blackout Tuesday”. As a result, the main movement hashtag has been clogged up with irrelevant content drowning outposts on essential information about the movement. This leads to a false sense of security as well as potential misinformation. Activists pointed out that the post drowned out organizing efforts and those who posted those black photos had done only a little to participate in the black lives matter cause.

Social media as a tool in facilitating activism

From a study in 2015, led by New York University researchers, people who are active online during protests are measurable effective in disseminating and spreading information about a movement’s message. Social media facilitates online activism by documenting and saving experiences shared by each individual, collating and filtering through similar information in a hashtag, building a community, and ultimately developing shared realities of the world.

Most empirical evidence, suggests that online and offline activism are positively correlated where social media posts can mobilise others for offline protest. It enhances the visibility of activism and helps represses repressive contexts. In some cases, there is also evidence of digital activism generating donations such as the online fundraising effort in the protest over Floyd’s death.

To sum up, the right amount of social media usage is helping the cause. Social media enables a call to action and the collective desire for social accountability. Messages are able to be delivered quickly, widely, and accurately raising awareness and getting so much attention no one can ignore. Even though too much sharing of unnecessary information may defeat the purpose, a middle ground needs to be established and netizens will need to learn how to filter information for themselves and consider which content is worthy of sharing.

Social media plays a huge part in the daily lives of young people and has left the boundaries between online-offline increasingly blurred. Whilst social media encourages communication and enhances the freedom of speech, it also raises some serious challenges.

The effects of social media may lead to physical aggression and violence, especially among the youth. According to research conducted for the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, it has been stated that “rather than being initiators or causes of violent behaviours, the internet and social media specifically can be facilitators within wider processes of violent radicalization”. Youths who perpetrated serious crimes were significantly more likely to have viewed violent online content.

What is violence and its effects?

According to Britannica, violence is an act of physical force that causes or is intended to cause harm in which the damage inflicted by violence may be physical, psychological, or both. In social media, visuals showing gruesome accidents, shootouts, murders in graphic detail to the audiences are quite common and are usually done to capture attention so that they can survive in the competitive environment of the media world.

This certainly affects the psychology of people who are exposed to such content particularly the youth. Studies have revealed that violent images have the potential to make teenagers become less sensitive to violence, which in turn promotes aggressive attitudes and behaviour. In other words, it is the desensitization or the subtle process of “gradual loss or elimination of cognitive, emotional and behavioural response”. This leads to youth thinking that such violent behaviours such as hostile fights are acceptable.

How does the media lead to violence?

By observing and being exposed to the portrayals of physical aggression by one human against another, contributes to the theory of “social learning” or “social cognitive”. This is when viewers imitate what they see. With the models of aggression, violent media leads to the development of violent scripts. Youth who oftentimes are continually exposed to violence in the media resort to aggressive behaviours to solve their problems which can also be attributed to what they see and who they’re around as kids tend to adopt social skills from their surroundings (Social Cognitive Theory, Bandura, 1986).

Apart from social networking sites, online video game exposure is also associated with an increased aggression score, increased aggressive behaviour, and increased aggressive cognition. Games which features inappropriate language, excessive blood gushes, and dismembered victims are obviously not so pleasing for the eye.

The link between social media and violence

The internet provides unrestrained access to images and motion graphics of real-life violence. In 2013, videos of murder and gang violence were uploaded to Facebook which established a trend called “Fight Compilations” and became popular across several sites such as World Star Hip Hop and Youtube. These “Fight Compilations” are videos composed of everyday fight snippets that anyone can record usually by their smartphones. Hundreds of thousands of people have tuned in to watch these videos and some even gained millions of hits becoming a huge trend.

Moreover, in controversial topics and issues, those on social media can also be manipulated by the spread of misinformation, inaccurate, and biased news becoming factors that trigger violence between different groups of people. The way in which these social media platforms promote emotive, divisive, and polarized content can lead to the escalation of existing prejudices. According to a research from the University of Warwick, it has been examined that crimes relating to every anti-refugee attack in Germany between 2015 and 2017 have been linked to locations and areas in which Facebook usage was high.

In order to keep people engaging on their sites as long as possible, companies like Facebook and Youtube use algorithms to recommend posts to someone who is likely to agree with that particular content which is generally divisive or controversial. If the algorithm thinks a video might have the stop and stare effect which keeps people interacting, it recommends it more. This leaves the users stuck in their own ideological bubbles where they see a version of the world from their side of the story – views that are never challenged. “These bubbles can create digitized terrorists,” says Linda Schlegel, a counter-terrorism consultant. Filter bubbles contains extreme attitudes towards certain perspectives which may lead to future conflicts if that bubble pops.

As a result, people are raising concerns over the way tech companies are curating their information and content because what increases the advertising revenue can also prevail on violent forces between communities.

Conclusion

To sum up, we can say that social media plays a role in initiating violence and results have been proven that youth violence increasingly occurs in the online space. However, they are also other factors leading up to that such as environment, family background, history of early aggressive behaviour, genetics and hormones as well as psychological and mental conditions such as prolonged toxic stress. Thus, we should not blame social media for being solely responsible for violence but rather as one of the players contributing to the whole.

Where do you get your news? With the 24/7 access to a variety of news outlets, it is impossible for us to miss out on any particular hot or trending topics. Like many, the first thing I do right after I wake up every morning is to check my phone, especially social media.

According to a research by The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism research, it also suggests that approximately 51% of people with online access uses social media as a news source. With over 2.4 billion internet users today and the fact that everyone can post whatever they want online, the question here is, can we really trust everything we see?

In the midst of today’s global pandemic, the increasing scale of the COVID-19 crisis demands strong, effectively coordinated governmental responses and media regulations. With many people being glued to their screens and receiving news right at the edge of their fingertips, one wrong message can potentially exacerbate things.

Communication during crisis

Whilst some may argue and say that unregulated media provides advantages such as freedom of speech, real-time communication and promotes information exchange between communities, having too much of this information might become a problem.

When a crisis emerges, the affected public becomes anxious and tends to look to the government not just for direction but also on how to cope with the situation. Concerns around social media, therefore, becomes heightened as social media is an information vacuum – it spreads both knowledge and information at an exponential rate making it very easy in spreading disinformation, rampant misinterpretation, scams, and fraud. This puts those innocent individuals at great risks of exposure to harmful content especially when they are in panic thus, the media during national crises should be regulated.

Dangers of unregulated media

Anonymity

Social media has raised a lot of concerns over people’s loss of privacy and terrorism. Anonymity in social media may become dangerous in the sense that it could spread false information and fake news. For example, Twitter allows users to remain anonymous with the IP addresses stored only on their servers. This enables users to hide behind their accounts and say things that can be considered inappropriate and lack fact checking.

Scams and fraud are the two direct impacts of unregulated media. In Thailand during this virus outbreak, there is also news of people claiming to be officials of the Chulabhorn Royal Academy luring people into ordering and paying for the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine. Moreover, there are also cases of fraudsters impersonating well-known influencers and asking for donations from the people online on behalf of various covid-19 charities

Unreliable sources

Some contents audiences encounter through unregulated media may contain unknown sources of information which therefore lacks credibility and confirmation by professionals and experts. There are no evidence or supporting materials in proving whether the information presented is true or false resulting in miscommunication, the spread of false beliefs as well as fear and terror.

A recent example of fake news is about the mRNA vaccines. Rumours and text messages sent across LINE messaging application claimed that these vaccines are harmful to the health and potentially killing those who are vaccinated. With the public already being paranoid of the situation, they are then unlikely to verify for sources but rather to share the message forward as soon as possible.

How should the media be regulated?

In order to establish a common ground and make sure that the dissemination of information is accurate, reliable, and real-time, the following actions should be taken:

1. Government and the public sector need to utilise their social media effectively – Messages should be delivered in a clear, calm, and professional manner as well as being conveyed through official services centers and organisations to increase credibility.
2. Use social media listening to identify inaccuracies and respond accordingly – whenever there are significant numbers of people spreading falsehoods, use official platforms to clarify that information right away to ensure real-time communication.
3. States should work together with media organisations and journalists to adhere to the highest professional and ethical standards – prioritising authoritative messages and granting access of journalists to first-hand information sources thus preventing stories from being amplified.

Conclusion

Managing the propagation of false information may be complex especially during times of crisis. It is still impossible to monitor every single content across the media as even the most sophisticated technological measures together with manual human effort are still flawed. At the same time, allowing all information to be published also poses threat. The crisis is a huge challenge that requires collective and collaborative efforts on behalf of the government and the community members. As a result, the media during a national crisis should be regulated and monitored to a certain extent while audiences should also pay higher attention to fact checking as well as information verification.

Are you on TikTok? If yes then you’ve probably seen those bright coloured, bold fabrics and funky pattern outfits all over your FYP. To be exact, those clothing pieces you see so often are called “Avant Basic”. If you haven’t heard the term, that’s okay because chances are you’ve probably come across it already.

With the rise of TikTok usage today, we no longer need to rely on fashion magazines, editorials, or fashion shows to keep up to date with what’s “in” trend during that season. The algorithms across all social media basically does all that job for us for free and also real-time.

These so-called “algorithm fashion” pieces are literally all over the feed and are usually worn by fashion influencers often carrying playful aesthetics, optical patterns and vibrant colours. Now what’s bad about that? This “Avant Basic” is hardly unique anymore and together with the social media like TikTok, it speeds up the trend process making fast fashion even faster than before.

Hauls and over-the-top consumerism

“It’s actually the toxic nature of TikTok, making people think they can’t wear items over and over again.”

While we are all stuck at home in the midst of this pandemic, the increased number of TikTok users today leads to the increasing number of mainstream contents produced. It is very likely that you will come across a video praising specific fashion pieces, try on hauls and unboxing a huge batch of clothing contents. These short less-than-one-minute videos are receiving so much likes and engagement, they become trends which encourage people to buy the latest pieces just to fit in. People try to replicate and follow the look and this leads to overconsumption because people did not truly want them.

Hauls and unboxing videos are subtle, yet a very entertaining way to promote consumerist culture. I mean, I personally enjoy them too. Most popular Tiktokers and influencers on the platform purely based their contents and career on these types of videos resulting in the constant and repetitive cycle of shopping. According to an online article by Leia Butler, “Tiktok leads to a downplaying of the element of individuality”, it is less about trying to be cool and unique but instead promotes desire for the people to conform to trends as that would get them more views, likes and engagements.

Social media dictates trends today and people feel the need to wear the same thing as what they see online because they do not want to be seen as old fashioned or out of trend. This then establishes a mindset for the audiences to “constantly keep up with the rapid trend cycle in order to stay relevant and in style”.

The “cancel culture” of fashion

An example of fashion’s cancel culture is the iconic green dress from an indie brand, House of Sunny which sparked a massive controversy on TikTok (in case you’re wondering, it’s this Green Hockney dress below).

The piece was initially promoted as an ethically made piece under a sustainable brand consisting of the perfect shade of green, pretty swirl graphic designs and high quality knit material gaining a lot of attention after it was first launched. However, with the cancel culture hopping onto the trend, this piece was then later labeled as something that was “over”.

Even though House of Sunny isn’t a fast fashion brand, the piece was somehow so powerful it managed to become a “microtrend” for a short while. It’s so popular it is almost impossible for you to log onto your social media and scroll down your feed without seeing at least a photo of this dress. As a result of this specific product being labeled as a “viral microtrend”, it became the target design for other fast fashion companies to copy, imitate and drop dupes of the original for lower price. At a later point in time the piece eventually became saturated in the market, people didn’t want them anymore as they were all over the place and therefore ultimately headed towards the landfill.

“Microtrends are so short-lived due to the acceleration of something called the trend cycle”

Mandy Lee, forecast analyst.

What’s next?

Haul and consumerist culture on TikTok is extremely problematic. Influencers created an environment in which people are urged to shop and spend money on clothes where quantity outweighs quality. If this continues, it is likely that the situation will get even worse in the future. We, as girls, love shopping but nobody needs a new closet every single week. Like what Vanessa Pettorelli, a famous content creator and blogger, has said “too many people are following a bandwagon instead of deciding whether they like a certain piece of clothing or not”.

What we need right now is a culture shift. To think more before you shop. We need to really buy something because we like the piece for what it was. There is no need to stop wearing something because it is no longer trendy but to keep on wearing them because it’s cute and we like it. In order to reduce consumption, we have to work with what we currently have. The solution is not to start buying from better sustainable brands but to completely stop buying.

“No trend is the new trend”

Alternatively, thrifting is also a great solution and we should definitely be re-wearing our old clothes rather than throwing them away. It is time for us to regain our sense of individuality and start existing outside of the trends. We need to develop personal and unique styles without having to rely on TikTok’s approval. At the end of the day, personal aesthetics go beyond fashion.