Performative Activism and Instagram Infographics
Over the past year, you’d have struggled to not run into at least a few of them on your Instagram feed: brightly-coloured boxes with minimalist designs, offering the answers to life’s big questions in pleasant fonts. But in the age of discourse and misinformation, can Instagram infographics be a source of material change? Ana discusses.
Many people think that infographics have only become a medium for sharing information about social issues in the last year. In reality, online activism (such as fundraising and protests) has been circulating for a long time, particularly in the form of infographics on Facebook and then on Twitter and Instagram with their rise in popularity among younger demographics. I vividly remember 2016 as being the year when a lot of feminist advocacy pages gained popularity on Instagram. In an article published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Thérèse F. Tierney identifies emerging efforts of utilizing the internet to empower marginalized groups as early as 2010.
In order to tackle the "Instagram infographic industrial complex," it's important to highlight the transformations undergone by forms of online activism through the years. As online communities grew, the spaces where discourses take place expanded accordingly. Many people have noticed that shared content has become increasingly diluted and more palatable in order to appeal to the average social media user. This phenomenon also plays into a larger problem that comes with the monetisation of social media. Earlier in the 2010s, behaviour on online platforms could be described as casual. From average users to real-life celebrities, individuals could bluntly and easily state their opinions on politics, as their posts usually reached a limited number of people with similar views. As the monetization of online content became the norm and online exposure increased in importance, content creators had to appeal to larger audiences and refrain from potentially controversial content to protect sponsorships and ad revenue. A popular page sharing a watered-down infographic may result in a larger number of impressions than a higher quality article shared among a smaller audience (which could potentially be deleted due to censorship). We have to ask ourselves if there is any value in this trade-off.
Easy to make, easy to read, and most importantly, aesthetically pleasing: Instagram inforgraphics have become ubiquitous in the past year. But how quickly should we trust a set of pastel-coloured slides asking for our attention with the most recent buzzwords and social issues? And how do we separate the well-intentioned from the corporate and superficial?
It can be argued that people have found creative loopholes to avoid censorship and spread awareness about social issues. In a video I have watched recently, a Youtube creator spreads awareness about the sexualization and mistreatment of a pop group under the name of ‘Naked Girls’ while constantly referring to them as NAKD to avoid demonetization. On every platform, there is a constant search for loopholes that would prevent censorship. A widely known example of censorship is Instagram’s constant erasure of the unedited female body (particularly that of body hair, body fluids and nipples). Popular pages give up on normalizing female bodies through the posting of unedited pictures and instead resort to sharing buzzwords plastered on aesthetic backgrounds (accompanied by the occasional digital drawing). There are still pages that place value on maintaining their integrity and keeping their followers informed. However, there is no guarantee that they will escape Instagram or Twitter censorship. As of May 2021, various videos and images revealing the struggle of Palestinian civilians are being taken down by Instagram and Twitter algorithms with little to no accountability from platforms. In this hostile climate, infographics are seen as a solution for engaging in “everyday activism” while keeping appearances less controversial. These images convey messages in a manner that resembles the way an adult would explain sophisticated concepts to a child. By the end of reading the infographic, the viewer would think that certain ideas are more comprehensible and logical and can be taken as fact. I would argue that this approach prevents posts from being reported and taken down by taking advantage of the framing bias.
One of the purposes of infographics is to provide accessibility. For many social media users, engaging with specialized literature is not an everyday priority, and certainly not something they would do after reading a headline. This is partly due to the psychology of social media use and the desire for instant gratification, but also because the majority of working people cannot afford to spend long hours reading theory/ do not have the resources to do so. From this perspective, an infographic is a tool of spreading awareness en masse which manages to break class barriers. The implications of universal availability are many: while larger groups get to be included in discourses and access information, the spread of ideological propaganda and misinformation increases. Reading and then reposting an infographic takes less than a minute but checking the sources that were credited is only an afterthought for the majority of people. This creates room for questionable actors to present their ideological systems in a well-packed, easily accessible manner and potentially infiltrate activist spaces. In Foucauldian terms, infographics contribute to the mechanisms of a regime of truth, which empowers those who are charged with saying what counts as true in society. Online activism can thus be weaponized by those who co-opt the language and procedures of online activists. In 2021, Instagram users have witnessed the weaponization of infographics by armed forces organizations marketing themselves as civilian-friendly and repackaging their ideologies of oppression.
Infographics about infographics: do we need to be concerned about this trend?
“The implications of universal availability are many: while larger groups get to be included in discourses and access information, the spread of ideological propaganda and misinformation increases.”
It is important to note that there are cases where the negative effects of sharing infographics are not intentionally inflicted. To comprehend historical phenomena and complex issues in a few slides, people creating infographics resort to simplifications. Reducing the word count and utilizing generalisations is key to getting a strong message across in the most direct way possible. Therefore, the general public reading these infographics is exposed to oversimplification. Anyone who has ever written an academic essay is aware of how space limitations can impede developing a nuanced idea. Without accounting for additional variables or analysing critical cases and exceptions, we produce a piece of writing that cannot be applied to real-life cases. In the same fashion, infographics can become too reductive. This is not to say that there are no black and white issues which can be analysed without playing the devil’s advocate, just that the majority of topics covered by infographics cannot be fully comprehended just by glancing at a few slides.
As social media users, we should take responsibility for the content we consume and actively try to supplement the information that we receive. This involves analysing biases and identifying subjectivity. Responsibility also means that we should consult sources and look into the actors producing the data that we rely on. If enough users who have to privilege to access sources (and by privilege, I mean not only access but also time resources) start challenging circulating ideas, as well as their framing, we can create a safer environment for everyone who comes across forms of online activism. Responsible consumption is key.
