Changing the world one picture at a time
Social media often gets a bad rap, but a growing community of activists are driving real change using Instagram. Cyan Turan investigates
Meet the women driving social and cultural change via social media
Most of us have, at some point, spent hours looking enviously at a stranger’s #holidaygoals on Instagram, or stalked our ex’s Facebook posts from 2011. But while social media doesn’t always bring out the best in humanity, activists are now harnessing Instagram’s communitybuilding powers as a force for good.
Jaz O’hara, 27, is one of them. When a Facebook post she wrote after visiting the Calais refugee camps in 2015 went viral, O’hara was contacted by thousands who wanted to help, and found herself at the forefront of a wave of volunteers.
Her Instagram account, @the worldwidetribe (TWT), already told stories of people from her travels in India, but it was about to become so much more. At first, O’hara and her online community delivered donations to the camp, but TWT soon became a storytelling movement, driven by posts of the Calais jungle.
“The public wanted to know what had happened, and we tried to tell them through our pictures,” she says.
Now, users are self-organising in the comments. “Someone will say, ‘I have 100 pairs of shoes to donate, but I’m in Birmingham,’ and another will reply, ‘I’m driving from Birmingham to Calais next week, I’ll collect them!’”
Activists like O’hara connect online, but often create communities offline, too – spreading good in the real world. And the new Instagram Stories and Live tools offer more opportunities: O’hara has already filmed police hammering eviction notices to doors in refugee camps.
As for the criticism that Instagram is driving an image-obsessed culture? “Social media isn’t going anywhere,” O’hara says. “We either embrace it and use it to its maximum potential, or don’t. I choose option one.”
Meet the women who, like Jaz, are using Instagram to drive change…