R8: Social Change

To compare Martin Luther King, Civil Rights movement, and all of the activism that came with it to social media activism in this day and age is, in my mind, utterly ridiculous. This is the attempt that Malcom Gladwell makes in his essay, "Small Change." In this essay, Gladwell's main argument is that activism now is nothing like it used to be, and social media activism's main task is to can do get a bunch of people rallied behind trivial topics. Gladwell starts out his essay by discussing the Freedom Summer, which started with four boys who decided to organize a sit in with themselves at a lunch table in a cafe. The sit in gained notice, and eventually spread to places 50 miles away, with 70,000 students participated. It was described as a fever- you couldn't stop it from spreading, and everyone wanted in. He ends this introduction with the line, "These events in the early sixties became a civil-rights war that engulfed the South for the rest of the decade—and it happened without e-mail, texting, Facebook, or Twitter" (Caldwell). While these events certainly did come about without any form of digital media, they were not simply by word of mouth. Events were planned through letters, newspapers, churches, and more. 

Gladwell thinks that we have forgotten what true activism is. High-risk activism, where people would get attacked, shot at and murdered- that is real activism. There are strong ties to people involved. According to Gladwell, social media activism is simply weak-tied and not effective. Often times people don't know who their followers on Twitter are, or are simply acquaintances with friends on Facebook, rather than actually being friends. He claims that the way to get these people to do something- people you barely know, if at all- is by not asking too much of them. To ask them to do something that won't cost them but something trivial, and will 9 times out of 10 allow them to gain acknowledgement on social media. 

Gladwell also argues in his essay that social media is a way to build networks, not hierarchies. There are no leaders; discussions are made, group think is applied, and everyone comes to a consensus as one, rather than any real leaders stepping up. He compares this idea to Al Qaeda, saying, "similarly, Al Qaeda was most dangerous when it was a unified hierarchy. Now that it has dissipated into a network, it has proved far less effective" (Caldwell). 

While there is no way for someone to get shot at over Facebook, and no one can be chased down on Twitter, these outlets and the like are still significant social movement outlets. The #BlackLivesMatter movement is a social change movement that came solely from social media- it's literally a hashtag. Social media has been used in this movement to raise awareness and get information out. Videos of brutal police killings have been posted online, fueling offline protests like Ferguson, and even the ones in Baltimore. These protests are organized both on and off line. For those who want to support the movements but stay out of the line of fire, social media is a great way to follow along with them as well. 

Social media is an extremely important factor in helping this movement reach its goals. It is a way to organize people, to let them know what they can do when they are looking for a way to help. DeRay McKesson brings up the point that "we aren't born woke, something wakes us up, and for some people, that something is a tweet or a Facebook post." This makes the point that although people may not be actively moving through Facebook or Twitter, these sites can get them to get up and actively do something. 

Cited
Gladwell, Malcolm, “Small Change,” The New Yorker, 10/4/10, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-3.

Opam, Kwame, “Building Tools for Digital Activism” 11/29/16, The Verge, http://www.theverge.com/a/verge-2021/deray-mckesson-interview-black-lives-matterdigital-activism.