‘The Doll that Saved Africa’: How Harmful Social Media Tactics Amongst Voluntourists Got Called Out by Barbie
“Digilantism” is a concept introduced by Emma A. Jane in 2017 to describe the “putatively politically motivated extrajudicial practices in online domains that are intended to punish or bring others to account in response to a perceived or lack of institutional remedies”. Originally coined to refer to the proliferation of ‘man-spreading’, digilantism has since been used more broadly, specifically in the context of satirical digital activism campaigns. A tool used to bring awareness to problematic and unethical online practices through persuasion and public shaming, digilantism is powerful and effective at shining a light on the harmful social media behaviors of development aid workers and volunteers perpetuating a white-savior complex through their experience in the ‘Third World’. In recent years, satirical digital activism campaigns, like Radi-Aid, Humanitarians of Tinder, and Barbie Savior, have adopted digilantism as a means of combating these offensive and exploitative actions. Each of these campaigns has gained large media attention and has become a resource for development education and training in doing so. Their effectiveness at illuminating the white-savior complex, both in the field and online, positions digilantism and these accounts as successful tools for countering the problematic posts made by development volunteers.
To understand this more, it is important to first think about the idea of “voluntourism” – an industry similar to a gap year that is often associated with its capacity to ‘broaden the mind’ (Sin and He, 2019, p. 216). The role of volunteers in development practice and how they represent a form of neocolonialism and reduce development to individual acts of charity is discussed quite largely in development studies academia, notably by McLennan. Through the lens of an organization called “projecthonduras”, McLennan analyzes the use of media to perpetuate the white-savior complex of the volunteers involved with the program. She specifically highlights the organization’s Facebook page and website, stating that while “the projecthonduras.com model frames volunteers as a constructive and relationship-based alternative for development, the underlying problematization of Honduras and the reliance on outsiders is resonant with...studies that critique the role of volunteers in development” (McLennan, 2014, p. 59).
There are also the implications of photographic practices in voluntourism in conjunction with the popularity of social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram (Sin and He, 2019, p. 216). Sin and He argue that by “emphasizing the ‘intersection of gazes’ within the voluntouristic encounter, photography-as-practice occurs between variously positioned agents, allowing for discussions of power and agency” (2019, p. 219). Interestingly, the voluntouristic behavior becomes a “self-governing mechanism against how one should behave in encountering the Third World” (Sin and He, 2019, p. 232).
Using a separate example, Garland positions the harmful usage of social media in the context of post-earthquake Haiti. He supports Sin and He’s implication of the ‘gaze’ among aid workers and volunteers, stating that there is “the presumption of a righteous and privileged gaze: we have the right to gaze upon their misery because it spurs us to do good for ‘them’” (Garland, 2015, p. 95). At the end of his conclusion, Garland asks perhaps the most important and poignant question when it comes to the social media pornification of poverty and development by Western aid workers and volunteers: Under what condition is the photograph beneficial for the individual being photographed? (2015, p. 99). This question can potentially be answered by Barbie Savior, who will be discussed further below, and who in her Instagram bio writes “It’s not about me...but it kind of is.”
Figure 1. Barbie Savior Instagram account.
To bring the discussion back to the concept of using satire, or digilantism, as a means of bringing awareness to the harmful implications of how the ‘Third World’ is portrayed in media, Marbach cites the example of The Norwegian Students’ Society and Academics’ International Assistance Fund, known under the banner of “Radi-Aid”, who released a video using satire to call attention to Africa’s portrayal in American media as needing to be saved by the West. The satirical video “follows the production of an ad campaign for a fictitious charity called ‘Save Africa’, starring Michael, a well-paid, well-fed young ‘charity actor’ whose specialty is a ‘sad African’” (Marbach, 2016, p. 215). The video depicts images of “quintessential voluntourists” - the white twenty-somethings who take a gap year to ‘find themselves’ in a ‘less-developed’ country that will provide them a “transformational experience” (Marbach, 2016, p. 216). Marbach argues that the desensitizing nature of ad campaigns created by the fake charity in the video, and by charities and nonprofits in real life, “dehumanize receivers of aid” and perpetuate the white-savior complex to an extent that has resulted in the voluntourism industry (Marbach, 2016, p. 218).
Rounding out the discussion of digilantism, humorous humanitarian campaigns, and digital activism are Schwarz and Richey, who root their argument and analysis in Waisanen’s idea of “comic counterfactuals”, or the “playful subversion of dominant discourses by ‘tweaking the content, structure, or delivery’” (Waisanen, 2018 cited in Schwarz and Richey, 2019, p. 1932). Schwarz and Richey explain that the use of satire is ultimately a hopeful method designed to aspire towards enacting and prompting positive social change (2019, p. 1932). Through the analysis of three popular satirical digital activism campaigns – Radi-Aid, Humanitarians of Tinder, and Barbie Savior – Schwarz and Richey argue that “these three initiatives interrupt the ways the humanitarian aid industry broadly, and international volunteers specifically, visualize and narrate distant suffering” (2019, p. 1932). These campaigns adopt a deconstructive role that offer criticism and shame, and according to Schwarz and Richey, “online and offline data suggest that within the international volunteer community, the potential for judgment and chastisement...is affecting ways that individuals think about how they represent their experiences on social media and what they post” (2019, p. 1938).
The impacts of development work and its representation on social media display how development workers and volunteers can often do more harm than good by documenting their experiences online. To better understand how satirical digital activism campaigns can be used to combat these problematic and unethical practices, the following section will look at the case of the Barbie Savior Instagram account more closely.
Barbie joins Instagram
Launched in 2016, the Barbie Savior Instagram account takes a satirical approach to demonstrating the harmful and unethical effects of voluntourism in the development sector. Depicted through photoshopped posts with sarcastic captions, Barbie says goodbye to Malibu and finds herself in dusty classrooms, surrounded by children, wearing wild animal prints, and posing for selfies in her African host village. Created by two twenty-something white women with regrettable experiences as former “white saviors”, Barbie Savior has amassed over 155,000 followers in its attempt to draw attention to the offensive nature of voluntourism that fetishizes and over-sentimentalizes the experience of visiting Africa (Blay, 2016). While it began as a joke between the two creators, Barbie Savior has become a resource for development organizations looking to educate their new volunteers on how to approach social media ethics in the field and to disabuse them of the ideas Barbie Savior represents (Zane, 2016).
Figure 2. Barbie Savior Instagram post.
Barbie Savior is an interesting case study because it uses the concepts of digital activism to draw attention to the harmful usages of social media in the development sector. It almost flips the concept on its head. The voluntourists who think they are spreading awareness on social media - or perhaps they do not think that and are purely doing it for personal gain – are being made fun of by a separate digital campaign to raise awareness of harmful development practices. “Putting Barbie Savior side by side with real voluntourists’ practices in their photo-taking and photo-posting therefore highlights the emergence of a reverse gaze on voluntourists, reflecting the increased awareness and surveillance on online social media platforms” (Sin and He, 2019, p. 230).
Barbie takes action
Due to the popularity of the account and the demand for knowledge about posting ethically, Barbie Savior teamed up with Radi-Aid to curate a ‘social media guide’ that includes both appropriate and inappropriate ways of representing one’s volunteer experiences abroad. Titled “How To Communicate The World: A Social Media Guide For Volunteers and Travelers”, the guide includes four key principles – promote dignity, gain informed consent, question your intentions, and bring down stereotypes – along with a ‘checklist’ to consider before posting on social media (Radi-Aid 2017). The collaboration could not go out without providing at least one piece of satirical content, however. At the top of the dedicated webpage is a video called “How To Get More Likes On Social Media”, which portrays a young white woman traveling through Africa trying her best to get the perfect selfie in order to get more “likes” on social media. The video has over 361,000 views on YouTube and ultimately offers an “illustration of how not to behave in the context of an international volunteer excursion” (Schwarz and Richey, 2019, p. 1936).
Figure 3. Radi-Aid webpage featuring the social media guide with Barbie Savior and the “How To Get More Likes On Social Media” video.
This effort is important to note because rather than simply raise awareness of the harmful behaviors taking place online by voluntourists, Barbie Savior and Radi-Aid “attempt to carve out space for ethical alternatives, buttressed through the previous work done by their campaigns” (Schwarz and Richey, 2019, p. 1936).
Power to the people – Foucault’s theory of power, knowledge and discourse
Social media is creating new ways of interpreting power dynamics as the world becomes more globalized and less distant. When a friend posts something problematic, it may be hard to identify it at first, but when those problematic behaviors get called out by a popular Instagram account, they become a lot more evident. Barbie Savior is exposing the massive power dynamics that lie within the international volunteer industry by showcasing what has been known and researched for years through funny, digestible, and relatable content. By using the character of Barbie, the creators diffused any personal offense that could be taken by the account’s audience. Doing so gave them the ability to unearth the true power dynamics at play – the white savior has power over the ‘uncivilized’, ‘unconnected’, ‘undignified’ African.
This notion of power lies within Foucault’s framework of power, knowledge and discourse. Foucault argues that since “we can only have a knowledge of things if they have meaning, it is discourse – not the things-in-themselves – which produces knowledge” (Hall, 1997, p. 73). In the example of Barbie Savior, Barbie, and social media for that matter, is used as a tool, or portal, for these power dynamics to be acknowledged by those who do not have the existing knowledge to recognize the harmful actions of those on these volunteer excursions. According to Foucault, “Knowledge does not operate in a void. It is put to work, through certain technologies and strategies of application, in specific situations, historical contexts and institutional regimes” (Hall, 1997, p. 76).
Barbie Savior and other satirical digital activism campaigns present a new strategy for sparking conversations about these important topics, and they have generated avenues for reaching audiences that have most likely never considered the negative implications of volunteering in the ‘Third World’. Whether the audience is comprised of current volunteers, former volunteers, ‘hopeful-to-be’ volunteers, or those who do not know anything about international volunteering, Barbie Savior and other satirical digital activism campaigns serve as important and necessary modes of education, and therefore power, knowledge and discourse transmission.
By illuminating the white-savior complex on social media platforms perpetuated by development volunteers, and by doing so through the use of digilantism, satirical digital activism campaigns are useful, effective, and necessary resources for development education and training, and they should be considered so more thoughtfully by practitioners of development. In the meantime, Barbie shall continue her adventures through Africa one selfie at a time.
