In the context of the present-day developments, slacktivism appears to gain popularity, and, occasionally, its influence should not be underestimated. An illustrative example could be the Instagram post by Justin Bieber on racism, which is presented in Picture 1. He expresses his resentments to the oppression of Afro-American people and encourages people to abandon this “systematically ingrained” behavioral model (Bieber, 2020, para. 1). This post may be considered to support the social movement Black Lives Matter, aimed to prevent racism and violence in relation to people of Afro-American origin.
The aforementioned movement may refer to a reformative social movement type. Despite the racial origin, all the population is interested in making a social change. However, there were episodes of riotous disturbances, though they were not significant enough to be considered revolutionary. As for the social movement theory, the new one can be applied in this regard. Black Lives Matter focuses on the improvement of the social surroundings. In addition, the movement was supported in other countries, as people of Afro-American origin encounter oppression around the whole world. These aspects are characteristic of the New Social Movements theory.
The movement Black Lives Matter appears to be at the second stage, which is titled coalescence. Macionis describes the following way: “After emerging, a social movement must define itself and develop a strategy for “going public” (para. 3). As for kinds of crowd behavior may differ. For instance, in the beginning, it was closer to an acting crowd. According to Macionis (2019), it implies “a collectivity motivated by an intense, single-minded purpose” (para. 5). However, after some time, the movement stuck to a protest crowd, as a great number of marches were organized.
References
Bieber, J. [@justinbieber]. (2020). The fight to stop racism is far from over [Photograph]. Instagram. Web.
Macionis, J. J. (2019). Revel Sociology, 17th edition. Pearson.