Clicktivism - does it help charities?

Last week, we posted some statistics on our blog and Facebook page about how social media has affected the way we give.

In the blog post we talked about how the viral nature of micro-blogging platforms Facebook and Twitter make it possible for social media charity campaigns to gain enormous amounts of traction and (subsequently) huge amounts of revenue.

However, what happens when people simply 'like' or re-post the message, without contributing any cash, or any of their time to volunteering? How does this social media "awareness" translate into any real change?

Kevin Lewis, a professor of sociology at the University of California, analysed the "Save Darfur" Facebook page to see whether it's huge presence correlated with donation amounts. Despite the page having 1 million members, only 0.3% of those ever made a donation. Over a 30 month period, the members only raised US$90,776 (NZ$106,307).

The trend began in the UK, where it generated £8 million

An even more relevant example, is the case of the 'no make-up selfie', in support of cancer awareness. The viral trend originated in the UK, as women posted photos of themselves sans make-up on Twitter and Facebook, and nominated their friends to do the same. The photos were often accompanied with a call to make a text-message donation to Cancer Research UK. CRUK were not the originators of the trend (whose origins are lost in the murky world of cyberspace), however they benefitted to the tune of £8 million.

NZ women adopted the trend and made donations

The campaign spread internationally and as it spread the message and its purpose was quite often diluted into 'cancer awareness', rather than an opportunity to fund-raise. Many criticised the campaign as an ineffectual exercvise in vanity, rather than constructive action for cancer research.  

There is a cynical name for this sort of ambiguous social media activism: clicktivism. It's detractors argue that it provides people with a shallow sense of "making a difference", without effecting any tangible change. Examples of clicktivism are abundant on Facebook and Twitter - think of the Kony 2012 campaign. Or, imagine a context-free image of an African child, a caption accompanying it, "Share if you care about me". Professor Lewis' research on the "Save Darfur" page shows us that these social media 'campaigns' achieve very little.

But what about the roll-on effects? Clicktivism may not directly result in revenue for charities, but does its viral nature encourage donation-giving? Social media campaigns can exponentially increase awareness of a cause, and allow a large number of individuals to come together to create change, and this will inadvertently result in some action being taken. Clicktivists are twice as likely to volunteer, twice and likely to take part in an event and 4 times as likely to sign a petition relating to issues that they've learned about online. 

Unfortunately, there is not a way to measure the number of people who saw a friend post a make-up free selfie and were then spurred on to make a donation, but the example of Cancer Research UK shows that it did indeed result in positive action. Were you or anyone you know encouraged by the #nomakeupselfie to make a donation to the New Zealand Cancer Society?