Social Media Activism Paper

Words: 1828
Pages: 8

Social Media Activism When employees experience dissatisfaction at work, employees may choose to express their dissatisfaction, leave the organization, or quietly wait to see if organizational changes occur. A recent study by Right Management, a human resources consulting firm, before the rise of the Internet, people participated in social activism by walking down a street, holding various signs that argued against some form of political action. Rallies and protests happened in physical spaces, where a collection of people gathered together to make their voice heard and known. As technology has advanced, however, social activism has taken on new dimensions. These new dimensions of activism have gradually moved away from people having a physical involvement with the cause; instead, people are virtually involved (i.e., having involvement through the Internet) in different movements and causes. The change from physical involvement in causes to virtual involvement in causes has become known as cyberactivism. Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia (2014) argued that there have been two nodes of cyberactivism. The first is called cyberactivism 1.0, which includes …show more content…
Rarely (e.g., Meyer and Bray, 2013) do these types of studies examine activism that is not directly tied to protesting something (such as boycotting Whole Foods) or supporting politically entrenched agendas (e.g., Penny’s (2014) study examined what motivated people to change their Facebook profile pictures to an equal sign in support of LGBT rights). There still remains, however, other forms of activism where protesting and politics are not central. This study examines one such case, specifically the recent ALS Ice Bucket Challenge (IBC), which captured social media activism in a setting not commonly studied. Instead of having a political or protesting agenda, IBC was done to help fight a