Boycotting in the Age of the Internet

Graphic by JC Marquez

For centuries, various organizations have used the tactic of boycotting as a way to advocate for economic, political, and social issues.

Famous instances of boycotting may come to mind, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, which protested segregated seating during the Civil Rights Movement. Or the Delano Grape Strike of 1965, when the National Farm Workers Association called for the boycott of goods made by the companies that employed farmworkers. The NFWA did so in pursuit of better wages for farmworkers in Delano, California. Although having existed for a long time, the act of boycotting did not receive a name until 1880.

The term is named after retired British army Capt. Charles Cuningham Boycott, a land agent in County Mayo, Ireland. According to The Comhairle Contae Mhaigh Eo Mayo City Council, issues arose in 1880 because the tenants of the land Boycott managed began refusing to pay the high rent he had set. After the brutal evictions of multiple families and urging from the president of the Irish Land League, tenants began to use passive resistance against Boycott to resolve their problems. 

 The Civil Rights activists involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott were able to bring attention to the inhumanity of Jim Crow. The NFWA had millions of Americans refusing to buy grapes until farmworkers signed union contracts in 1970, and Capt. Boycott eventually left Ireland after being ostracized by his tenants and the community in County Mayo. Results such as these catapulted boycotting into the 21st century.  

UTRGV Management Adjunct Lecturer Djordje Djordjevic said that boycotting has changed drastically in the online era. Although boycotting was already a fixture of activism, the introduction of the internet transformed how it operates.

“The internet came and for the first time, you don’t need to have a local boycott of something,” Djordjevic said. “Now, even if it is not shared on the news, there is still information online.” 

According to Djordjevic, people may now organize to boycott globally, whereas before the internet, they mostly only had access to local or national news. The internet amplified the visibility of incidents happening around the world. An issue only needs to go viral for millions to hear about it and for activism to begin. 

Djordjevic said that most of the issues boycotted online nowadays are political. He mentioned how there consistently is news about companies violating environmental regulations or using unhealthy ingredients, yet that is not the focus when boycotting a company.  

“[Boycotting] has basically become about political issues,” Djordjevic said. “It’s about the left and the right. If you look at the last ten boycotts that are big in the U.S., [they] don’t have anything to do with the articles [about the environment]. … You hear about political issues over and over and over again.” 

Djordjevic expressed skepticism about this approach’s effectiveness. He said a company can not inherently change society or fix a political issue. It can only change it’s stance on it. In his opinion, a consumer’s boycotting power diminishes when they boycott for a political issue instead of a problem within the company. 

“McDonald’s can decide tomorrow to change their menu and use healthier alternatives, but McDonald’s can not stop a war in a different country,” Djordjevic said. “McDonald’s does not necessarily have the power or the necessity to change something in the world. They should have an opinion, but it’s a company, not a person. What a company can decide is what it does.” 

Djordjevic believes that choosing to boycott for any reason is a personal decision. He said boycotting is valuable because it is the easiest way to show agreement or disagreement with a company’s practices.  

“Boycotting for any reason is good,” Djordjevic said. “If consumers boycott products based on anything [companies] are doing wrong, in the long run, it’s a good thing.” 

UTRGV Advertising and Public Relations sophomore Camila Sobrevilla is one of those consumers participating in boycotting. Sobrevilla said that the first time she heard about boycotting was in 2020 when the Black Lives Matter movement gained mainstream popularity.

 “I learned about boycotting through the internet,” Sobrevilla said. “I learned about its consequences and how to partake in boycotting.” 

Sobrevilla said consumers can show their alliance to a cause by choosing to boycott. She has found causes to lend her support to through social media, such as the ongoing conflict between the Palestinian and Israeli governments.  

“I found out by logging into Instagram and realizing that everyone was posting about the attack from Hamas on Israel,” Sobrevilla said. “Then I went and searched online through different sources about the actual conflict that had happened on October 7th and everything else that surged after that initial attack.” 

Sobrevilla has been boycotting Starbucks and McDonald’s because of the two companies’ alleged support of the Israeli government.

“It’s been important to just stop going at all to show my support for Palestine,” Sobrevilla said. “I think that a lot of people may be under the assumption that boycotting doesn’t make too much of an impact or a difference. … People are still going. There is still a line at Starbucks and the stocks are not really going down too much but you’re making a statement by boycotting.” 

Sobrevilla said that the internet has been a crucial tool in the dissemination of information and knowledge. The average consumer can now open any social media app and receive endless information about any issue they wish to learn about. It goes hand in hand with boycotting since consumers do not have to wait to be incited towards boycotting by a sophisticated organization or movement. 

According to Djordjevic and Sobrevilla, consumers can inform themselves about what they want to advocate for; boycotting is now personal. 

“I think social media has been a good platform for all of these issues happening in the world,” Sobrevilla said. “It’s kind of an initial spark for people to actually go and read about these topics and become informed, well read and form an opinion for themselves about anything that’s occurring in the world.”