Dealing with crisis capitalism and online fundraising during national disasters
At Hotglue, we’re all feeling devastated for the communities throughout Australia suffering through a horrible summer of bushfires. A lot of us are from regional areas in Victoria close to those affected and have done all we can to help out with donations or packs to send to those in need.
In a crisis such as this, social media has become an invaluable method of communication about current affairs and fundraising for emergency causes. In the last week of the Australian bushfires, awareness about the disastrous events have led to international support and assistance. Individual personalities have also joined in on requesting donations for various services, most notably Australian comedian Celeste Barber, who has created a crowdfunding page via her Facebook page and raised $40 million (and counting) in merely four days.
However, through national and global action from small brands and large corporations, we have seen the rearing ugly head of crisis capitalism. Simply, brands using a national emergency to capitalise on sales rather than giving a cheque straight to organisations that are so desperate.
Granted, some companies are small and cannot afford to part with large sums of money like bigger corporations can. But the idea that brands are earning money as well as donating a percentage is riling up a lot of fans and followers online. While a percentage donation is better than nothing, profiting from something deemed material or luxury in a time when so many people’s lives have been burned down is extremely vapid and disrespectful.
In another grim turn, Instagram users wanting a boost engagement are using bushfire related hashtags to up their like count. And people have taken notice. One that I found was a vegan lifestyle profile that promoted a daily diet, using the post to detail a meal plan before a brief write-up about the devastation in Australia. Despite offering a weekend’s worth of profits from the purchase of meal plans, the copy could have been focused more on this than the sweet potato and tofu quiche they advised eating for lunch. The hashtags used included #bushfiresaustralia and #australiaisburning. The line between support and insensitivity is very thin.
An influencer on Instagram even had the audacity to use the bushfire relief effort to get herself more work. She has posted on the platform to offer a 50% discount on her brand collaboration fee, with the other half being donated. Is something better than nothing in this case? While hundreds of firefighters, medics and drivers are working voluntarily around the clock, this influencer is trying to market herself for some free products and vapid promotion. A pretty horrible irony.
Instagram has also been monitoring posts based on false information, which has already been rolled out on Facebook. The warning label is similar to those for graphic and sensitive content, but rather says ‘False Information: See Why.’ You can then view the post if you would like to.
A lot of images have been shared around, in particular one of late that is an image of Australia from a NASA satellite showing the burning fires across the country. A warning label came up for this post on my Instagram feed saying that this was a misleading image—it is actually an artist’s visualisation of the bushfires that have occurred across this horrible bushfire season. Yes, Australia is burning. But we must avoid the spread of fake news (yes, that tired term), and fake imagery for the sake of dealing with this emergency properly.
It would also be important for people to know to donate to a non-for-profit organisation or service’s own donation website rather than donating through Facebook— more so as supportive etiquette.
The company recently removed a 5% transaction fee on donations made to non-profits . In Australia, fundraising for charitable organisations on Facebook raises no fees. It does however charge taxes and processing fees for personal fundraisers (1.77% + 0.30c). On a positive note though, the social platform is also matching donations to some causes such as for natural disasters. Let’s hope that $40 million from Celeste Barber doubles then.
From now on (ideally with some forward action on climate change from the government to reduce the incidence of natural disasters like the bushfires), we must be smarter as individuals and businesses as to how we react to crises and raising money to help.
Offer bulk donations rather than capitalising on a disaster to help revenue with percentages of sales.
Think about giving whatever you can direct to the organisations, not through a secondary party like Facebook.
Keep content relevant when using hashtags about current affairs.
It’s about giving money or goods, but also giving a shit, as someone on Facebook wrote.