On Using Social Media as a Tool for Liberation Movements
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It's time to reflect on our use of social media as a tool for liberation movements.
And by "our", I mean me, and maybe this will resonate for you too.
I've been feeling really exhausted by my social media use, especially in the past year where the pandemic, numerous uprisings, and my first year as a counsellor (post-grad) have overlapped. I began to experience my Instagram account as something that depleted me, which goes against my firm belief in embodying liberation while in the pursuit of collective liberation.
A few conversations have inspired my reflections on the use of social media. adrienne maree brown, in conversation with Prentis Hemphill on Finding Our Way Podcast (S1E2), spoke of how we were not trained for this moment of the internet, how much we’re expected to know (transcript). In one of their posts, @mimizhuxiyuan wrote about how social media is not the end of the sentence. In my 1:1 disruption session with Nic Wayara (highly recommend!), I realized that I was experiencing social media as a form of surveillance.
Information overwhelm, restrictive obligations, the reduction of self to a resource on the internet... I am deeply in need of a shift in my relationship with social media. So I posed these questions for myself (some more relevant for folks who tend to engage on social media more so than less) and came up with some new practices for liberatory social media use.
Reflection Questions
Here are some (as in many) questions to get you started; pick one or any or all, whatever you find helpful…
How would I describe my current relationship with social media? How would I like to shift my relationship with social media?
How much time and energy do I allocate in digesting, processing & implementing the information that I consume? Intellectually, emotionally, somatically? By myself and in community?
How much information is enough to keep me informed and mobilized in taking action? At what point of information consumption do I become overwhelmed and unproductive in the pursuit of liberation? How do I incorporate sustainability in both learning and action? How do I know when I need to take a step back to rebuild capacity and/or cultivate spaciousness?
How much of my social media shares and content creation is rooted in social perception vs. alignment with my values, desires, responsibilities, and commitments? When I'm disengaged, how much of it is to maintain sustainability, and how much of it is to avoid the work/discomfort?
What would my use of social media look like if I were to embody collective liberation? (my personal favourite)
Points to consider:
maintaining sustainability AND attending to necessary urgent calls to action?
amplifying stories that are silenced and erased AND remembering (esp. QTBIPOC) joy, pleasure and ease?
committing to engagement AND honouring desire for spaciousness and rest?
My Own Practices
With the recognition that my previous social media practices have been: crisis-based, saviour-based, needing to educate, disregarding my own and others' capacity to take in and digest info…
focus on amplifying CTAs + actionables, share educational content by amplifying guides, threads, or other accounts
be critical of what I choose to share + not share - what biases are present?
focus on the few particular issues/topics that I want to focus on amplifying: settler colonialism, therapy, mutual aid, abolition
create more vision and reflection-oriented vs. crisis or problem-oriented content
post when I want, about what I want, that is aligned with sustainable, liberatory engagement
majority of the time, add my perspective/interpretation/learnings when resharing vs. resharing mindlessly. make sure I'm consciously consuming everything that I'm resharing. don't amplify more than I can digest myself, at each given time.
keep majority of learning off social media. social media as the starting point.
I want to emphasize two things here that often get missed: spaciousness and action.
We need to create time off-line to let information digest & simmer, to build relationships to solidify our movements, to feel through the grief & rage, to allow ourselves pockets of rest, ease, and pleasure. This spaciousness and capacity-building must be accompanied by implementing calls to action. Resharing content can be helpful, yes. But it is rarely the end goal. The CTAs are usually: pressuring politicians & institutions through phone calls, emails, petitions, initiating uncomfortable conversations with community members, shifting structural/cultural changes in our own communities, workplaces, families, showing up in person for solidarity actions, blockades, jail support, and redistributing funds and mutual aid.
Social media allows us to tap into a wealth of information and knowledges, and so we need to be especially intentional in how we engage with it. Noticing the difference between obtaining more knowledge vs. using it to transform the world.