Malcolm Gladwell's Small Change

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.

Technology is being used all across the globe in everyday life. With the development of technology, the development of social media became very popular. In “Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted”, Malcolm Gladwell stresses that “real” revolutions do not depend on social media to be resolved or started; however, small revolutions can depend on social media or networking. Although Dennis Baron is sending the same message in “Reforming Egypt in 140 Characters?” there is one point that Baron makes that differs from that of Gladwell’s; Baron actually believes that a game changing revolution can occur with the use of social media.

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.

In his article “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted”, published in the New York Times on October 2010, Malcolm Gladwell looks closely into the notion of social change and the different means to achieve it. He makes a clear distinction between traditional activism, which implies sacrifices and physical devotion, and current activism, based on social networks. The writer considers that “social media can’t provide what social change has always required” (Gladwell, paragraph 1).

One of the main arguments in Malcolm Gladwell's "Small Change" is that social media has a huge impact on activism positively and negatively.In the 1960's it took 10s of thousands of people to come to make a change like the sit-ins but now with twitter and facebook, people just have to group together and contact the network they want, to make changes.It's a lot safer to get a point across on social media then taking the risks people took back then to get a point across. Social media has no real sense of authority so they don't make as much of a movement as the N.A.A.C.P did. With social media comes no organization or structure which causes false information to be passed around. In the end, both types of activism have their positive and negative

“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

Debunking the myth of hierarchical necessity brings us back to the question regarding the role of social media. Gladwell elegantly states that social media is "not a natural enemy of the status quo." Thus, the question becomes whether social media can in fact contribute to the process of forming a significant social movement and effective social action, as opposed to whether it can serve as a satisfactory substitute for that process. Referring to the previous example, a phone is not a branch of government, but a phone if properly utilized can mobilize a large

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 Malcom Gladwell’s “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not be Retweeted” he argues that social media has negatively impacted activism. For the most part, I disagree with his argument, however I do disagree with some of his points. He uses multiple examples of protests from the past, like the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project in 1964, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s movement, the sit-in in the Greensboro case, which quickly spread like wild fire from four college students to thousands of people all over the country simply by using strong connections unlike those online today. Gladwell also uses examples of terrorist groups like the ones in Afghanistan, the Red Brigades in Italy, and even the movement that led to the tear down of the Berlin

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

The 2011 uprising in Egypt was in many ways a traditional brick-and-mortar revolution, but with a cyber-twist to it: based on their statistical analysis of a large body of tweets related to the 2011 uprising in Egypt, Starbird and Palen (2012) observed that activists used Twitter as an important tool to share ideas and information with like-minded people, because Twitter allows a high number of activists interact using its retweet and other mechanisms. In this case, Twitter was used among participants and supporters of a traditional mass movement to bypass government controlled

No matter how much potential social media has for political or societal change it is important to criticize its negative aspects. An article written by Andrea Moncada, begins her argument with the question has social media had the same impact on advocacy. Similar to Gladwell’s points of view, Moncada states, “social media can help get the word around, but participants must be united by a core message and traditional methods…” This source of uncertainty is the basis for its support and is understandable.

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”