Why The Revolution Will Not Be 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

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.

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

However, at the same time, he claims that the powerless cannot achieve anything without the help from the big guy. He believes that any type of movement that uses social media as its main platform simply cannot have a “leader” and can never have a strong strategy. Gladwell’s argument is extremely one sided. The majority of the points he claims are all the postives of activism before social media and the few times he brings up activism on social media, it is incredibly negative. His main point is that social media is the weaker platform because it is simple and fast. It allows people to think that they are helping and becoming a part of a movement simply because they clicked a

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

Thank you Dean Christy Hanson, the Institute for Global Citizenship, planning committee, fellow panelists, and distinguished guest Malcolm Gladwell for coming together for the 2014 International Round Table. A panel to discuss the grounding roots of ‘effective revolutions’ in no way feels revolutionary at Macalester. As an institution founded on a pillar of civic engagement, we protest, we gather and we surrender ourselves, our time and our labor to causes that we support. But at Macalester it often seems we are asked what we do, instead of why we do it. This ‘why’ question, however, is essential in the quest for understanding how revolutions start and what forces motivate communities into action. Today, we millennials extend arms or should I say “likes” to support our causes through social media. We join Facebook events, retweet 140 character blurbs from our favorite politicians and ‘tumble’ our time away reading the latest blog posts of like-minded friends. But do these social interactions produce the momentum and manpower to produce revolutions similar to a civil rights movement that engulfed the southern United States for nearly a decade?

With America’s history of people fighting for their rights, we have become accustomed to the idea that activism needs to be extreme; to cause riots, have aggression, and for people to be put in jail to make a point. We have created an image that there needs to be a fierce willingness to fight, in order for activism to be effective. As Malcolm Gladwell describes in “Why the Revolution Should not be Tweeted”, he reminds us of what ‘real’ activism is and how other generations have risked their lives to make a difference, in both their lives and the future of America. He does not think that activists can be considered true activists if they are non-violent when protesting for their rights. However, Gladwell should consider that protesting

His outlook is that people should be straightforward about a situation and confront it head-on. He shows his viewpoint in the following quote: “Boycotts and sit-ins and nonviolent confrontations-which were the weapons of choice for the civil rights movement-, are high risk strategies. They leave little room for conflict and error” (Gladwell 237). A chief example of how social media can raise awareness, but failed to reciprocate a major change in the world for the better was the trend called the “ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.”

Successful memes facilitate humans to learn, acquire, and transmit new ideas and behaviors. In Susan Blackmore’s essay “Small Creature,” she proposes that memes are the ideas and beliefs that pass on through generation. Moreover, she believes that humans’ behaviors are greatly influenced and solely dominated by memes. But there is an important omission that left untouched in her essay. Blackmore lacks a clear explanation of what exactly contribute to the success of a meme’s transmission. However, when exploring in the Malcolm Gladwell’s “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted,” we could find out that he suggests many valuable illustrations of how successful memes are transmitted and what ingredients contribute to the success. In his interesting piece, he regards successful memes as strong ties, while unsuccessful one as weak ties. In a strong-tie relationship, people keep frequent contact in-person and have shared personal history, whereas a weak-tie is with tenuous relationship. Furthermore, He argues that social media and online communications connect people with weak ties that do not profoundly influence real social change and justice. On the other hand, Gladwell cites Civil Rights Movement as a strong-tie phenomenon that motivates people to devote real sacrifice. To answer the question then of what makes one meme popular and another one not, even though memes can be transmitted discretionarily, personal

Walter Payton famously said “We are stronger together than we are alone”. In Malcolm Gladwell’s article “Small Change- Why the Revolution Will Not be Tweeted”, Gladwell discusses the pros and cons of a situation in which social activism is amplified when combined with social media. Throughout his article he states various reasons why social media would not be an effective way to get people to be involved in a large-scale revolution. He also provides a lot of examples that show why social media is not a good platform to start a revolution. By using historical examples, the “strong tie” phenomenon, and through his constant skeptic tone desiring to uncover the truth, Gladwell effectively persuades his readers that social media has had more of a bad influence on social activism than beneficial one.

Gladwell provided an example of successful revolution in the past when there was no existence of social media and some current examples when social media like Facebook and Twitter were popular in most of people's daily life while they were not as useful as they were claimed to be so in the revolution. By listing these examples, the author would like to to support his statement that social media is ineffective in revolution. The first example is the revolution against the racial discrimination in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960. The revolution started with the sit-in protest of four college students in a lunch counter. It is a typical and successful example of revolution without the help of social media. The revolution grew quickly that it

Malcom Gladwell article “small change” estates an injustice that happened in the United states of America. Some examples wooed be A&T sit in that occurred because some students were refused serves in an all-white diner. this sit in started and it created a great movement that change the country. Gladwell states all of this to make the point that social medias a nonexistent tool in the time can’t make USA today he believes that the real activists are the ones that work with the people they know and have strong ties with.

Gladwell argues that real-life activism is the result of strong ties among the persons involved, enabling them to come together and be high risk activism towards social change. But depending on critical friends the more friends there was, the better to join the protest against the cause to spread sit-ins through the South without the use of social media. Gladwell states “these events in the early sixties became a civil-rights war that engulfed the south

In discussions of using social media, one controversial issue has been the impact of social media in modern day revolutions. On the one hand, Malcolm Gladwell argues that social networks cannot establish a connection between people, and it doesn’t have any authority organization to take charge of modern social network environment. On the other hand, social media encourage communication and collaboration. Others even maintain that social network has been become a most important tools of communication in modern society. My own view is that social media can promote social activism development now. Malcolm Gladwell’s theory that social media are not able to help change social movements or promote social development, because it reduce deep connection among people and even doesn’t have a hierarchical organization is overly simplistic, because not all social media make connection broken, and social network also do

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