Social Media’s Limited Social Impact

When Lei Guo, a College of Communication assistant professor of communication, spends a day on social media, she’s not playing Candy Crush or tweeting what she had for breakfast. She’s doing research.

Guo, originally from Shanghai, is especially interested in the way the Chinese social media site Weibo challenges government censorship barriers. Weibo is a real-time public communication tool similar to Twitter—it limits posts to 140 Chinese characters—that boasts over 275 million users worldwide. Typically a forum for entertainment, lifestyle, and sports news, Weibo has also been touted as a platform for activists and citizen journalists. Yet Guo has found that its social impact is limited.

In 2015, Guo received one of the two inaugural East Asia Studies Career Development Professorships from BU to further her research of social media “slacktivism,” in which people support a cause with online actions (such as “liking” a post or signing a petition) that don’t call for much time or involvement. The online world, says Guo, is one where success is measured by what’s popular or trending, not necessarily what’s meaningful. She’s found that most bloggers and tweeters write messages that are socially acceptable or desirable not necessarily because they love a cause, but in order to boost their own popularity.

In a recent study, Guo examined a Weibo-fueled protest from July 2012. The maelstrom began when the Chinese government announced plans to construct a massive copper factory in the city of Shifang in the Sichuan province. Concerned about the potential environmental threats, local dissenters organized a street protest, which became violent when police got involved. Social media commentators, including some of the original protesters, took to online media to spread word of the issue, and for three days, “#Shifang incident#” (“#什邡事件#”) attracted a significant number of posts (293) on Weibo. Days later, the government halted the construction project, in part because of the critical Weibo response.

It was hailed as a victory. But Guo says her research has shown that most online participants were less interested in the construction issue than in criticizing the government; only 3 percent of posts related to the environmental concerns that spawned the protest. Once construction of the factory was postponed—online—protestors didn’t hang around long enough to help hold the police accountable for their brutality or ensure the government did not reinstate the project. Traditional media skirted the issue, leaving questions about the town’s future unanswered.

The phenomenon of social media users jumping on a cause’s bandwagon is not restricted to China or Weibo, Guo says. In one study based on a focus group, Guo wrote that US immigrants’ rights activists in Austin, Texas, found social media tools like Facebook were “best for raising awareness and are less able to incite people to participate in offline activism.” She has also studied Asian immigrant populations in the United States. Although some members of the younger generation have started using YouTube as a means to discuss serious issues, Guo says they usually abandon such causes in favor of providing entertainment and building bigger audiences.