Click 'Donate' Without Compassion - Digital NGO: Ironic Solidarity and Light-touch Activism in Social Media

CLICK ‘DONATE’

WITHOUT COMPASSION

Digital NGO: Ironic Solidarity and

Light-touch Activism in Social Media

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree Master of Art in Humanities

Master of Art, New Media & Digital Culture

Graduate School of Humanities

University of Amsterdam

June 24, 2016

Student name:

Izumi Otsuka

Student number:

11127309

Supervisor:

Prof. Dr. Richard Rogers

Table of Content

Acknowledgement ... 4

Abstract ... 5

Chapter 1.

Chapter 2.

2.1 Politics of pity ... 11

2.2 Technologization of humanitarian activism ... 12

2.3 Celebrities? Actors of digitalized pity ... 15

2.4 Digital NGO - Charity: water ... 17

2.5 Absence of suffering - Collective Optimism ... 19

Chapter 3.

3.1 Web 2.0: a social web and onwards ... 23

3.2 Online Crowds: crowdsourcing and crowdfunding ... 23

3.3 Crowdfunding ... 26

3.4 Platforms, profiles, and self-branding ... 27

3.5 Madness of the crowds ... 31

Chapter 4.

4.1 Facebook user motivation for charitable causes ... 32

4.2 Platform analysis ... 33

4.3 Social media and post-demographics ... 35

4.4 Study of social networks ... 36

Chapter 5.

5.1 The Digital Methods ... 38

5.2 World water issue ... 39

5.3 Charity: water Facebook page ... 41

5.4 Local actors ... 44

5.5 Analysis: step by step ... 44

5.6 Limitation and challenge in studying social media discourse ... 45

Chapter 6.

6.2 Sampling process ... 47

7.2 Social Network Analysis ... 70

7.3 Web 1.0 interlinks analysis of water NGOs webpages ... 77

Chapter 8.

8.1 Engagement Analysis ... 80

8.2 Social Network Analysis ... 81

8.3 Web 1.0 analysis ... 82

Acknowledgement

I would first like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis advisor Prof. Richard Rogers for his inspiring, and positive attitude for any challenging situation. I imagine supervising my thesis must have been a challenging task, seeing as how my rhetoric could have been “lost in translation”, and I am thus grateful for the rapport I shared with him.

I would also like to thank assistant professor Eric Bora, and Bernhard Rieder, of the Digital Method Initiative team. The open tools they developed were indispensable to my study of social media based off digital data. I would also like to thank all my teachers in MA New Media & Digital Method program.

Lastly, thanks to my fellow classmate Srushti for her friendship and warm support, and my husband Vincent, for his readily available and encouragingly constructive advice. And at very last, thanks to my son Max for his accommodating patience through the year.

Thank you. Arigato. Izumi Otsuka

Abstract

This paper studies the state of philanthropy in a digital environment from a moral as well as technical point of view. Drawing from Lilie Chourialaki’s arguments in the Ironic Spectator, it looks at a modern sense of solidarity among social media users based on pity, an act that is characterized by a post-humanitarian style of activism. It then charts the paradigm shift of the cause of such solidarity, from pity to irony, a new way of activism that goes beyond post-humanitarianism, and that leads to light-touch online activism such as ‘click-donate’.

This paper also looks at the theater of social media- who are the actors performing in this theater and who are their audiences? The empirical study undertaken as part of this research demonstrates a post-demographic approach based on Richard Rogers’ Digital Methods so as to implement web data driven analysis of an NGO’s Facebook page. The role played by diverse performative actors in the social media theater is also studied. Self-expressionism oriented online activism is critically analyzed on a peer-to-peer basis. The paper enquires into imagery as well and looks at performative imagery originating from the South that represent the voice of the suffering. But these small voices often drown under loud voices by powerful actors such as influencers, celebrities as well as user-generated celebrities born out of Web 2.0.

Although the real impact of online activism is not measurable, this undertaking shows that Chouliaraki’s arguments regarding the solidarity of irony are to an extent amplified in social media environments and Web 2.0.

Keyword

social media, digital media, solidarity of irony, digital native NGO, philanthropy, online donation, online activism, Digital Method

Chapter 1. Introduction

Image 1. http://www.clickheretosavetheworld.c om/ Accessed on the 25th, May, 2016.

Click here to save the world – (click) – saved – well that was easy – you can leave now – seriously – stop clicking – you’ve done your part – now leave me alone – go back to facebook – or twitter – anywhere – snapchat? (www.clickheretosavetheworld.com)

In our daily lives, action is chopped into a short span, partly because of the mobile phone culture, and partly because of the fact that fragmented communication on social media requires less attention. Clickheretosavetheworld.com (Image 1) satirically presents such an idea with ’one-click’ user interaction – the idea of ‘saving’ the world is presented as a simple matter of just one click. Slacktivism1, a term that combines ‘slacker’ and ‘activism’,

is an expression of bottom up and small scale activism by young people to affect society (Christensen, Henrik Serup 2016), often be used as a criticism of the more recent ‘feel good’ egoistic activism taking place in digital environments that require minimum effort. Charity organizations contrarily have come to take advantage of this idea in altering their

1

“Slacktivism” term coined by Dwight Ozard and Fred Clark (1995), (Christensen, Henrik Serup 2016)

communications, turning such ‘feel good’ activism into a great way to petition for donations.

Get moving with Charity Miles every day. Walk your dog, grab a coffee, go for a run, bike around the neighborhood, shovel some snow. You’ll help earn money for charity and feel great all day!2 (charitymiles.org) Inspire yourself, inspire others, Donate, feel good, pass it on, – generosity can improve health and reduces stress. (Advertising of Google, One Today in Apple Store)

Lili Chouliaraki argues in The Ironic Spectator that the INGOs, as well as various celebrity petitions, via technology and new media, have given online activism a complacent form- a way to to ‘feel good’ about helping others from a distance, a phase she terms as a new ‘post-humanitarian’ style. The act of charity is done rather for themselves who are lucky enough to be a giver in West, instead of for the sufferers in distant South. And sufferers’ voices are rarely heard. Another example of such an act is where high brand companies as well as fashion industries are often seen partnering with iconic INGOs, advertising extensive and expensive campaigns about improving the working condition in the third world, thus bettering the lives of sufferers3 (Chouliaraki 2013).

Chouliaraki’s ironic spectatorship seems significantly amplified in the theater that is today’s social media, brought about by the Web 2.0 (O’Reilly) mechanism that seductively invites humans to see more, create more, dedicate more, share more, donate more, to enhance your digital social life. Celebrities were, and still are, powerful communication vehicles for the philanthro-crowd. Be they well renowned public figures or even user generated celebrities for example, YouTubers, or Vloggers, who gain popularity from amateur content made by themselves, or even pet dogs or cats who become worldwide stars thanks to the social Web 2.0. Traditionally, International NGOs (INGOs) have set projects and goals with a measurable indicator and collected data to show a ‘before and after’ effect to keep the branding bond with loyal donors.

2

“Charity Miles.” Accessed May 25, 2016. <http://www.charitymiles.org/.>

3

McDougall, Dan. “Now Charity Staff Hit at Cult of Celebrity.” The Guardian, November 26, 2006. <http://www.theguardian.com/society/2006/nov/26/internationalaidanddevelopment.internationalnews.>

Unfortunately, the way INGOs communicate, often via A-list celebrities in case of iconic INGOs, shakes the focus of philanthropic agenda and also oversimplifies extremely complicated issues, making it seem like they can possibly be tackled without political intervention. In most cases their communication is focused on a sophisticated symbolic marketing branding technique of fundraising, rather than the issues themselves.

Consequently, the online space has become a competition theater: Celebrities, or experts, struggle for screen space on new media, as the field has been taken over by amateurs, wannabe celebrities, journalists, politicians, bloggers, influencers, or any one that wants to be visible and reach out to wider audiences. Philanthropy is often a great mask to create of themselves an ideal humanitarian self-image with minimum effort. Instead of sharing a meaningless picture of the day’s lunch, flashing pity-jerking content is used to mobilize the online mob’s mind. Social media is a useful platform for wannabe stars or populists, affording them higher visibility among marketers with their ‘please harness me’ attitude, and for individuals who are posting or sharing to gain more ‘likes’. People are thus busy with managing their own self-branding of ‘how other people see me’ online.

Chouliaraki contends that this ‘grand emotion’- the feeling of pity for distant others- has a power to mobilize large crowd into ad-hoc action and can empower collective online/offline activism. However, the more iconic images of suffering communicated by most NGOs (as discussed by Boltanski who problematizes the ‘emotion-oriented’ discourse of ‘suffering’) are giving way to an emphasis on the positive photorealism of the sufferers. Now, born digital humanitarian organizations in general seem to be minimizing the use of images of misery of the suffering South that provokes the crowd into feeing ‘pity’, rather focusing on a more copacetic style of communication. Chourliaraki criticizes that such ‘positive image’ displays have a risk of leading to inaction (2010, 10). We as the lucky observers, are getting detached or becoming skeptical of the imagery of the suffering “others” driven by media channels, which in turn are often driven by economic power, and are beginning to avoid seeing such suffering4. Can we still develop compassion by imagining the suffering of others and thus build an emotional

4

“The Politics of Pity: Suffering as Spectacle (guest Blog).” Polis, July 23, 2008.

<http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/2008/07/23/the-politics-of-pity-suffering-as-spectacle-guest-blog/.>

connect to the cause? Or is the ability to imagine such suffering exhausted from an overload of information? How does social media evoke not just feelings of ‘pity’ and ‘compassion’ but also a sense of solidarity amongst its user base? Has this solidarity resulted in a different form of compassion, eliminating pity altogether? Has new media managed to shorten the emotional distance between the givers in the West and the sufferers in the South?

To study social media as a theatrical stage for actors in philanthropy, this paper includes an empirical study of Charity: water, a popular NGOs known for their acclaimed use of social media practices.

Research Question:

How is light-touch activism and a post-humanitarian ironic solidarity of social media users engaged by the philanthro-crowd on a natively digital NGO’s Facebook page?

Sub Questions:

• Who/how are the various philanthropic actors performing in the social media theater?

• Are there hidden actors or voices not heard by anyone?

• How is ‘pity’ evoked and how does it lead to solidarity or irony?

• How are self-expression and irony expressed in the discourse on Social Media?

Hypothesis:

Social media when viewed as an open theater for the phiranthro-crowd reveals a new form of ironic solidarity beyond the post-humanitarian crisis of ‘pity’.

To explore these questions, I will follow Digital Methods theorized by Richard Rogers. The method is an academic approach to studying digital environments that could be positioned beyond or between the humanities and social science. Social media today, when viewed as a theatrical stage for charitable causes, coupled with the irony of philanthropic solidarity that Chouliaraki anticipates, would be a spectacular phenomenon to observe from an academic point of view. Studying new media tools by using digital methods helps us redefine the online social world we inhabit, and how our

solidarity by way of ‘pity’ has ironically transformed over the time. Digital Methods is, as illustrated in Chapter 4, a new research method that involves using web data instead of off-line methods such as surveys, to study today’s social media platforms where mass crowds are participating in shaping mutual relations and reflections, that shape our grass-root society. Thus, studying social media by using merely digital data might indicate the magnetic engagement drawn by hidden actors who are shaping, or manipulating the reality of our social or emotional engagement online.

This paper consists of nine chapters. In order to answer the research questions, this paper begins with two theories, 1) the crisis of pity and 2) the technical mechanism of Web 2.0. In chapter 2, I illustrate the shift from the politics of pity to irony in the form of post-humanitarianism theorized by Lillie Chouliaraki and Luc Boltanski, followed by a criticism of online charitable activism. Chapter 3 traces the technological features of the new media scene, specifically, Web 2.0’s characteristics of user-generated participation culture and the technology shaping our online social life. Chapter 4 introduces case studies and approaches of studying social media within the context of this research. In chapter 5, analytical approaches for the empirical research are outlined. Here I refer to Digital Methods that is a methodological outlook proposed by Richard Rogers. In chapter 6, the methodology of empirical study of the social media page of Charity: water is explained. Chapter 7 demonstrates the most significant findings as a result of empirical research by using the Digital Method. And finally in chapter 8 and chapter 9 I discuss modern form of pity to irony, and summarize my research as a conclusion.

Chapter 2.

Digital NGO: A Humanitarian Crisis of Pity’?

2.1 Politics of pity

In Boltanski’s Distant Suffering (2004), based on theories by Hanna Arendt, the politics of

pity is summarized into two characters. First is the distinction between who suffers and who do not. Second, who is seen and who looks- or the ‘spectacle of suffering’. It is a problem lying on the very relationship between humanitarianism and politics (Boltanski 2000, 1-6, Chouliaraki 2010). The distance between spectators and the suffering others has created a certain generality of thought, a notion whose cause could be interpreted as political. As Arendt’s argued, the politics of pity unfolded in the mid-eighteen century, as seen particularly from the works of Rousseau (Boltanski 2000: 5). In her argument, she also illustrated the dissimilarity between compassion and pity. Compassion, she argued, was a feeling of empathy towards the suffering others, that was pursued by taking action for the benefit of the sufferers at their place of suffering. Unlike compassion, pity instead was characterized by the physical and emotional distances between the ‘happy’ spectator and the ones who suffer. Such a distance encouraged observers to view the suffering of others as a spectacle. Compassion, thus, did not lead to the politics of pity, because the spectacle of misery could either be ignored, or simply lead the observer to benevolent concern outside of politics, for example, a compassion of Christianity. (5-6)

According to the modern dictionary (dictionary.com5), the definition of the two terms are as follows:

Pity: sympathetic or kindly sorrow evoked by the suffering, distress, or

misfortune of another, often leading one to give relief or aid or to show mercy.

Compassion: a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is

stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.

5

Click without compassion- donating by clicking a link is regarded as the ultimate way of the distant spectator to discount the cause, yet by clicking he is still involved in the situation or cause making him not a silent participant but a social network hero.

Images of suffering children are often used in media as they are strongly bonded to the human nature of survival, procreation and the future of mankind. In September 2015, the image of a drowned three-years-old Syrian refugee toddler who tried to reach Europe spread around the world via social media within one hour with a hashtag #KiyiyaVuranInsanlik (humanity washed ashore)6, immediately arousing pity all over the world. The position of the child’s corpse strongly reminded the spectators of a fetus with a direct association to the creation of life and a life that had ended much too soon. Suddenly the image changed the role of the spectators, and pity changed into compassion. Dictated by nature, people are open to help each other however the West developed a distance helping that is often determined by geographic lines and a form of self protection. The refugee crises show a united body of governments (EU) still creating their own borders and rules when it comes down to taking refugees and integrating them into their society. The pity and compassion becomes real outside the net and shows a different face altogether.

Most of the people in the West are not able or willing to sacrifice their lives for the sufferers except for some NGO aid workers or vacation volunteers in the sufferer’s sites. To support a cause from a distance, two forms of reactions are regarded – paying and speaking or, simply ignoring, or feeling no pity (Boltanski 2014:17). Thus, joining a cause by computer screen can yet be seen as a noble act made possible by technologization where digital intermediators are there to help with payments that could not have been done otherwise (17).

2.2 Technologization of humanitarian activism

We have become more sensitive to misery shown on the little screen than to immediately tangible misery, there is more commiseration with

6

Smith, Helena. “Shocking Images of Drowned Syrian Boy Show Tragic Plight of Refugees.” The Guardian, September 2, 2015, sec. World news.

<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/02/shocking-image-of-drowned-syrian-boy-shows-tragic-plight-of-refugees.>

the distant other than for our everyday neighbor. (Lipovetsky, le crépuscule, p. 143, Boltanski, 2004)

Referring to Boltanski’s argument, Lilie Chouliaraki’s book The Ironic Inspector (2013) calls for us to realize that, today’s new media has technologized our social interactions, and created a solidarity among its users towards effortless or impulse online activism, tasks that could be undertaken parallel to other daily exercises (Schudson 1998: 311, Chouliaraki 2013). When people feel ‘pity’ for others in the distance, and are unable to do anything directly, they speak up, or express their feeling by buttons or emoticons, as allowed by the platform they are using. Often criticized as slactivism, such acts can be seen when Facebook users change their profile picture into a French flag to support France after the Paris Attack, or a rainbows to support LGBT7 rights, without deeply questioning what such action exactly mean. It is an extremely simplified one-click way of expressing their ‘humanitarian self’ so as to ‘feel good’. “The Speed and on-the-spot intervention are the features of online activism celebrated as catalysts for new democratic politics 8”. ‘Donate’, ‘Pay Now’, ‘Support’, ‘Create a Campaign’ and other such endless quick suggestions have been able to accommodate their way into our busy modern multitasking lives: texting, taking pictures, filtering, sharing, commenting on others, liking others or celebrating friend’s birthday as and when our gadgets remind us.

The technologization of solidarity refers […] to the capacity of digital media to incorporate the moral imperative to act on vulnerable others within digital platforms that render solidarity a matter of tweeting personal emotion, downloading the message of our favorite celebrity, web-streaming our preferred Live 8 bands, clicking on the donation link of ActionAid or clicking ‘like’ on a Facebook wall. (Fenton 2007, Chouliaraki 2013)

Supporting aid campaigns from a comfortable home, using a high brand mobile phone which was produced by hands of cheap labors in the South, to act online to make the world better place, is irony. Such activism is simplified by Technologization as well as the

7

LGBT: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender

8

affordances of digital media. (Fenton 2007, 2008, Chouliaraki 2010; 52) As an example,

ActionAid tells you ‘what to do’ without making you question ‘why you should do’. Such

online petitions and donations, are examples of what Consequently, crowdfunding or garnering mass attention for certain causes has become an instrumental action (Illouz 2007:23, Chouliaraki 2010) which does not require a large effort or deep concern, technologizing human communication or interaction. Drawing on the argument of what Boltanski calls ‘crisis of pity’: understood as a critics of politics, justifying the ethics of public action by an emotional-oriented discourse of suffering, Chouliaraki’s argument suggests a shift from emotion-oriented to post-humanitarian style of appealing. These appeals are characterized as its’ low-intensity emotions and short-term forms of media market agency. (Chouliaraki 2010: 2)

Charity has moved beyond the ‘Slash donate’ or ‘click donate button’ options and has now become a part of routine or exercise. Charitable interventions to the sufferings of others in the distance are instrumentalized by new media tools, often by clicking on ‘donation’ buttons via various channels, without justifying the action or undertaking deeper thought of the world issue itself (Chouliaraki 2013). The modern humanitarianism is thus born out of capitalism: a case of unequal socio-economic distribution.

Chouliaraki proposes that the transformation of technnologization has three stages between 1970 to 2010 timespan: 1) Instrumentalization of the aid and development field 2) The retreat of the ‘grand narratives’ of solidarity 3)Increasing technologization of communication9. In the most recent stage, new media brought us a significant feature of ‘self-expression’. Chouliaraki disputes that human communication relies on mobile phones, social media, blogs, and these platforms invite any user to produce more content and share their everyday life, filtering it, make a story out of it- hoping that millions of people (like you) will see it and follow along (Rifkin 2009: 558)(54). Such self-expressive communication is one of the many drivers of the interests of aid and development marketers who see emotionality becoming a key motivation for the solidarity of donors. (56) Because of the persuasive abilities of digital platforms such as social media, blogs and fundraising platforms born in Web 2.0 to tell a story, users who have a digitally native social life become active expressionists. Such expressionism becomes an essential part of

9

our daily lives, and thus our emotions are influenced by each other more than ever. And so we see that web2.0 and all of its affordances help shape the way people portray themselves and interact with not just each other but also the causes that help shape their digital identities.

2.3 Celebrities? Actors of digitalized pity

In five year’s time no cause will be completed without an accompanying star to promote it. (Fielding 1994, 29: Littler 2008, 240)

Celebrities like world issues10 (Rogers et al. 2007). Hollywood stars and musicians as a front of humanitarian organizations emerged only a generation ago (de Waal 2008). Ever since celebrities have strategically used charitable causes, and their strong influential power to mobilize fans and draw their financial capital towards their select causes. However, the celebrity has become a main vehicle of communication, and that is problematic11 (Chouliaraki 2014). Furthermore, such a medium via celebrities has shifted humanitarian issues towards more corporate models of communication (A.F. Cooper 2007; West & Orman 2002) in the way that such strategy represents an own emotionality of celebrities rather than them acting towards suffering others reproducing a narcissistic solidarity (Chouliaraki 2013).

Empirically analyzing the two UNICEFF Goodwill Ambassadors, Audrey Hepburn in her later years (1988-) and Angelina Jolie during the peak of her career, Chouliaraki argues that Hepburn’s personalization of her engagement, as a reflection of herself as a refugee in the Second World War and as a mother of two, ‘de-celebritized’ her persona from that of a Hollywood actress. Contrarily, Jolie as the most animated celebrity ambassador for humanitarianism, now a guest professor of economy and politics in the School of London School of Economics in 2016, attained a ‘hyper-celebritized’ persona.

10

“Rogers et al. and Govcomorg Foundation 2007 “A Thousand Dinners A Night: Amongst the Issue Celebritiesie”, Accessed June 9, 2016. Movies

<https://movies.digitalmethods.net/issuecelebrities.html. >

11

Chouliaraki Lilie “Gearty Grilling: Lilie Chouliaraki on Media Ethics & Humanitarianism” London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Oct, 2014, YouTube Video

She actively showed up on the film screen, maintained an influential personal life as a mother of six children, and built a charitable foundation of her own in 2006, shifting her persona as a political actor, as well as an icon of the humanitarian world12 . Jolie’s intense activism as a philanthro-capitalist celebrity might even have encouraged us to feel for her cause, that which Chouliaraki calls ‘narcissistic solidarity’. When people recall the UN or UNICEF, they think about the celebrity endorsing every campaign, and such an association is degrading to the cause. Having to feel for the celebrity’s emotionality as opposed to being sympathetic to the cause of the sufferers runs the risk of the cause losing its relevance or importance (Boltanski 1999: 185, Chouliaraki 2013).

Jo Littler also argues in his research article I feel pain in 2008, that cosmopolitan compassion charity by celebrities is more focused on their own profile and the symptoms of issues rather than the social injustice itself. Adding compassion and caring, A-list celebrities and other wannabe celebrities support their select causes publicly through various channels in order to raise their profiles, or re-gain a popularity. “The positive effects of gaining the public’s sympathy and estimation may well more than compensate for the negative effect […] ‘there is no such thing as bad publicity’” (Lai 2006, 225; Littler 2008, 245) Being visible and being known in any way is better than not being seen at all for flagging celebrities. (244)

When celebrities are used as communication vehicles, they inadvertently hijack the message, taking the focus away from issues. This is problematic because they seemingly set the agenda for world’s crises. For example, it would be more pertinent for a UN ambassador rather than Hollywood celebrity Sharon Stone to present the UN’s budget and priorities. (Littler 2008: 237) In such cases, celebrity participation becomes more a problem than a solution. For example, the speech in the G8 by celebrities led people to believe that the issues discussed had been resolved, thus not addressing the core problem. (247)

12

Chouliaraki, refer to “Sara Sands: we need Angelina Jolie – she’s the antidote to despair”, The independent on Sunday, 18 Nobemver 2007.

<http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/sarah-sands/sarah-sands-we-need-angelina-joliendash-shes-the-antidote-to-despair-400797.html>

and Mark Malloch Brown ‘The 2006 Time 100: Angelina Jolie’, The time, 8 May 2006,

<http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1975813_1975847_1976577,00 .html>

Referring to Boltanski’s theory, Littler argues such an explosion of celebrity attention on charitable causes is a reflection of social weakness: celebrities becoming an icon of marketing and branding of charitable campaigns is antithetical to democracy- diffusing understanding of the social weakness. (Litter 248). Furthermore, the politics of pity rather than justice (Boltanski 1999) is predominant, that is questionable in itself. Online technological solutions that offer light-touch activism for those who believe and follow celebrities or other potential actors without deeply questioning the need to do so, are also problematic. How much do online charitable crowds truly care about the causes? Or are they merely a crowd of fans, or as Littler describes, wannabe crowd who want boost their career? But after all, we all like issues and are more or less populists. We are all more or less wannabe heroes or wannabe celebrities, or at least become happy when we see the rising number of ‘likes’ for our own posts. New media and social media has turned the world into a cosmopolitan theatrical stage where ordinary people can enter with their own reality as actors. It is well explained in Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1790) - people do things because, one is aware of sight of the others, or feels sympathy towards others, and acts to obtain such sympathy from others. Although Smith’s theory is criticized as a “confusion of human nature and economic behavior”, this ‘other-oriented sympathy’ and ‘self love’ is the significance of western modernity that situates the instable solidarity in the heart of modernity itself. (Chrouliaraki 2013)

2.4 Digital NGO - Charity: water

Iconic traditional NGOs such as Red Cross, UN or UNICEF have been busy for years with their brand marketing and working with A-list celebrity ambassadors, with a large financial pool for brand marketing. Eventually there came a need for budget cuts as well as the need to catch up with social media promotion to gain attention from new young donors who are ‘digital natives’. Meanwhile ‘nimble’ ‘buzzier’ NGOs (mmm-online.com, 2011) that were born as ‘digitally native’ after Facebook, Tweeted and Facebooked to mobilize thousands of young people around the world (Kriegel 2009, BBMG). The recent enormous growth of not-for-profit organizations (NGO) is almost akin to a revival of e-commerce web boost that was witnessed during dot-com bubbles (Howe 2008). Today,

business for social good is sexier13, or more attractive, than becoming greedy to seek own profit. On the other hand, the difference between philanthropic non-profit activity and business has become blurred (New York Times 2006). There are no longer borders between time zones, countries, persons or groups, public sector or business, for-profit or non-profit, (Bernholz et. al 2013)

Today, NGO needs to know how to work with the crowds on social media, collective individuals, who spread, donate, and evangelize the causes, or even instigate a derivative project for free (Kanter and H. Fine, 2010), that seems more important than solving issues, as problematized by the communications of iconic organizations. Spending for traditional advertising is long criticized.

On February 12 2009, a popular NGO, Charity: water’s crowdfunding campaign called ‘Twestivals’ (Twitter + festival) raised over $ 250,000. More than 200 sites14 events across the US went across the globe, way out to Europe, Africa, North and South America, ending in Honolulu organized by local volunteers at zero cost to the organization15. Innovative NGOs like Charity: water are described as ‘Networked Nonprofit’ in the book by Kanter and H.Fine (2010). These organizations are conspicuously, ingeniously skillful in social media and drive change while disrupting the traditional charity models, by working differently instead of working hard. Majority of NGOs’ top pages of the websites consist stats and figures of the effectiveness of the aid projects, picture of supporters, convincing the audience why they should support the cause. On the contrary, Charity:

water simply present what they want audience to do: the PayPal donation button with a

monthly payment suggestion- $60 (for my case) on top of a moving image of the distant sufferers, this may be personalized by Google algorithm partnering Charity: water with Google.

As Boltanski questions, politics here is that who matters and who does not, who has priority and who does not? (Boltanski 2010: 12) There is excessive suffering in the world

13

“NGO 2.0: Accelerating Social Impact in a Connected World -- The Hult Prize.” The Huffington Post, 12:19 400AD. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hitendra-patel/ngo-20-accelerating-socia_b_1909014.html.>

14

“Twestival. Tweet. Meet. Give. | Charity: Water.” Accessed May 29, 2016. http://archive.charitywater.org/twestival/.

15

and most of us can do nothing about it, and the issue is too large for NGOs to take care of. NGO aid workers cross borders, across the distance, take risks and action on site, and are heralded as heroic (Boltanski 2010). Although action aid workers are often caught under fire over criticism for their actions being sometimes manipulated by others, or for not doing something political, nonetheless, they are still regarded as the last heroes. (Boltanski 2000: 12) And heroism is still growing. Chrouliaraki asserts that the recent increase of agencies including NGOs or project based funding as well as the increased intermediaries evoke a major risk. Social problems such as poverty or illitaracy are too large for single organization to solve, but most of the NGOs fight the issue alone. (Kanter and H. Fine, 2010) We need the ability to evaluate and decide independently and think carefully: Is such light-touch activism in the long run supportive to a great solution to solve social core issues? How is the solidarity of users brought about by pity harnessed and turned from a collectivist politics of conviction into a lifestyle politics of reflexivity? (Bennett 2003; Chrouliaraki; 2013, 168)

2.5 Absence of suffering - Collective Optimism

In absence of pity for the sufferer, there would be no reason to be indignant about his suffering. (Boltanski:2000: 9)

Back in ancient times, Greeks sought to evoke ‘pity and fear’ among the misfortunes of men (Aristotle). In Athens suffering was enjoyed as spectacle excitement of fascination (Boltanski 1999: 21, Chouliaraki 2013). Feeling pity and fear was once a part of public entertainment. The difference between compassion and pity, as explained byHannah Arendt in Boltanski’s book, is that for compassion, action is taken within the presence of suffering, pity instead, characterizes a situation where the sufferer is distant from the person who is the fortunate one. Such distance can be described as political. Thus, incase of pity, the question of suffering is political- “because it gathers people and unites them around a cause.” (Boltanski 2000: 6)

Chouliaraki argues that a humanitarian crisis of pity relies on what we see on the screen and ourselves as an actor imagining how the sufferers feel- Boltanski’s Distant

Suffering – instead questions the ethical morality of Western inspectorship of distant

challenge the problem of the poor or misfortunate. It has established philanthropy as a dominant practice to manage poverty (Nussbaum 1986: 186, Chourliaraki 2013). Humanitarian imagery presented through new media invites us to act by practicing and paying, as Chouliaraki points out. Journalism, and e.g. entertaining benefit concerts are theaters of pity where help needed-humanitarian imagery is presented, to inspire and invite us towards acting for distant suffering by participating and paying. That theater, as Chouliaraki argues, has a problem in terms of the communication of solidarity creating a paradox. - Solidarity of pity to solidarity of irony.

Image 2. Archives of Charity: water website top page. (Top, May 19, 2016 / Bottom: archived capture between May. 2007 – May 12, 2016) Captured on Wayback Machine by Internet Archive: Digital Library by non-profit organization

One-to-many communications on traditional media show a tear-jerking commercial, which is an effective way, but on Facebook nobody likes to share a sad commercial with friends and family16. (Paull Young, Charity:

water, 2014)

The mediation practice through digital media can be further re-contextualized because of their practice of using photorealism- imagery, videos, proliferating the spectacles on a planetary scale “using aesthetic sources of language and images to mobilize the power of imagination.” (Chourialaki 2013) The official website of Charity: water (Image 3) once showed proof data shows simply a payment button on top of imagery of children carrying the water tanks, evoking the ‘pity’ feeling and your credit card payment simultaneously. Many sufferers are molded into certain a type of performance (holding a glass of clean water with a smile), acting to present a ‘positive pity impression’. The combination of framed images and invitation of impulse action multiplies the skepticism and questions about the action toward distant sufferers.

The Facebook page of Charity: water shows pictures to prove that the organization makes children and women happy and satisfied, because, they emphasize that water scarcity forces slavery tasks on women and girls presenting an obstacle for proper education. However, suffering seems absent from the association of solidarity of pity, instead there seems a larger degree of solidarity in practicing “playful consumerisms” (Chouliaraki 2010: 1). Innovative NGOs such as Charity: water show almost exclusively happy optimistic imageries on Facebook and avoid showing heartbreaking ones, in spite of the fact that 1.1 billion people live without clean drinking water and 3,900 children die every day from water borne diseases17 (WHO 2004). Yet, traditional news media still constantly shows misery images of the world crisis, while misery is almost excluded on

Charity: water’s page. Instead their exposure of photorealism for it tends to gain more

engagement such as likes, posts, or shares. In case of Facebook, the users may simply

16

Young, Paull. My 5 Biggest Lessons from 5 Years Leading Digital at Charity: Water, Medium, December 31, 2014. <https://medium.com/@paullyoung/my-5-biggest-lessons-from-5-years-leading-digital-at-charity-water-d156948bc703#.l99qei3t1.>

17

“World Water Council - Water Crisis.” Accessed May 19, 2016. <http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/library/archives/water-crisis/.>

ignore to respond to pity-jerking content within the capacity of Like buttons and comments in public.

Though Chouliaraki calls such ‘positive images’ appealing, such optimistic imagery runs a risk of misrecognition , impacting and increasing compassion fatigue because of its two predictions. Firstly, positive imagery could give an impression of ‘the issue is already taken care of’. Secondly, positive imagery grows crisis of pity by ushering suspicion in the representation of suffering, (2010: 10)

There is a need for a well-defined chain of mediators between donors and sufferers so that there is no obscurity of the flow of funds and the emotional connect between the actors is retained. However, the series of financial mediators in a digital environment are more complicated than ever. Donation buttons, appear at random on social media platforms, NGO websites, Google apps, and donations itself may be made in conjunction with the act of buying a product or service and the flow of funds cannot be traced. Thus the connection between the donor and the receiver is minimalized and becomes abstract, and the distance between the donor and the sufferers seems to expand. (Bortanski 2004) Consequently, we are uncertain if the objects of our empathy or projects are authentic, and if our feeling of pity is worthy.

However, social media is a private owned entertainment platform after all and a theater of uncertainty, their political impact has been largely questioned and their social responsibility gives rise to political tension. The validity of the personal profile or of group and who is suffering is often questioned for it is actually uncertain if the information is manipulated or fictional. The sufferers are presented through photorealism, and this raises questions among the spectators: is the appeal for humanitarian aid causes on social media still worth a pity? To what extent do technology and the media feed the crisis of pity?

Thus, in the next chapter, I will trace back to the Internet and web 2.0 to the today’s social media and platform cultures transforming online crowds (mobs), to further analyze how our solidarity and society of pity is forming through public intercourse on social media, in the context of technologized humanitarianism. Then later in the case study, I will examine the social media domain as a part of the theater of pity. To seek the answer of the research questions, that may shed a light on what kind of social life we inhabit today (Chouliaraki 2013).

Chapter 3.

Digital Media, Digital Crowd, and Platforms

3.1 Web 2.0: a social web and onwards

An enquiry seems pertinent into Chouliaraki’s question, how does the technologization of humanitarian communication, both as digital platforms and moral subjectivity change the way the West today invites you to construct solidarity? In this chapter, I illustrate the general history of the Internet after Web 2.0, or the social web. Internet and new media today seem to shorten the distance between the West (us) and the South (suffering others), particularly post Web 2.0. People see the spectacle of the ‘other’ on the flip side of the earth being streamed real time and there are options within such a capacity that new media tools suggest. Chouliaraki, exemplifies the technologization of communication and explains how the actors of such communications work within the interactive affordances of their chosen platform. For example, the ActionAid website tells the users what to do, yet avoids answering the question of why we should act as aforementioned in previous chapter. The infrastructure of the Internet gives us the option to ‘Act now’ or embrace ‘solidarity’ towards people in need by getting people to pick up a mobile device, select, click, tweet, comment, or share their feelings. According to Eva Illouz, this ‘feeling’ or ‘emotion’ is a capital of ‘emotion cultures’, or what she calls ‘emotion capitalism’ commoditized by profit-driven industrial players (Illouz 2007, Lovink 2011: 42).

Referring back to the Chouliaraki’s argument, technologization of humanitarianism could be highlighted by one crucial aspect: self-expression. We participate, or collaborate, or aggregate consciously so as to express ourselves within the allowed capacities and puppet ourselves in front of own network or that of the unknown others (2009: 550-60; see also Thumin 2009, Chouliaraki 2013). And self-expression often thematizes ‘the self’ in front of others that in turn becomes a key motivation for solidarity, a key aspect of the moral discourse, and often a point od interest for the aid and development market (Chouliaraki 2013).

3.2 Online Crowds: crowdsourcing and crowdfunding

Web 2.0 has also brought a paradigm shift in the last two decades (Nicholas Carr 2006) to the way we work as cosmopolitan citizens – specifically, the expansion of

crowdsourcing and crowdfunding models. Crowdsourcing comprehensively depicts the activity of ‘ask the crowd’ phenomena, that is, looking for a solution by asking a large group of people would bring about a more intelligent, effective result than finding a solution from within a network of a few experts. Such a concept is widely recognized for the monetary benefit as well, because funding experts costs more than asking the online crowd for their participation. In other words, the power of the crowds is aggregated to accomplish tasks that once used to be only for a specialized few. The most notable part of such a task is that the crowds are happy to participate in such a social mechanism without traditional rewards- Wikipedians being a great example.

“Crowdsourcing is outsourcing on steroid” (Jeff Howe 2008) - the contributors in this case are often not driven by monetary reward mechanisms. Contributors or problem solvers are not always specialists or experts but quite often hobbyists or enthusiasts, who are in a way exploited by the fact that ‘anyone can participate’. Companies and platforms who depend solely on crowdsourcing models are unable to exist without such extremely cheap or free labor participation– for example, such social media platforms as Facebook, Twitter, and Kickstarter. Web 2.0 participatory features have disrupted traditional business models widely. For example, YouTube clips produced by amateurs could become massively popular, and so anyone can be a hero or a celebrity, even a pet dog or cat. The world is becoming exceedingly competitive. The larger the group becomes, the more power, intelligence and benefits it gains, for example on YouTube, the more content users produce, the wider audience the platform attracts, and as a result, more advertising revenues are harnessed. Technology has thus changed our ways of consumption. We are no longer free from this competitive world, where millions of online crowds create content every day for free. Skillful experts loose power against generous crowds, coordinated by platforms.

During the last two decades, thanks to the Internet and ‘the wisdom of the crowd’, millions of people have been involved who without borders, contribute to the collective cosmopolitan intelligence aggregation onto online platforms, rather than a few thousand as Aristotle probably imagined (Landemore 2012). A Financial coramnist of NewYorkers, James Surowiecki’s book The Wisdom of Crowds (2004), proven the wisdom of crowds in different arena, e.g. economy, science, politics, and even fight against terrorism. The wisdom is what Aristotle remarked: “many heads are better than one.” (Landemore 2012)

to describe the benefit democracy (Hong and Page 2012). Later, Novel prize winner Elias Canetti, in his book Crowds and Power, remarked that when individuals are aggregated as crowds, the individual feels more powerful (Canetti 1960). Their collective intelligence can be applied to complex problems so as to generate an intelligent solution for certain circumstances via smart coordination. Web 2.0 and crowdsourcing, a model of collective intelligence, encourages ordinary people to participate and work towards a common goal or solve common issues (Surowieki 2004).

To maintain the efficacy of the wisdom of crowds, Shouwieski emphasizes that coordination is the key. Social media platforms are convenient tools to aggregate or coordinate messages. At the same time, it has been said that these platforms grown, and people have stopped thinking with own brain, and have begun to ask search engines instead. People type a question then Google chrome presents the very best choices of recommended answers based on the mass data, which is in fact the ultimate model of crowdsourcing. The Internet itself has something to say about the collective knowledge of the online crowd (Lanier 2010, Lovink 2011: 7). Aptly called “the Carr’s effect”- Nicholas Carr evoked such a ponder in his book The Shallows (2010), stating that Google [has] made us stupid. “We opt for either speedy or slow tasks according to our character, skill-set and taste – and then we outsource the rest” scanning, skimming and multitasking are expanding meanwhile the ability of deep reading and thinking is eroding (Carr 2010, Lovink 2011).

Gao et al. have studied social media as a crowdsourcing mechanism in case of a disaster relief. For the catastrophic Haiti earthquake, a massive crowd of people posted their personal experiences on the side in real time, and as a result the Red Cross received $8 million in donations18(Gao et al. 2011). Through an open source crowdsourcing site Ushahidi (www.ushahidi.com), the Web 2.0 participatory mechanism could create a crisis map based on reported user data, as these tools based on Web 2.0 crowdsourcing mechanism could possibly also coordinate disaster relief by mediating government, NGOs, and local sites. However, such an undertaking witnessed three shortfalls: that “fraud reports from malicious persons might appear as normal requests”. (12) For

18

1. J. Morgan, “Twitter and Facebook Users Respond to Haiti Crisis,” BBC News, 15 Jan. 2010; <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8460791.stm.>

example, refugee crisis and human trafficking. The social media mechanism seemed to work effectively, particularly during sudden natural disasters that needed immediate aid as well as collective funding for donation, and is thus becoming a crucial place for both sufferers and distant others. Nonetheless, the question here is, is social media useful for world humanitarian issues often rooted from social inequality that does not ever seem to end?

3.3 Crowdfunding

Despite her many criticisms of humanitarian activism, Chouliaraki argues that crowdfunding is a crucial milestones when one considers online donations by the fortunate becoming an instrumental action to the suffering of others. ‘Crowdfunding’ – a micro-funding model born from crowdsourcing, gained popularity in the last decade or so, as it can be seen from the result of google trends (Image 3).

Image 3. Comparison of search volume for [Philanthropy], [crowdfunding] according to Google Trends, March 16, 2016

Crowdfunding is a model that seek online financial contributors (mostly for small amounts) from a large number of stakeholders, including donations without financial return, lending, and investment for monetary return (Crowdsourcing.org), instead of approaching investors such as angel investors, banks, or venture capitals (Kleemann et al., 2008; Lambert and Schwienbacher, 2010, Schwienbacher, and Larralde 2010, 3).

Hemer explaines that the concept of crowdfunding is not a recent trend. From Mozart to Beethoven, to presidential campaigns: Musicians, artists, film makers,

designers, large enterprises, environment or science researchers, humanitarian organization, political parties, all make use of crowdfunding. Seemingly, it is a new way of an old system, often shifting small amounts of private capitals into something that the individual has interest in (2012).

With ‘click donate’ or ‘slash donate’, more and more crowdfunding platforms emerged around 2005, at the same time NGOs hyped presumably because of the ease of logistics, which was accelerated by the variety of digital tools. Crowdfunding platforms, such as JustGiving(started in 2000) or KickStarter (started in 2010) are a new type of social media aspect that intermediate fundraisers and cause seekers to meet and transfer money directly (Wash 2013) by algorithmic coordination of information matching. Crowdfunding platforms present a list of projects or products just like a shopping site, allowing donors to decide exactly what/where their money should be spent for, thus the best project to invest (Agrawal et al., 2010; Mollick 2013).

Georgia Tech Researchers studied Kickstarter to analyze the key success factor of their campaigns. The researcher and professor Eric Gilbert and his team found that the general principle that worked besides giving gifts to the donors for a pledge, was that the successful projects creators express strong foretelling phrases19. Platforms are nudging the users’ action to fit into an ideal mold to gain wider attention and thus helping to produce millions of homogeneous funding projects. Is there any creativity left outside of the technical capacity of the New Media tools? Today on most NGO websites, peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns by random users are enabled by embedded functions, which further simplify the process of a campaign launch, to make more people to become a fundraising hero.

3.4 Platforms, profiles, and self-branding

Platforms

Gillespie explores the role of ‘platform’ in The politics of ‘platforms’ (2010) –though the term ‘platform’ today is used for discursive discussion, it is originally a space where the public

19

“Georgia Tech Researchers Reveal Phrases That Pay on Kickstarter | Georgia Tech - College of Computing.” Accessed April 21, 2016. <http://www.cc.gatech.edu/news/266771/georgia-tech-researchers-reveal-phrases-pay-kickstarter.>

discourse is shaped, used as a populist appeal, as a space for marketing pitches or conducting political debates. The term ‘platform’ has become an increasingly popular way of describing the online service of ‘content intermediaries’ (348). The communication is often publicly available and anyone can see anything, and that is the significance of most of the platforms- an opportunity for organic reach to distant unknown others.

Proliferation of platforms such as blogs, photo sharing platforms, social networks, professional networking sites (Kanter and H. Fine, 2010), as well as crowdfunding platforms are jostling for attention and recall as well as screen space on the web. Although there have been criticism for its closed ecosystem as called ‘Walled Garden’, platforms are yet a place of open opportunity (Gillespie 2010; 347), where anyone can express themselves or even create a profile that may be far different a character from themselves. We are no longer anonymous passive consumers, and are instead ‘distributed actors’ present on multiple channels, a multitasking audience (Lovink 2011).

The openness of social media in particular, is something many classic iconic NGOs are afraid of (Kanter and H. Fine, 2010: 4) because they may lose control of their message. Nonetheless, social media platforms have become “a vital arena for supporting grassroots participatory democracy in terms of enhanced civic engagement” (Brandtzæg et. al 2012). By providing an opportunity of turning friends into founders (Kanter and H. Fine, 2010: 137), social media is totally reinventing the way you tell your story and present your cause in that environment20. Facebook, Twitter, crowdfunding platforms are free to use and have a built-in interactivity with a user friendly interface, to help ‘not so tech savvy’ NGO starters in any size to raise awareness through these tools. Large NGOs such as Red Cross, National Wildlife Federation have also stepped into the social media world (Kanter and H. Fine, 2010: 12) almost compellingly. In 2007, UNICEF partnered with causes on Facebook to launch their 'Charity Gift' feature21.

20

“An Interview with Jean Case on the 2013 Millennial Impact Report.” Nonprofit Quarterly Delivers the Latest News and Investigative Reports. Accessed March 29, 2016.

<http://nonprofitquarterly.org/2013/07/18/an-interview-with-jean-case-on-the-2013-millennial-impact-report/.>

21

UNICEF, U. S. Fund for. “UNICEF Partners With Causes on Facebook to Launch ‘Charity Gift’ Feature.” Accessed March 29, 2016. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/unicef-partners-with-causes-on-facebook-to-launch-charity-gift-feature-58784197.html.

With more than 150 million people around the world connected to a cause, Facebook is a global community of volunteers, donors and activists coming together to make the world a better place. By Naomi Gleit, VP of Product Management (November 18, 2015) 22.

Later in 2015, Facebook also launched the ‘donate’ button feature to support NGOs for fundraising, taking initiative to make the world a better place. Supposedly, Facebook is ultimately trying to engage the cosmopolitan philanthro-crowd, seemingly as a for-profit organization to make up for their monopoly of being a giant billion dollar internet company as their social responsibility. The PayPal payment featured button is embedded on the banners of NGO’s Facebook pages and/or the page of fundraisers, providing extremely simple mechanism for donations without visiting the official website of the NGOs to find out why you should donate for the cause. Then I question what kind of risk lies here? Is Facebook a great tangible platform of charitable funding for making the world better place? Nonetheless, as the social media becomes a place of “the stuff you care about all in one place23”, leveraging social media is no longer avoidable for NGOs. Does Facebook truly play an important role of connecting donors, the causes, and possibly distant others?

The way start-ups and fundraisers were once using social media or platforms to easily raise money does not work anymore (Kanter and H. Fine, 2010: 12). The crowd has a ‘collective intelligence’ to find scams and to choose where/how to donate. Basically too many people in the world do the same ‘good for the world’ business. Moreover, on the social media pages or their website they look larger in scale but they are not, misusing Facebook or Twitter’s promotions by mentioning physical resources etc. which is dangerous24. (CNET.com)

22

Facebook Newsroom https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2015/11/introducing-new-tools-for-nonprofits/

23

Promotion phrase of Flipboard for iPad: “your personalized, social magazine.”, in Lovink 2011

24

“Crowded Roads Ahead for Charity 2.0.” CNET. Accessed March 31, 2016. <http://www.cnet.com/news/crowded-roads-ahead-for-charity-2-0/.>

Profiles and self-branding

From the user’s perspective, the social media platform has enhanced personal self-image management as well as participatory culture through crowdsourcing mechanisms. Social media platforms give a certain freedom of having multiple self-personas. People have two faces, a public and a personal one. One can easily manage her/his self-branding – Lovink describes that the public face becomes important in the social media outlet, unleashing a “collective obsession with identity management” (38). Managing the public self is getting to be a major task online, a thing celebrities have been busy with for decades (Illouz 2007, Lovink 2011: 42) Action on social media platforms is for the response of people (51). They do things with the expectation of receiving responses from others, intensively re-creating their self-image in the virtual place, and possibly to be a different person in a virtual world.

Similar to Smith’s theory previously mentioned (although it is criticized as “confusion of human nature and economic behavior”), this ‘other-oriented sympathy’ and ‘self love’ is the significance of western modernity that situates the unstable solidarity in the heart of modernity itself. (Chrouliaraki 2013) Thanks to social media, anyone could potentially manipulate your profile, who you are, how you act, what you like and dislike. But in this self-branding culture, people tend to fall into such collective uncertainty, and one may question ‘who exactly am I?’ especially under the threat of privacy issues, the private self and the public one become inseparable- “There is no true Self, only an endless series of interchangeable masks.” (Lovink 2011: 39). What happens if the billions online manipulate self-persona or speak up under profile masks, and influence each other so as to be impressed or liked or agreed with? Are the crowds spiraling towards madness or disastrous circumstances?

3.5 Madness of the crowds

Madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups25

(Nietzsche)

If everyone broadcasts, no one is listening. In this state of “Digital Darwinism,” only the loudest and most opinionated voices survive. (Lovink 2011: 7)

Collective intelligence is believed to not only have democratically decentralized power to make a better decision in a particular case as explained before, but also have led to collective errors. Such collective errors in the Web 2.0 mechanism could spiral a tragedy out of control. Lorenz et al. study on the effect of 'the wisdom of crowds’ showed that while groups generate a collective intelligence, a collective error for certain circumstances- without fixing the error the wisdom, reduces the expertise, therefore crowds could become less reliable. The recent financial crisis is an example of elites misled by the crowd mechanism (Lorenz et al. 2011). When large group are looking at the sky, more people join the group to look at sky- because they believe in the story behind the action, believe that something great is happening in the sky. If a large group is making profit by a set method, as a social being we tend to copy. If large crowd fall into a same mistake, the impact could be mass scale. “The more influence we exert on each other, the more likely it is that we will believe the same things and make the same mistakes.” (Surowiecki 2004, 86) Furthermore, one influential individual could possibly undermine the wisdom of the social media crowds. Here I question that could we examine the madness of the crowds through social media platforms for charitable causes? From next chapter, I present some examples of social media study and the analytical approaches I will follow to examine Charity:water and their social media engagement.

25

Surowiecki 2004, The Nietszhe quote is from Friedrich Nietzshe, Beyond Good and Evil, translated by Walter Kaufman (New York: Random House, 1966): 90.

Chapter 4. Study of Social Media

4.1 Facebook user motivation for charitable causes

The number of social media users around the world keeps increasing, and could strategically play a role in digital charity on a large scale, reach a wider, younger and new audience in a cost effective manner that is not driven in the same way the off-line charity does, for the size of donation is relatively small (Saxton and Wang 2013). In this chapter, towards case study of Charity: water and the use of social media especially focusing on Facebook, I therefore present previous Facebook charitable cause studies and show how Facebook as a social media could be analyzed.

The first paper I reflect on analyzes the charitable effect of Facebook, Saxton and Wang (2013) and studies a large number of fundraising campaigns organized by a crowdfunding platform Cause through Facebook. The donors through Facebook shows new type of motivations. Fundraising campaigns with a peer-to-peer platform affect through friends, family, colleagues and networks on Facebook, creates a social pressure for individuals, which differs from other fundraising platforms. Although some of the fundraising platforms retrieve personal information and build it into their platform in order to harness donor’s private networks, social media is more an attention-getting tool rather than a rational one. There also is an increase of impulse donation, or slacktivism – action with minimal personal effort. Donors through Facebook do not seem to care about the efficiency of the donation. Users easily ‘like’ projects, share or promote a project, meaning that they easily become a part of the ‘fundraisers’ however it seems more difficult to get them actually donate money.

Saxton and Wang indicate that organizations need to convert “less effortful fan engagement into deeper modes of participation” of donors (860). Technology no longer requires large financial capitals, but rather knowing cross channel synergies between platforms, website and other channels, and their echo chamber effect. Thus “having the appropriate level of tech-savvy is just as important as adequate financial resources.” (863) and therefore much studied in terms of efficacy.

They suggest the need of examining “message characteristic” for future research – closely looking at the engagement with the stakeholders, stakeholder dialogue (Bortree & Seltzer, 2009; Waters, Burnett, Lamm, & Lucas, 2009, Saxton and Wang 2013),

community-building (Briones, Kuch, Liu, & Jin, 2011; Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012, Saxton and Wang 2013), status updates, requests for donation and support, as a donation platform, and how social media connects with and mobilizes public? (Lovejoy, Waters, & Saxton, 2012, Saxton and Wang 2013). These questions are the core point of the empirical case study later in this paper.

4.2 Platform analysis

Social media needs to be studied by new methods, by new ways of analysis such as approaching the web more largely as an object of study, considering the increasing platformiation (Helmond, 2015) Each social media platform is different, and grows differently and therefore, each platform can be analyzed differently26 (Rogers). With Facebook for example, ‘likes’ can be classified into six kinds: “1) social responsible liking, 2) emotional liking, 3) informational liking, 4) social performative liking, 5) low-cost liking and 6) routine liking” (Brandtzaeg and Haugstveit, 2014: 258). Through the data of ‘operational digital objects’- likes, comments, shares, in and out group formation, friends network, the activities can be mapped as a post–demographic method- But how could one determine social engagement, or solidarity within a specific common interest? And what types of findings could be expected by studying social media as a platform?

With Facebook as a platform with 1.09 billion daily active users on average27 (March 2016) Facebook pages are considered to be the most public place of Facebook (Rieder et al. 4).

26

“Cross-platform analysis worksheet” written by Richard Rogers, December 2015

27

“Company Info | Facebook Newsroom.” Accessed June 6, 2016. <http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/.>

Figure 1. Facebook user engagement classification by Beth Kanter “The Ladder of Engagement” 2010.

Another example of the engagement level of donor crowds on social media is categorized by Kanter and H. Fine (2010: p68) into five types: 1) Happy bystanders: Blog readers, Facebook friends and acquaintances e.g. coworkers. 2) Spreaders: people who shares a cause information with others. 3) Donors: People who financially donate to a cause. 4) Evangelists: People who reach out and ask other people to donate time or money to the cause. 5) Instigators: people who takes initiative to create content, lead activities, and events on behalf of the cause. They may even start a new cause initiative or organization to express themselves even more. Within this framework I question, to what extent social media provides a domain for democratic engagement or social discourse and how that is shaped by the actors?

In the case of Twitter, a micro blogging site with 320 million users and 1 billion tweets per month28 (Twitter), an issue can be studied based on a topic, keyword or tweet via hashtags or search queries. Keywords (or hashtags) could re-illustrate side-taking, promotion, a particular campaign or project, or even be used in the political arenas (Rogers 2016). Tagging is in that sense, are expressed in neologisms such as ‘hashtag activism’, hashtag politics, ‘Twitter diplomacy’ or ‘Twiplomacy’ or even ‘hashtag

28

“Company | About.” Twitter About. Accessed February 11, 2016. https://about.twitter.com/company.