Clicktivism is a form of digital /online engagement that requires the extraordinary effort of one of your fingers, possibly the index, to associate yourself with something… err.. digital, or the digital representation or articulation of a cause or an idea or a Facebook friend ingenious joke.
Sorry, this is my definition. Harsh? OK, this is how it is defined in Techopedia:
Clicktivism refers to the use of social media and the Internet to advance social causes. It uses the metrics available through Web analytics to optimize Web pages, emails and online petitions. This optimization is meant to increase user engagement and maximize a campaign’s page views.
Clicktivism is a controversial form of digital activism. Proponents believe that applying advertising principles such as A/B testing increases the impact of a message by leveraging the Internet to further its reach. Opponents believe that clicktivism reduces activism to a mere mouse-click, yielding numbers with little or no real engagement or commitment to the cause.
There you are. Some people are on my side, others will think I am missing the point of the clicks.
I have no problem with clicking and ‘liking it’ in Facebook. But I cannot accept that it only has a good side. Serious engagement needs action beyond your index finger. There are multiple examples of great social causes that have accumulated six figure clicks/likes but that, when the cause has asked for a bit of money, they only get three figure, if lucky. A click is a great alibi.
Do we have the same inside the organization? I am not talking about the real clicks/likes that an internal digital platform (enterprise social network of some sort) may have, but their equivalents in human interaction terms.
Yes we have. It is represented by the email with significant number of people in the distribution list, that contains a reply such as ‘OK with me, Peter’. Or the ones of the type ‘I am not sure I understand’, with not reference to what needs to be understood or the specific questions to ask.
Monosyllabic, written checking-in is hardly human engagement. Yet, we all do some of this at some point.
Let’s progress human evolution beyond clicking and liking, shall we?