Online activism

Sist oppdatert Fredag, 11/06/2021

Simply put, activism is taking action and raising your voice to mobilise people and eventually have a political impact. So, online activism is about using digital tools such as social media, blogs, debating platforms and petitions as a means towards the change you want to see.

Are you keen to have an impact on your local community? Do you want to see changes in Europe or globally? Your voice matters. There are different ways to make yourself heard such as marching for climate change. This can also be done online, discover how.

The power of your message

There are several recent topics of activity and push from young people for change, such as discrimination (#BlackLivesMatter), gender equality (#MeToo) or climate change (#FridaysForFuture). They are not mutually exclusive - so you can support all of them - and each one carries a powerful and needed message and action behind.

Using common hashtags helps connect people across the world who campaign for the same cause. In that way, they become stronger together and can coordinate action to obtain a greater impact.

Young people are the best prepared to know how to adapt messages and create impact through different digital tools and social media channels, so grasp your unique talent and spread the word! You can make use of, for instance, TikTok, Instagram or Twitter to raise awareness and speak up situations that you wish to change. 

If you feel like developing your idea and putting forward your arguments more extensively, you can share and debate using platforms like: the 25 Percent Project, Media Activism or European Youth Ideas which is a link between you and the European Parliament in the framework of the Conference on the Future of Europe. You can make suggestions about the issues that Europe is facing today and share your ideas for the Europe of tomorrow.

Go a step forward and bring to life your idea

If your idea goes in hand with a concrete project or idea which can be implemented in a certain time-frame you can start an online petition using platforms such as Change.org.  

To put in practice your idea or project, you will mostly need financial assistance. There are platforms that you can use to spread the word about what you want to do and gather support for your cause, for example GoFundMe, Goteo or Avaaz.

Is the change you want to see in the world EU-related?

The EU Youth Dialogue is in place as a dialogue mechanism between young people and decision makers taking place in the framework of the EU Youth Strategy. Hence it aims to ensure that the opinion, views and needs of young people and youth organisations are taken into account when defining the EU's youth policies. Here you can check EU Youth Dialogue contact points. 

On top of sharing your ideas and views you can gather and join other committed discussions with other individuals to shape the present and future of the EU, for example together.eu, put in place by the European Parliament to prompt democratic participation and connect citizens.

You can also resort to the European Citizens’ Initiative. This is an EU mechanism to ask the European Commission to take action and propose laws on a matter which is not regulated yet. Anyone can submit a proposal on the platform, launch a campaign and start the road to collect one million signatures from at least 7 different EU countries. Once your proposal achieves that, the European Commission will have to express their position. 

Finally, you can get in touch with Members of the European Parliament because they are elected representatives by citizens to represent people’s interest with regard to EU law-making and to make sure other EU institutions are working democratically.

Remember that your voice matters and you can make it heard from wherever you are right now, you just need to choose the means that suit you and your cause best!