Notes

On the Streets or Online?
In his essay, “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not be Tweeted,” New York Times bestselling author and writer for The New Yorker Malcolm Gladwell encourages his readers to understand strengths of social media as a tool in social activism but to keep it in its proper place and not abandon person-to-person organizing. Social media can form ties between people, says Gladwell, but they are not strong enough to generate perseverance through difficulty. Social media can form networks, but they will not succeed against a highly organized and well-equipped enemy.
Gladwell begins by recounting the story of the sit-ins of the 1960s civil rights movement as an example of what can be accomplished without modern internet communication. He shows the dangers the sit-in protesters faced and believes that the friendships between participants were what kept them committed. Gladwell then presents the most common view of the use of social media for organizing: that it is the most important and useful tool of the modern age. Explaining his position, he says that some activist organizations are held together by strong ties, those between people who know each other closely or have some powerful bond between them, such as the sit-in participants. These strong ties spur activists to take risks they would avoid without social pressure. Other movements, Gladwell suggests, form from weak ties, such as those between acquaintances. He believes these large, unstructured networks are composed of low-commitment participants, excellent for kids of activism that require pressure or intimidation without danger or leadership. In contrast, Gladwell thinks, strong-tie organizations tend to form hierarchical structures and are better equipped for work that is costly and demanding of an orderly approach. Gladwell believes many people mistakenly social media as a platform that lends itself easily to making strong ties and unifying philosophy. He writes that some activism, especially against powerful and well-organized opponents, requires a top-down chain of command impossible to generate using Twitter or Facebook.

More than Hashtags Needed
I agree with Malcolm Gladwell in his analysis of the use of social media in modern social activism and especially astute in his assessment of human motivation in undertaking various tasks. I do not think social media is a useful tool for making connections between people strong enough to force them to risk loss. Just as essentially, I do not believe social media is capable of forming the chain of command necessary to run a truly radical movement in the face of stiff opposition.
At the beginning of the article, he shows that organizing huge numbers of people is possible without modern communication methods, through the example of the civil rights era sit-ins. He persuasively dismantles the myth of the critical role played by Twitter and other social media platforms in recent global uprisings. The people of the countries were not actually the ones using the platforms, according to Gladwell. He provides clear pre-internet examples of movements that choose the network structure and suffered for it. The right-wing East German independence movements and the Palestinian Liberation Organization both used a network structure; both were or are generally ineffective. Another section of his article I find convincing is his explanation of the difference between strong and weak interpersonal ties, and their relation to social activism. People are far more likely to take big risks if they have a friend or two keeping them going with peer pressure. Faced with his evidence, I have come to agree with him. Gladwell is right. Those who seek social change must not abandon traditional organizations.