Analysis of Malcom Gladwell´s Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not eBe Tweeted

In “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted,” Malcolm Gladwell discusses the social media and society changed how people and groups of interact with each other. The four students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. The Woolworth’s lunch counter denied service because of their race. They refused to leave until the dinner closed and protest grew. The four students protested widespread and people from different states started to join in four students. They were also protested to happen without social networking. There was incident that people protested against the communist government and received through Twitter Revolution. Gladwell emphasizes the importance of social media for

To build his argument, he ties in similar examples from history that involve either social or political activism. Not only does he connect these examples to the “weak ties” that the platforms of social media are built upon, but he also offers insight to his readers, the general public, and social-networking gurus (Gladwell 551). In his essay, “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted”, Gladwell creates a rhetorically effective argument that illustrates why social networking is not an adequate way to conduct social or political activism.

Gladwell sends a very strong message about how social media cannot cause a major revolution in society; likewise, Baron is sending across the same message. Revolutions continue even after the internet is shut down. As crowds gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, Baron describes how they “continued to grow during the five days that the Mubarak government shut down the internet” (330). The crowds increased in size without the help of social media. Somehow, word got out and people came to support the cause. Also, Baron brings into realization that Americans are too involved in the world of social media. Americans fail to realize all of the news that they are missing because they “can’t seem to survive without the constant stimulus of digital multitasking” (Baron 330). American citizens are too busy tweeting about what they ate for breakfast to worry about the hungry that is going on overseas. They depend on social networking to tell them the news rather that picking up a newspaper and reading about what is going on in their country or maybe even overseas in a different country.

This paper analyzes and responds to Malcolm Gladwell’s The New Yorker article, “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted,” concluding that though Gladwell provides a decent context for his argument, it is ultimately made less effective because of its comparisons and underlying assumptions. This paper shows how Gladwell’s comparison of contemporary social movements to those of a prior non-digital age works against his main argument by drawing an unfair parallel in which the two systems of comparison are far too different to draw any binary conclusions. The purpose of this paper is to consider how rhetoric, including the use of ethos and pathos, can influence how readers think about issues of social and political justice.

“Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted.” by Malcolm Gladwell focuses on previous examples of activism that occurs with and without the use of social media. The first event he talks about is the Greensboro, North Carolina sit in. To sum of the event, 4 African American college students were denied service. During this time the Civil Rights Movement was taking place, so the African American community were fighting against being segregated and discriminated everywhere they went. This event was used in Gladwell’s favor to show that this event happened without the help of social media. Gladwell uses the story of a person in need of a bone marrow transplant to explain how thousands of people got to sign up for the campaign. The simple

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

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

Malcolm Gladwell’s article "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will not be Tweeted" raises a significant question about the prospective contribution of web-based social networking to the advent of progressive social movement and change. Gladwell bold declaration that "the revolution will not be tweeted" is reflective of his view that social media has no useful application in serious activism. Contrasting various elements of the “high-stakes” lunch-counter protests in Greensboro, North Carolina in the 1960’s with the “low-stakes” activism achieved through social media, Gladwell concludes that effective social movements powerful enough to impose change on longstanding societal forces require both “strong ties” among participants and the

The main argument of the Gladwell in this article is that social media is not effective in “high-risk” activism because it lacks strong bonds and hierarchical command structure. Although he agrees that social media can bring a “limited” change which has far less consequences than the “high risk” activism and do not require a higher level of commitment. He thinks that social media is not an effective enemy of status quo.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s 2010 New Yorker article, “small change: why the revolution will not be tweeted”, Gladwell explores change throughout

Hierarchical organizations, like high-risk activism, allow individuals to obtain strong ties. Malcolm Gladwell argues in his essay “Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted”, that technology cannot be used for high-risk activism because it is not disciplined enough to be used for strong bonds; however, technology can be used for low-risk activism. He speaks about people having thousands of friends on Facebook, but those online friends are not the real friends who will hold strong ties. Without discipline, movements would not be considered high-risk activism because strong hierarchy is consists of moments without violence. In the story “Return to Hayneville”, Gregory Orr explains the civil right movement that he cooperated with was a civil rights group for racially integrated delegates at

In his article, “Small Change", Malcolm Gladwell claims through his use of acknowledging the counterclaim, sequencing, and juxtapositioning that although social media seems to have reinvented true activism and produces small change, its weak ties and hierarchy shows how it is not true activism and does not bring huge change. In the middle of his article, Gladwell builds his credibility by acknowledging the counterclaim. After saying that social media platforms promote weak ties between people that do not normally associate with each other face to face, he takes note that there are advantages to weak ties and agrees saying, “Our acquaintances - not our friends - are our greatest source of new ideas and information . . . it is terrific at the

In the reading “Small Change : Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted,” Malcolm Gladwell discusses the act of four brave college students and their act of social activism. The four freshmen from a local all black college sat down at a counter in a diner near Greensboro, North Carolina and were denied service because of their race. The students refused to leave and instead started a protest there at the restaurant. The numbers of people protesting with the four young men increased as the story spreaded across states. The story of the sit in was done without the use of any technology or social network. Gladwell discussed the effectiveness of the sit-in because of the relationship between

As a logical consequence, Postmes and Brunsting (2002) reasoned that the Internet is changing society because people's cognitive processes, triggered by access to information and communication, replace the strong social ties that traditionally underpin committed activism. In simpler words, in the past, humanity used the herd instinct as the main driving force behind committed forms of activism. Thanks to the Internet, we climb another step or three on the evolutionary ladder, and simply do away with the herd instinct and replace it with reason. The argument, if put this way, does not sound particularly strong. What can be taken away is that social media is still evolving, that social media changes the way we – or most of us communicate, that social media is used in social and political activism, and that the Internet increases quantitative if not qualitative access to information.

Some, including Malcolm Gladwell, a famous Canadian journalist, uphold a negative view that social media is not capable to make real social activisms. In the article, Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted, Gladwell states, “the platforms of social media are built around weak ties,” (Gladwell 406) whereas high-risk activisms in the past concern more of the strong ties. In other words, Malcolm believes that closed relationships are critically required for the activisms while social media only provides distant connections among acquaintances. Therefore, weak ties offered by social media, “seldom lead to high-risk activism”