Effects of designers using social media for protests.

(Designing for social change, 2020)

Over a decade ago, Andrew Shea recognised that using digital platforms for social change, if used correctly, can definitely “make a positive impact”. In his book “Designing for social change” he presented many strategies with examples attached to ensure that designers began to make that positive change.(Shea, 2012)

Since then, many movements have emerged and grown with the help of graphic designers and social media. A key example is the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, which went viral online and “developed its tactics, its messaging, its reach.” As Deva Woodly noted, “This movement has mastered what social media is good for”. (Hu, 2020)

(I can't breathe, 2020)

The role of design and social media within the BLM movement is explored in Design Week’s 2020 article, Black Lives Matter: the designers using social media to protest. However, concerns have been raised about people “sharing without thinking” (Wong, 2020), highlighting criticism of the superficiality of social media activism. Designer Greg Bunbury told Design Week the movement must not “stop with an image – it requires active engagement.” Designer Sophia Yeshi added that while it’s “easy to feel like you’re helping... by engaging,” this often isn’t the case. This relates to slacktivism, defined by Urban Dictionary as “the self-deluded idea that by liking, sharing or retweeting something you are helping out.”

This raises the question of whether viewers understand what they’re engaging with. In today's fast-scrolling digital culture, this makes the sustainability of online activism - compared to physical protest, worth questioning.

(Support Black Women, 2020)

In 2020 Sarah J. Jackson, an author and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote the book “#HashtagActivism: networks of race and gender justice”, where she discusses how marginalised groups, long excluded from elite media spaces, have used twitter hashtags to advance counter narratives, pre-empt political spin and build diverse networks of dissent. She calls these groups “hashtag activists” as they utilise hashtags to create social change. Jackson believes that there have been positives to these hashtag activists with hashtags, such as “#blacklivesmatter” and “#metoo,” “reaching influence, moving debates about politics, inequality, violence, and citizenship from the margins to the Centre and into places as crucial as presidential agendas.” This shows how effective a hashtag, and the media can be at getting people’s attention and making a difference. However, Jackson does argue how this “online activism leads to material effects in the digital and physical sphere.” (Jackson, Bailey and Foucault Welles, 2020)