How to Speak with Social Activists

How do you speak with social activists?

Local com­munit­ies or act­iv­ist groups have always spoken up when they see an organ­isa­tion step­ping over the line. Peaceful protests are vital signs of healthy democracies.

As a PR pro­fes­sion­al, I’ve helped many organ­isa­tions deal with angry pub­lics. It’s a per­fectly nat­ur­al part of our job description.

But lately, these attacks seem to have spir­alled out of proportion.

In this blog post, I’ll dis­cuss why social act­iv­ists are becom­ing a lar­ger and lar­ger PR threat in today’s amp­li­fied media land­scape — and how these social act­iv­ists ought to be addressed.

Here we go:

The Imbalanced Playing Field

There have always been groups of people who speak out against brands. However, social act­iv­ists are becom­ing an even more severe PR prob­lem that seems to be grow­ing out of proportion.

But the play­ing field used to be more bal­anced. While organ­isa­tions are typ­ic­ally strong, the tra­di­tion­al media logic has always favoured social act­iv­ists as underdogs.

But when social media is com­bined with influ­en­tial soci­et­al trends of polit­ic­al cor­rect­ness, vir­tue sig­nalling, woke cap­it­al­ism, and post­mod­ern­ist iden­tity polit­ics, social act­iv­ists, can grow their strength expo­nen­tially in hours.

And their attacks are often relent­less and unbal­anced. They use social media not as a plat­form for dia­logue but as a tool for coer­cing organ­isa­tions into compliance.

Where is this imbal­ance com­ing from?

Moral Slacktivism — Amplified

“Slacktivism (a port­manteau of slack­er and act­iv­ism) is the prac­tice of sup­port­ing a polit­ic­al or social cause by means such as social media or online peti­tions, char­ac­ter­ised as involving very little effort or com­mit­ment. Additional forms of slackt­iv­ism include enga­ging in online activ­it­ies such as ‘lik­ing,’ ‘shar­ing,’ or ‘tweet­ing’ about a cause on social media, sign­ing an Internet peti­tion, copy­ing and past­ing a status or mes­sage in sup­port of the cause, shar­ing spe­cif­ic hasht­ags asso­ci­ated with the cause, or alter­ing one’s pro­file photo or avatar on social net­work ser­vices to indic­ate solid­ar­ity.”
Source: Wikipedia

“Why does­n’t your brand speak out against X?”

Anyone can tag a busi­ness on social media and hold it account­able for any­thing. And fel­low online act­iv­ists will quickly know how to tag along and whip up tensions.

Their author­ity stems from pro­fess­ing their mor­al superi­or­ity to mute any­one who does­n’t share their polit­ic­al ideas. This is often referred to as “can­cel culture.”

Rather than pro­pos­ing dia­logue or debate, online act­iv­ists tend to grav­it­ate toward mak­ing severe threats, demand­ing total con­form­ity, and organ­ising efforts to smear or deplat­form the brand and its spokespeople.

“Deplatforming, also known as no-plat­form­ing, has been defined as an ‘attempt to boy­cott a group or indi­vidu­al through remov­ing the plat­forms (such as speak­ing ven­ues or web­sites) used to share inform­a­tion or ideas, or ‘the action or prac­tice of pre­vent­ing someone hold­ing views regarded as unac­cept­able or offens­ive from con­trib­ut­ing to a for­um or debate, espe­cially by block­ing them on a par­tic­u­lar web­site’.”
Source: Wikipedia ³Deplatforming. (2023, January 8). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​D​e​p​l​a​t​f​o​r​m​ing

From a PR per­spect­ive, social act­iv­ists seem to resort to increas­ingly more anti-demo­crat­ic meas­ures to coerce brands into total obedience.

Cancel cul­ture and de-plat­form­ing are typ­ic­al meas­ures used to exert pres­sure on pub­lic opin­ion through the spir­al of silence:

Freedom of Speech is a Two-Way Street

In a demo­cracy, all organ­isa­tions must be open to cri­ti­cism — how­ever unpleas­ant or unsubstantiated.

Freedom of speech is a pil­lar of PR as well. Whenever the man­age­ment of an organ­isa­tion is under heavy fire, and they’re try­ing to hide, escape, or deflect, the PR func­tion is there to pro­mote trans­par­ency and pub­lic action.

PR has this func­tion, not due to mor­al high ground but because pro­mot­ing open­ness in adversity is good for busi­ness. If an organ­isa­tion fails to adapt to neg­at­ive feed­back, the prob­lems don’t dis­ap­pear. Hence, open­ness is neces­sary for survival.

Contrary to pop­u­lar belief, when cri­ti­cism is against an organ­isa­tion, the PR func­tion is typ­ic­ally at the front lines for pro­mot­ing dia­logue and change.

But the basic prin­ciples of free­dom of speech also apply to social act­iv­ists. Self-pro­claimed mor­al superi­or­ity should­n’t jus­ti­fy anti-demo­crat­ic and dis­pro­por­tion­al attacks on organisations.

But some­times, it seems that it does.

Too Woke — or Not Woke Enough

With CSR issues becom­ing increas­ingly import­ant, brands must find strategies to deal with social activists.

Arik C. Hanson, the PR blog­ger, writes:

“[…] we’ve seen numer­ous reports from vendors and agen­cies like Edelman telling us 1 in every 2 cus­tom­ers is a ‘belief-driv­en buy­er.’ And, of those buy­ers, 65% will not buy from a brand because they stayed silent on an issue it had an oblig­a­tion to address.”

So, how do we nav­ig­ate the jungle of mor­al issues?

A com­mon brand strategy, albeit insig­ni­fic­ant, is to wait and see which issues become press­ing enough to war­rant action. 

At best, such a strategy is oppor­tun­ist­ic and cal­lous. If you choose this route, the media will expose your brand to accus­a­tions of piggy­back­ing on the social agenda.

Being too woke is just as bad as not being woke enough.

It back­fired when Gillette came out in front of ongo­ing gender dis­cus­sions by sham­ing them­selves and their cus­tom­er base for being per­pet­rat­ors of tox­ic mas­culin­ity.

I would­n’t recom­mend brands make it their busi­ness to inform adults how they should live their lives. I would recom­mend more focused CSR activ­it­ies instead.

Opting to score points by going for the mor­al high ground is risky. Opting to please social act­iv­ists while dis­reg­ard­ing the busi­ness strategy is mad­ness.

Moral Pragmatism

Social reforms are com­plex by nature.

Whilst both the news media and the social algorithms are pref­er­en­tial to por­tray­ing con­flicts as hav­ing only two polar oppos­ite sides, the real­ity of social change is bet­ter under­stood as a spectrum.

A brand could be super pro­gress­ive by design, but it must remem­ber that its cowork­ers might have vari­ous polit­ic­al per­sua­sions. Diversity is good — also when it comes to polit­ic­al ideas.

Let’s be pragmatic. 

Should brands sit down every morn­ing to review all poten­tial social issues and ask, “Where do we stand on this par­tic­u­lar issue?” Should a social policy team spend days draft­ing pos­sible responses while con­tinu­ously updat­ing a grow­ing lib­rary of documents? 

Well, maybe they should. But for most brands, this type of setup would be fin­an­cially impossible. Irresponsible, even.

There must be a way, right?

Teaching Brands to Speak Human

“How hard can it be to stand up against injustice?” someone might ask. 

Finding answers is a respons­ib­il­ity that often befalls social media, con­tent, and com­munity managers. 

As humans, we’ve evolved to com­mu­nic­ate with each oth­er, not with abstrac­tions. This is why we tend to human­ise brands, to think of a brand as a liv­ing entity with a mind of its own. In pub­lic rela­tions, we human­ise brands for this exact reason.

But while an organ­isa­tion is not “human” in any sense, it must still be taught to imper­son­ate a human being.

And make no mis­take about it: 

Getting an organ­isa­tion to “speak human” with many unique indi­vidu­als is challenging. 

So, how should a com­munity man­ager respond to social act­iv­ists online?

The High Road Tonality

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PR Resources: Publics in PR