When 2011 began, the debate over clicktivism versus activism was going strong. On this blog, Esra’a al Shafei argued that there was no point in creating a distinction, because they both work to some degree and both are appropriate depending on the amount of time and energy one has to devote to making change in the world:
I don’t see people who changed their avatars in solidarity with a cause claiming to be activists; they just see themselves as average people trying to help out. Some of them are willing to go much further than that, but the problem is that on many occasions, no one gives them a realistic, achievable direction. So what happens to a directionless activist? They turn into a clicktivist.
That’s the direct fault of the campaign director. People who look at numbers. Statistics of participants is merely a detail. Some of the best campaigns I’ve witnessed have been launched by two to three people who focused on just getting stuff done—and relied on the community to share that work, with a clear guide on what they’re expected to be doing.
People really do underestimate the amount of work that has to be done for a digital campaign to really be effective. It’s incredibly difficult to cut through the noise specifically if your attempt is to generate international support on a channel as busy as the internet. This is no easy challenge to overcome, but many digital activists do overcome those challenges through creative ideas and tough, long hours to pull it off.
One hard-working person can achieve what a billion RTs cannot, and those individuals are not clicktivists. However, let it be known that the people who “clicked” and RT’ed helped get the idea to continue gushing through people’s screens, radios, etc.
The organizers need to look, as Esra’s points out, at the numbers. But looking at the numbers also means proving a strong relationship between the digital campaign and, say, someone’s release from prison – and that’s not so easy.
So can petition drivers declare "victory" at Chinese dissident and artist Ai Weiwei’s release? Doing so without the evidence to back it up deflates, rather than enhances, the value of petitions. Even if the activist, the digital director, and all the clickers, do everything they possible can and gather millions of signatures, there’s still no way to define the relationship between the end result and the campaign. Take the Free Kareem campaign. It was innovative, creative and offered up lots of tactics that could be adapted for other scenarios, but Kareem Amer was released when his sentence ended – no earlier. And why was WeiWei released? Was it because of the online campaign and public actions by art and free speech enthusiasts? China says it’s because he confessed to the crime of tax evasion. Human Rights Watch’s Asia advocacy director pins it to international pressure at large, saying: "it is an example of how international pressure works, since Beijing was paying a high cost to its reputation for his detention…international pressure apparently prodded the Chinese government to conclude that the cost/benefit ratio of continuing to detain Ai Weiwei wasn’t worth it."
As of now, there isn’t any way to disentangle the results of the online campaign from global pressure more generally from internal factors. What do you think?
Update: At the New Yorker, China expert also raises this question, saying: "the other big question—for activists, for the State Department—will be to pin down what role the outside world played in his release."