I’ve finally had a chance to read the recent Malcolm Gladwell article in The New Yorker, entitled “Small Change – Why the revolution will not be tweeted”. While I respect Malcolm Gladwell quite a bit, I do often disagree with his views on certain subjects, usually those involving social media. The last great debate he sparked occurred when he called out Chris Anderson (author of the Long Tail), essentially dismissing Anderson’s “free” economy theory and views on the future role of journalism. The ensuing discussion and ripple effect this created throughout the social Internet is what I found most interesting. I’m hoping a similar “long-tail” discussion will evolve out of his latest piece.
Here’s the scoop
Malcolm Gladwell, with his brilliant instinct for picking thought-provoking topics, wrote a New Yorker article focused on the nature of social activism, and the role of social media in fostering activism. Citing social media evangelists who champion the role of social media in various recent social movements, Gladwell points out that there is an important distinction between true friendship and weak ties, such as those created on Facebook and Twitter. His main point seems to be that social media sites help manage acquaintances or former friends, or people you are interested in, but not necessarily people with whom you might engage in a risky behavior such as social activism. In the article he downplays the perceived role of Twitter in events such as the Iran Election and points out the minuscule average individual contributions (9 cents) on the Facebook page of the Save Darfur Coalition, which has 1.2 million members.
That being said, Malcolm does point out that “there is strength in weak ties, as the sociologist Mark Granovetter has observed. Our “acquaintances not our friends”are our greatest source of new ideas and information. The Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvelous efficiency. It’s terrific at the diffusion of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, seamlessly matching up buyers and sellers, and the logistical functions of the dating world. But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.”
My Take
I actually think that the entire article fails to properly address the bold statement made in the title: “Small Change – Why the revolution will not be tweeted”. I have three main reasons for this.
- Low individual risk does not necessarily imply unsuccessful activism. It seems as though Malcolm is directly associating the outcome of a revolution with the level of individual risk. It is quite possible to be successful in your activist efforts these days without taking on significant individual risk, so long as you have a solid network in place to distribute its weight. As long as you’re successful, what difference does it make whether or not your individual actions were risky? The end is more important than the means when it comes to activism. Why not leverage the fact that we live in an era where we can distribute the risk exponentially through social networks when trying to achieve a particular outcome? I donated 5$ to Haiti via SMS, which I saw my network doing through Twitter. I will be the first to admit that I likely would not have donated if it wasn’t easy. My individual effort was negligible, but within the first 36 hours of the earthquake, nearly $10 million was raised through various micro donation SMS efforts.
- Social media activism can augment “high-risk” non-social media activism to new heights. I do agree that the individual bonds of people belonging to an online social network with a common cause may not be as strong as that of an in-person, hierarchical brotherhood organization with a clear mission. However, one of the most important elements Malcolm seems to have missed is that these so-called “weak” online social networks can significantly enhance the efforts of “high-risk” activists on the ground. The two are not meant to be mutually exclusive. If the black Greensboro students that Malcolm refers to lived in the era of social media, their efforts would have been augmented by the people that were tweeting, blogging, video taping and sms’ing their every move to a global Internet population. My point here is that high-risk activists will always exist. They are now joined by the formerly “on the fence” activists who don’t necessarily want get involved in high-risk activities, but are willing to play a small role nonetheless. I think what Malcolm doesn’t quite understand is that these “weak-tie” social networks serve as a powerful addition rather than a replacement to high-risk activism.
- The nationality of the internet is changing. The dominant voice will soon be that of the developing world. I just wrote a blog post on this last week so I won’t repeat myself. Essentially, mobile devices combined with Internet access are providing people in the developing world with a voice for the first time in history. The remaining growth of the internet is primarily going to come from these areas of the world as that is where the majority of the world’s population resides. We haven’t even seen the beginning of true activism.