Digital Activism in the 21st Century

Payton Stites
3 min readApr 16, 2020

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Photo Credit: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/not-just-hashtag-activism-why-social-media-matters-to-protestors/384215/

Online activism is a topic that brings heated discussion and discourse to topics that are important in every day life. We think of online activism in many ways. Sharing articles, posting photos, tweeting, and so much more. Recently, activists like Isra Hirsi, daughter of MN congresswoman Ilhan Omar, has turned to TikTok as a platform to spread activism and movements to younger generations. Online activism has shown leaders around the world, the power of technology and communication. Movements across our nation have been started, grown, and enhanced through the use of social media. As a budding activist myself, I personally attended the March for Our Lives and 2019 Women’s March MN because of reading about and connecting with the organizations through Facebook and Twitter. I now use these connections to stay up to date on what bills are being introduced in to legislature, other organizing events to attend, and as a way to find other movements to join. But online activism has not always been seen in a positive light.

The article that stood out to me most this week, was The Atlantic article on Hashtag Activism. Hashtag Activism has been called a “cop-out” and fake activism. But this article demonstrated that hashtag activism is a way to spread movements and often encourages people, like the Minneapolis School Administrator in the article, to get involved even if one may not know another person in the movement. Online activism can be negative if it is used for call-out culture or cancel culture as talked about in the MarieClaire article. But even online, we as a people have power. One example of online-activism-meets-digital-leadership is when tweets spread with phone numbers, encouraging people to call their local representatives and voice their concerns for new laws and bills that are passed. We have seen that this type of movement works and the encouragement of people to speak up and make their voices known can change policies and laws.

In a case study that I did, an article by globalcitizen.org featured 8 Massive Moments Hashtag Activism Really, Really Worked, 8 different movements were detailed. These included #DressLikeAWoman, a counter movement made after Donald Trump told his female staff to “dress like a woman”, #BlackLivesMatter, and #WomensMarch2017. Each of these movements blew up on the internet and led to in person actions such as the 2017 Women’s March, the day after the inauguration of Donald Trump. We can see from movements like these, that online activism can have a big impact. The Women’s March movement happened in over 50+ countries around the world and had millions of people out in the streets to support women, women’s rights, etc. By showing the positive light that online activism can have, we can encourage students to lead and join movements. Referring back to Isra Hirsi, she is a student in the Minneapolis Public Schools and has gained a significant following, shedding light and encouraging young people to join movements to protect the earth, fight for progressive change, and encourage young people to vote. She is a light for us to use as an example to all students that they have the power and the knowledge of technology to encourage positive change for their future, even if they cannot vote for it yet.

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Payton Stites
Payton Stites

Written by Payton Stites

Master’s of Education student, future teacher, current gymnastics coach, forever learner.

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