Excessive Media Coverage Prompts Performative Activism

By Mimi Lebeau ‘24
    In this age of instant media coverage, where every controversy and piece of information is readily available online, it is evident that the public’s attention span is rapidly declining.

According to research from Google Trends, Schema, Axios and other data-collection companies, big news stories stay in the media spotlight for, on average, one week before the public moves on, regardless of whether it is resolved, meaning that every week or so, there is a significant public issue that people are seemingly obligated to care and protest about.
This pattern of spiked attention and rapidly-changing focus on issues is detrimental to the discussed cases, mainly because it perpetuates the notion that solid media coverage and posting are valid means of solving a problem. If a social media user sees a flood of information on Iranian executions, then after a few days, it all disappears, they may be moved to believe that social media can solve issues by merely sharing information about them. Thus, users are led to believe that simply posting can solve a real-world problem.
    While some may attribute this trend to the myriad of news issues in the world, this phenomenon stems from the fairly novel concept of performative activism. 
    Performative activism is “essentially the act of supporting a cause, not necessarily because you are passionate about creating change,” writes Erica Nahmad in an article for BeLatina. “It is basically the idea that people use their social media feeds, actions, or online presence to show that they are ‘woke’ to the issues that their followers care about and to gain praise for their support rather than actually making a difference.”
It is typical of a performative activist to repost the issue of the week, not from genuine concern but because it is trendy. However, it is not the fault of performative activists that they cannot connect to a certain cause; rather, the media cycle changes its focus on crises so frequently that it is nearly impossible to truly attach to one cause before the next comes along. 
Additionally, given the limited focus of media today, as it is seemingly only able to highlight one issue at a time, there is constant competition between causes and news providers to get into the spotlight. 
A main problem this causes is sensationalization of news to attract public attention to the news source itself and make a profit. However, this dramatization of news creates a general mistrust of news media. According to Gallup’s “Americans' Trust in Mass Media, 1972-2022,” as of 2022, only 34% of Americans surveyed greatly trust the media.  
In order to avoid falling into this harmful cycle, as media users, we need to be skeptical about the news we see on social media and do our own research using credible sources rather than blindly following information online. Even after an issue has passed out of the public eye, we could and should continue learning about the situation and what we can do to help.