Social Citizen activism doesn’t happen in one place, on one channel, or in one medium. Millennials are using all of the digital tools at their fingertips to share pictures, sounds, feelings, and information about their causes with their social networks.
As mobile phones have become less expensive and smarter with advanced applications, they have also become the go-to device of youth connectedness and activism. Young people from Korea to the Philippines to the United States have been using text messages to significantly increase the youth vote. A dedicated website, MobileActive.org [1], has even emerged to chronicle this type of usage. This is a grassroots movement more easily conceived and carried out than any letter-writing campaign, and driven by an authentic desire to participate.
Mobile phones are not the beginning and end of connectivity, however. Social Citizens use the full contingent of social media tools in support of their causes. In 2003, Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey, and Laren Poole, three young filmmakers from San Diego, went to northern Uganda to capture the untold story of children of war. The film, Invisible Children: Rough Cut, was released shortly after.
The filmmakers subsequently started Invisible Children [2], a nonprofit organization, with the mission to share their message and raise funds to support the building of schools in northern Uganda. They describe themselves on their website in a way that applies to many Millennials: “We are storytellers. We are visionaries, humanitarians, artists, and entrepreneurs. We are individuals—part of a generation eager for change and willing to pursue it.”
The Invisible Children group started by a high school student on Facebook has over 400,000 friends. Related yet independent student blogs share news and information about the cause. Invisible Children student clubs have raised money online through websites such as DoSomething.org [3].
There are trailers for the film online; a video by a singer/songwriter supporter on YouTube highlighting the problem and all the different ways that people have become involved in the effort; and another video by students at Berry College on why they support the cause.
And in an amalgamation of entertainment, capitalism, and activism, a fan site for the pop singer Avril Lavigne encourages visitors to fill out three surveys for a marketing company. In return, users receive a bracelet, and a $25 donation to Invisible Children is made.
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