‘I cannot donate all the money to charity...but I can “Like” them’: A qualitative investigation of the accounts of modern students’ offline and online volunteering activities

Abstract

This dissertation broadens the debate on the ability of social networking sites to mobilise support and encourage participation by looking at the phenomenon of “slacktivism” as a gap between the online intentions and real life behaviour in the context of voluntary activities. The applied methodology continues the qualitative research tradition of Daniel Miller (2010) using both online and offline methods of data collection. The data gathered from two focus group discussions with nineteen participants provided insights into the possible motives of the slacktivist behaviour among modern students. The findings suggest the need for further investigation of the general apathy among young Internet users in terms of their overall activity. As a direction for the explanations of the causes of slacktivism the concepts of strong and weak ties as well as time and space compression are proposed.