The use of social media as a tool for political activism is not an overnight sensation. Since the Iranian elections in 2009, whereby students took to the streets, using not only their physical bodies but their Twitter accounts to protest what they saw as a fraudulent poll, critics have celebrated the supposed politicizing effects of social media. The reaction reached such fervor that in 2010 a campaign began calling for the Internet to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Since this time social media has become more sophisticated, yet our engagement with it more ambiguous. If we were to collate the energy contained in, say, the social media reaction to a terrorist attack or even just a tweet from Donald Trump, we would at face value bear witness to a highly charged, politicized and engaged community of activists, (or if too strong a word, at least socially driven citizens). However, the ironically active feature within this dissent lies in the fact that, in it’s online environment, it remains largely dormant, effectively contained within its own sphere of dialogue.
Social media has become more sophisticated, yet our engagement with it more ambiguous. When we dissent online, we render this our action, effectively dissipating our power in real time.
The point here is that when we dissent online, we render this our action, effectively dissipating our power in real time. For the most of us, we like, comment and share, only to put away our devices moments later and return to our ‘real lives’. It’s for this reason that Slavoj Zizek during the Occupy Movement warned protesters that, ‘what matters is the day after, when we will have to return to normal lives’.
The Establishment of Dissent
Adam Curtis, in his documentary Hypernormalisation looked at how social media corporations control the use of intelligent algorithms to effectively contain our social networks, ensuring that ‘you are speaking to people who already agree with you’. To what extent can social media be said to contribute towards open discovery and discourse when the selection of content presented to you is based on preferences you yourself have made?
We can now witness what appears to be a concerted effort from social media corporations to assimilate political and cultural events on their respective platforms. Facebook’s recognition of International Women’s Day and Earth Day is but an example of how they are working to curate culture. However, it is their political gestures which raise a more contentious alarm.
The aftermath of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris prompted the corporation (others followed suit) to promote the ‘French flag filter’, encouraging users to show solidarité with the victims of the attack and with the nation at large. Online observers at this time will also remember the #PrayforParis hashtag which became viral within hours.
Interestingly enough, what followed from this seemingly innocuous act was a reaction from online users agitated by what they saw as the hypocrisy of corporate empathy. Where were the filters for Palestine, users began to ask? Or for Congo, where at which time thousands of people had been slaughtered under aggressive regime? And so there forth sprang the reactionary hashtag #PrayforSyria, reminding all those of the forgotten, under represented, or what Noam Chomsky would call, unworthy victims.
Now, to what extent can we view such antagonism as anti-establishment dissent or anarchy? This question is problematic. In the first instance. there is a strange paradox that exists when one protests the actions of corporate bodies using their very own tools to do so.
The classic movie Network (1976) is a wonderful exposition into this very point. What began as a challenging and controversial figure in the shape of Howard Beale was soon reduced to – through the networks adoption and embrace of his very message – a raving caricature of a pseudo prophet. The film shows us that regardless of how mad and unwilling we are to take it, the revolution will not, indeed can not, be televised.
And so in our real world we observe similar workings. Just how are we to negotiate the seeming paradox of how journalist Simon Jenkins can heavily criticize the BBC’s coverage of the attacks in London Bridge whilst doing so on their very platform? This postmodernist feature of using self-critique as an extension of one’s own power works effectively to exhibit the narrative of the BBC as an open, reflexive body, welcoming of dissent and criticism unto itself. And whilst this is of course an honorable endeavour, the danger lies in the fact that the narrative now belongs to them, it becomes established, so much so that one, or at least the critic, is forced to consider how challenging such activism really is.
The postmodernist feature of using self-critique as an extension of power effectively exhibits the Establishment as an open and reflexive body
In any form of protest there is the desire that the behaviour engaged in is to some degree threatening. Yet it can be argued that established power structures, far from being intimidated or fearful of such dissent, welcome it (or, if too strong a term, at least tolerate it) – but within the confines of the virtual space only. By allowing, or rather, not interfering with people’s desires to vocalize their dissent, established structures of power, whether intentional or inadvertent, service people’s needs to express themselves. By doing this within a space of no physical disruption similarly services the needs of established power.
The adoption of dissent for the purpose of maintaining political and cultural hegemony may appear a conspiracy theory, but is in fact an old idea. Sartre, in his post war essays stated that if colonialism was a system, then resistance [to it] began to feel systematic too. This idea is further exemplified in the work of Theodor Adorno and Hans Enzensberger’s notion of ‘consciousness industry’ which demonstrated how repression and tolerance are utilized as instruments of social pacification.
The End of Dissent?
When we consider that to dissent or not to dissent produces similar outcome, the question begins to beg, How are we to meaningfully resist? What does it mean when we consider that our voices, in the ways we presently use of them, are effectively pacified? When our dissent lingers stagnant, falling on deaf or familiar ears?
Towards an ideal of hope, perhaps what we are witnessing are the slow reverberations of cultural change. I’d like to think that online activism, even if the result of empty rant, can serve to persistently etch away at the apathy and passivity living amongst us. Whatever the answer to the multitude of questions surrounding online dissent, there seems to be a clear need for us to find new methods of voicing our social and political concerns. Ironically, in our age of urgency, a simple Tweet will not suffice.
Margin Page.
Margins Page is a play on its very words. Stories of black people in Britain, both past and present, have often been relegated to the margins of the British canon. This platform attempts to reconfigure this position, serving as a page to help develop, curate and promote black British literature.
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