The most effective electoral campaigns are those that awaken the collective imagination, those that are overwhelmed by the activists and sympathizers themselves, those that generate autonomous and creative mobilization outside the centralized structures of the parties and candidates.
Days ago, in the middle of the Argentine campaign, a Twitter thread from a journalist (@ceciazul) who compiled small actions and content developed entirely by militants or activists. Some kites made with recycled posters of a candidate, homemade posters that warned about cuts in public health, designs and illustrations (some with Artificial Intelligence), interventions in electoral advertising and many other examples that other users added.
These “micromilitancy” are creative expressions with a persuasive vocation that originate independently and autonomously from the bases or even from the citizens. This “microactivism”, as I prefer to call it, arises on the margins, without control by those who decide or decide the strategies in an electoral campaign. They are a different creative and political energy, with very high penetration in the conversation as they are repositories of an authenticity and spontaneity that legitimizes them in a special way. Are political communication crafts They are genuine and that is where their effectiveness lies. Their non-professional simplicity reverts them to an amateur atmosphere but that does not prevent them from being widely shared and viral. People are more likely to share an autonomous piece than political propaganda, no matter how well done it is.
This is not the first time that microactivism transcends anonymity. We had warned of something similar in the Gabriel Boric (Chile, 2021), Bernie Sanders (United States, 2016) and Manuela Carmena (Madrid, 2015), the latter also analyzed by researchers María López-Trigo Reig, María Puchalt López and Victoria Cuesta Díaz. For Sebastián Kraljevich, who was an advisor to the now Chilean president, the overflow is always good news: “When that happens, you don’t want to and you can’t control it. There is no way to correct the memes or the people who are knocking on doors.” This specific case, as Júlia Alsina describes, was unique due to the “emergence of self-convened and self-managed commands.”
There are several reasons that explain the success of microactivism, which, like any campaign action, can be online, offline or hybrid, as Xavier Peytibi points out in his book Connected campaigns: disintermediation, the expressive and creative capacity, the intelligence of the crowds, the connection with the territory or community where the initiative is born, and the contagion effect, which sometimes takes the form of a very energizing activist challenge. Finally, the expansion and popularization of generative Artificial Intelligence tools, such as ChatGPT, Midjourney or others, represents a huge opportunity for microactivism, which becomes faster and more productive, although, perhaps, more predictable and less creative.
To this we must add the microactivism that can arise within some communities of interests or fandomsas is happening now in Argentina with the swifties, otaku and k-popers. The political positions within these networks, as we had already seen in the United States, when K-pop fans boycotted a Donald Trump rally, move very quickly and are tremendously persuasive.
There is a special beauty in the simple and amateur. It is a raw material unadulterated or domesticated by the logic of advertising or political marketing. A creative energy that connects in a direct and authentic way and that allows campaigns to be turned into conversations. That’s the key: from persuading to sharing, from being spectators and consumers of political propaganda to being protagonists of the same campaign.
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#Electoral #microactivism