"Likes Don't Save Lives" email chain

***edit: 29th April 2013. Have changed embedded video to official UNICEF Sweden channel at their twitter request ***

The below is an email chain between me and three other researchers.

I've just watched this video that Holly posted and I think it would be nice to get your views on it with a view to blogging your thoughts.

When I watched it, my critical gaze probably fell immediately not onto Unicef Sweden (Were they child actors? Would that matter? If they are, what was the remit for the casting agent?!) but to the taxonomy of Facebook. It's an issue of language for me, so I should probably start by saying that I no longer feel like I'm going on to Facebook as much as I'm going in to Facebook - looking inside my ephemeral postbox for a new letter, watching my closest friends cross a street made out of 1s and 0s to knock at my door in the form of a 'wall post'. It's the issue of Facebook 'friends' that I find alarming. Truth is, of all my Facebook 'friends', I probably couldn't tell you all of their names if I were to bump into them in town. Indeed, some of them I actually haven't met in a physical sense. To 'like' something on Facebook, then, isn't - as far as I am able to tell - an act of registering your taste for, or favouring of, anything anymore than accepting a friend request is to recognise a friendship.

A like of a band's Facebook page might denote simply that you listened to them a few times; liking an author's page may simply be an effort to illustrate to those looking at your page that you are literate (it doesn't mean you've actually read anything). A 'like' is often the building of an identity (so palpable an identity that the Facebook platform is a social space of mourning for the dead. What happens to our data when we die, how do we manage our sadness?). Equally, a 'like' can be an active subversion. A 'friend' says something unpalatable or idiotic - in response you 'like' it, actually hating it. Alternatively, somebody says something sad and you 'like' it, qualifying it in the proceeding comment that you don't actually like it but you want them to know you read it, or are thinking of them.

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Sydney Calkin

I had some of the same initial thoughts: the boy started speaking I thought it was real testimony from his country (which isn't specified in the video, PROBLEMATIC?) Anyway, once he started talking about facebook I realised it must have been staged, but then that raises all kinds of interesting points about where the video was 'located', why it was staged as such, etc. As a piece of campaigning material it was very powerful but I also have a lot of questions about the production of the clip. This reminds me of an advert from the Swedish military where they take a similar tactic- trying to interpolate 'us' and 'other' in a jarring way that creates distance between our lives and distant others: the army video is called "Everybody's everyday is not like ours"

I love that UNICEF are challenging lazy social media activism and pointing out that its kind of bullshit, but I'm not entirely happy with their suggestion that individual donations are adequate. Its a typical feminist critique: where is the structural analysis??? Poverty/ inequality/ deprivation don't result from the failure of individuals to donate small sums, but from injustice in political and economic architecture. It would have been better if the video hadn't reduced its message to the individual (although I guess that's the campaigning outcome UNICEF would like).

I think a comparison between this UNICEF video and Kony 2012 would be interesting, because they seem to use the same media for some of the same purposes, but with entirely different frames. Kony2012 is all about overstating the power of social media to promote awareness and influence policy makers (and it had a very minimal money raising goal) whereas this video is ostensibly using social media (youtube, facebook) to criticise its lack of impact. Both try to appeal to the 'facebook' user on terms she can understand, but in the UNICEF case it tries to challenge the comfortable assumptions about online activism. Hmm!

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Holly Steel

A miscellany of thoughts:

I guess distance is required in order to subvert the narratives of that specific genre; to hijack our original sense of direction. The familiarity of the unfamiliar child, speaking an (assumed) unfamiliar language in the unfamiliar space is what makes the mention of Facebook jarring and draws our attention in. Acknowledging structure would have diluted the message of this specific video - don't just 'like' me, help me - and it's important to note that a donation is theoretically only a click away.

The likelihood that these pieces of content emerge through our own social media channels is also interesting; in liking we like not liking, if you follow, which is interesting in line with what Ros was saying. Also, I 'like' Unicef Sweden, a video pops up in my feed telling me I shouldn't just like things; I wonder whether anyone will simply unlike the page as a response? In addition to this, regimes of feeling on Facebook not only marginalise dislike, but create a flattened and homogenous terrain of meaning. I 'like' a video of a bear being rescued from a bin, but I also 'like' an article on gender in the media. There is clearly a qualitative difference here, which can never be conveyed through a corporate medium such as this; I cannot love or find interesting.

"I 'like' a video of a bear being rescued from a bin, but I also 'like' an article on gender in the media. There is clearly a qualitative difference here"

I guess this also brings up the question of how we're measuring meaningful action. Kony 2012 is a hugely successful lobbying tool, regardless of the outcomes. It relies on 'attention philanthropy' to occupy flows of information (if only for a short time) to get coverage and official responses. So what does it mean if I 'like' this particular video? Well, it means it'll increase the reach of that particular piece of content. By sharing it on my timeline I know at least three other people have watched it, and here we are discussing it. It has provoked a conversation, and I don't think we should underestimate the power of talk. It's how we act on this talk that is in question; anyone here actually donate? I can't remember the other ideas I had…

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Sam Burgum

Cheers for the invite to the conversation. I thought the video was very interesting. From the point of view of interpassivity (where the video acts on our behalf, relieving us of our feelings of being passive), we can perhaps see it working on three levels within the video's narrative:

 1) The criticism of clicktivism which the video addresses (suggesting the views 'doesn't just like/follow' as this is less of a meaningful action) is itself a criticism of interpassivity in allowing our 'like' or 'follow' to act on our behalf.

 2) But also the suggestion that you give money instead (which the video doesn't seem to realise is also something of an interpassive gesture). As Zizek says: when we are presented with the picture of the starving child, the true message is dont think of the structures which have caused that child's poverty, simply donate or purchase in order to be relieved of having to think. I think Sydney has completely hit the nail on the head with: "Poverty/ inequality/ deprivation don't result from the failure of individuals to donate small sums, but from injustice in political and economic architecture."

 3) Our consumption of the video (I dont know if you noticed, but I ironically 'liked' the video when Holly posted it - ho ho ho). Our consumption of the video perhaps gives a kind of distinction: "yeah, we're not like those other people who just 'like' or 'follow' causes; we are real activists who donate" completely missing the point that, as Sydney pointed out, this in itself is ineffective. For me, such integrations of an ethical duty with a consumable product or action is a typical way of performing ones radical identity - and feel authentic in action - rather than act 'politically' (problematic notion) to change the structure itself. The liking or following of a cause is an act of ethical performance of an ethical identity in the same way as people choose to buy fair-trade or recycle. This isn't to say, of course, that fair-trade or recycling are bad things, just that they might be counter-productive in actually bringing about change in the first place by playing into the capitalist-consumer ethical bonanza.

This is why I lean away from Holly's argument that "it means it'll increase the reach of that particular piece of content" and "I don't think we should underestimate the power of talk" because I think, while this is true quantitatively, the video does nothing to create new solidarities that might bring about change, and instead plays into the narcissistic individualism of the activist-consumer who 'consumes' (likes, follows, watches, purchases, donates…) the video for their own identity. In other words, I think there is a link between the form of the conversation (through a consumable ethics) and the inaction which follows.