Journalist and speaker, Malcolm Gladwell, has worked as a staff writer at The New Yorker for twenty years now. In addition to being a staff writer, Gladwell is also the author of five books which focus primarily on sociology and psychology. In February of 2000, Gladwell released his debut (and most successful) book, The Tipping Point, and it gained national popularity as well as earned its spot on The New York Times Best Seller list. The Tipping Point seeks to explain how a trend and/or an idea, no matter how old or new, reaches a point where it “tips” and then begins to spread rapidly. Throughout the book, Gladwell examines several social epidemics in the world including the unanticipated revival of the Hush Puppies shoes, teen smoking in …show more content…
It reached number 10 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, resulting in her eighth most commercially successful song at the time. However, now in 2016, some debate may arise on which one of the singer’s songs is actually the most successful. Thirteen years after its original release, the song has regained an enormous amount of popularity due to the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context. This past summer, the #SoGoneChallenge began circulating all over social media with several athletes, comedians, actors, musicians, and more taking part in it. Since the creation of the challenge, “So Gone” has seen well over a 129% increase in streams on Spotify, a 309% boost in YouTube views, and a remarkable 407% spike in sales (Muhammad). The presence of Gladwell’s three rules of epidemics contributed to this abrupt upsurge in …show more content…
The Power of Context serves as a great explanation for this. As stated by Gladwell, “Epidemics are sensitive to the conditions and circumstances of the times and places in which they occur” (Gladwell 139). Monica released “So Gone” in the early spring of 2003 while the #SoGoneChallenge gained popularity in the summer of 2016. Shortly after the release of “So Gone”, several events including a tornado outbreak sequence, the Riyadh compound bombings, and the killing of 33 civilians in Morocco due to a terrorist attack took place. These serious occurrences in the outside world overshadowed the success of the song. Although major outside events still exist in 2016 such as the Olympics and the buildup of the up-and-coming presidential election, this generation of teens and young adults seem to occasionally attempt to shed light on a numerous amount of situations. For example, some of the participants of the #SoGoneChallenge have actually addressed those events in their versions of the challenge in joking ways. Also, the presence of social media today increases the circulation of them. Likewise, social media serves as a platform for the aspiring rappers who partake in the challenge. Monica, who currently has 4.4 million followers on Instagram, has reposted her favorite videos which may persuade people to follow suit
Does social media “shrink the world” by bringing us closer together? In his article Small Change, Malcom Gladwell asserts that social media might be connecting more people, but the bonds it forms allow us to stay comfortably separate and avoid impacting meaningful social reform. Gladwell makes it apparent that he believes social media and revolutions are unsuited for each other. His article, written just two months before the beginning of the Arab Spring, was written in response to what some contemporaries have dubbed, “The Twitter Revolution” in Moldova. This revolution, as well as another in Iran, was heralded as examples of the merits of social media, with some even nominating Twitter for the Nobel Peace Prize due to their belief that Twitter had played a major role in these uprisings. Gladwell writes against a sentiment of righteousness and accomplishment that advocates of social media maintain in an attempt to convince people that the true motivation behind social change is conviction. He raises the point that while it is exceedingly easy for someone to join a cause, such as hitting a ‘like’ button, it is far more effortless for them to quit. This sentiment seems to be fueled mostly by opinion, looking only at how social media did not cause revolutions and avoiding analysis regarding how
In, “The Tipping Point,” Gladwell employs the rhetorical appeal, logos, to prove that individuals can make enormous changes in society. Gladwell identifies “connectors” using logos through statistics, “Anyone who has ever acted, in other words, can be linked to Bacon in an average of under three steps.” (Gladwell: page 47) When Gladwell expresses that Bacon is a connector, he uses a numerical value to demonstrate how most people that act are connected to Bacon. Using statistics through logos makes Gladwell’s argument more sophisticated and believable with numerical values.
The author, Gladwell's, research focuses on KIPP Academy a public middle school in the South Bronx, New York City. Children enrolled in KIPP live in the poorest neighborhoods and are randomly chosen by lottery to join the school. Their goal is for students to acquire an opportunity of education similar to higher class student. KIPP proves that despite their economic situation, students can achieve high academic grades with time and dedication. They believe students should spend more time in school studying to become successful. Students vacations are limited since they make student’s learning procrastinate
On “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell discuss different concepts that explain the sudden spread of a product or idea. Gladwell explains that this sudden and instantaneous spread is very similar to an epidemic. Gladwell uses the examples of fashion trends, the success of a book, the decrease of crime in New York City, smoking and the increase of suicide rate. To explain “the three rules of the Tipping Point, the law of the few, the stickiness factor and the power of context” (29) influence how a trend, product or action takes off as an epidemic. In the power of context Gladwell introduces a different way of being a connector. That one person can connect to many groups (173) and that small groups have the potential
In Malcolm Gladwell’s article “Small Change: The Revolution will not be Tweeted” There is an example of large-scale change which caused by the social media there was Twitter revolution at Moldova, Iran in 2009. People started to use Twitter as a tool for protest the government and it became a huge change. This could be possible because people could argue with more confident when they stand up against government through the Social Media. The Malcolm Gladwell’s response about this kind of social event was “Social media, the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended, making I easier for the powerless to collaborate, coordinate, and give voice to their concerns” (Paragraph 7, Gladwell) Also he called
Malcolm Gladwell’s “Law of the Few” states that there are certain people who are necessary to make an idea, product, or behavior spread to reach its tipping point. These types
Have you ever stopped to look at the world around you and wonder if people see the same things you see in the same light that you do? You and a stranger may both be looking at a poster hung up on the side of a building, but does the picture or message illustrated on that poster carry the same meaning for the both of you? Whether you live in the heart of New York City or in suburban Ft. Lauderdale, there are millions of little details one encounters in their daily routine that are normally ignored or looked over. But for some people, it’s in that one moment of being in the right place at the right time that one of the millions of details normally over looked causes a sudden epiphany. In Malcolm Gladwell’s novel The Tipping Point, he examines
4) How would you relate “the law of the few” to a transition management team?
After reading The Tipping Point, I have learned many important “tips” in marketing. Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, identifies three important concepts based on his deep studies throughout his life: “the Law of the Few”, “the Stickiness Factor”, and “the Power of Context”. These factors play essential roles in deciding if a particular trend will work in widespread popularity. He makes these concepts interesting and understandable.
Society is stocked full of various trends and epidemics. To many, the way in which these trends start is a mystery. As members of a society, we often subconsciously take part in these patterns without questioning our participation. Therefore, people continue to ignore the drastic changes in society, and the reasons why they occur so swiftly. There is a lack of motivation to take a step back and inquire about society as a whole, and rethink one’s actions. In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell effectively discusses and analyzes how and why ideas spread throughout societies using the rhetorical appeals, ethos, pathos and logos.
In the article “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted” by Malcolm Gladwell, he argues that the use of social media to start a revolution doesn’t help the cause to be as big or impactful than it could be. He explains the connection between social media with “weak-ties” versus “strong-ties.” In relation with these “ties,” throughout the article Gladwell goes back and forth from discussing the successful approaches of the Civil Rights Movement and their strategies for their cause without the use of social media, to how ineffective other various organizations in the past and present turned to social media to try their cause.
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell looks at a number of social epidemics and analyzes their build up to the point where they tip. “Tipping” is that point where an epidemic booms, or grows, to its maximum potential. Gladwell begins defining “tipping” with a literal example of the famous shoes, Hush Puppies. Once considered old-fashioned, Hush Puppies experienced a social boom in the mid-90s when hipsters in New York made them trendy again. Gladwell continues explaining “tipping” with a medical epidemic of syphilis in Baltimore. Gladwell introduces us to three essential rules of epidemics: the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor and the Power of Context. The Law of the Few says a key factor in epidemics is the role of the messenger: it
What can one consider being a tipping point in a situation. Is it when a situation changes from bad to worse? Could it be when it changes from good to better? Or could it be from when it changes from a bad situation and all of a sudden it turns around and becomes good? In my essay we are going to explore the tipping point from four different authors: Malcolm Gladwell, Mary G. King, Lynne M. Anderson, and Christine M. Pearson. From subject of: hush puppies, teen suicide, crime, smoking, incivility in the workplace and the black women’s breakthrough into clerical work. There could be many reasons why there were tipping
Criminal case is always tedious when it involves little or no information about the offender, like in the 9/11 terrorist attack which annihilated most of the workers in and damaged the New York Trade Center building. However, in an attempt to identify the offenders, government officials and investigators try out different ways such as criminal profiling and others. Thus, in the New Yorker article, “Dangerous Minds” by Malcolm Gladwell; the author informs the deeper problems with FBI profiling and argues that it is ineffective. He questions the usefulness of criminal profiling, “But how useful is that profile, really?” and uses other criminal cases, group research analyses, and analogies to refute
Do you ever wonder what is the meaning behind what you so proudly sing whenever you hear it? Music is an art form of culture which organizes sound with times It first came around in prehistoric times, however, as times passes, music is drastically changing. As a result, in the last decades music has experienced drastic changes in the themes they are talking about. These changes are due to the generations and what they are living, political and social actions of the time. For example, the decade of the 80s was the rise of hip-hop and rap music from a local phenomenon to a worldwide known genre of music. Previously, a crack cocaine epidemic had stroke major cities in the USA and it coincided with the rise of hip-hop in black communities as these