How COVID-19 and recent events have energized online advocacy

In life and in work, we often seek out catalysts for change. Something or someone to help us think differently, access our creative side and rediscover our passion for what we do.

In work, we often look at new team members as catalysts for change, who bring fresh thinking and different perspectives. In life, it can be a little bit more difficult to find that arbiter of transformation.

But this year, we haven’t had to go looking for change. Life has brought us significant, paradigm shift-inducing, irrevocable catalysts for change, as millions across the globe continue to wrestle with COVID-19 and Americans try to find our place in the fight for social justice and racial equality.

It can be difficult to find silver linings in the pandemic and in the tragic events that led to the renewed fight for social justice—although the latter, while long overdue, is a step in the right direction. But perhaps one silver lining is the unified collectives emerging online in response to these catalysts for change.

The restrictions on social gatherings that are necessary to flatten the curve of COVID-19 cases have put digital communication at the heart of everything we do. Social media—once supplemental to our daily lives—is now central.