R8: Social Media Activism and the Weak Tie Phenomenon

In “Small Change,” Malcolm Gladwell asserts that social media is detrimental to an effective social justice movement. He likens true activism to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, where efforts were meticulously planned out and members organized into a hierarchy. After training and experiencing often violent protests, only the most committed activists would stay to carry the movement. This continued attachment to the cause is considered a strong tie. Gladwell notes that social media is a weak tie because it only simulates real change. When people like, share, or retweet social justice rhetoric, they feel as though they helped enough, disincentivizing taking action though things like organized protest.

However, I think that Gladwell has a skewed view of the role of social media in activism. He writes, “The evangelists of social media don’t understand this distinction; they seem to believe that a Facebook friend is the same as a real friend and that signing up for a donor registry in Silicon Valley today is activism in the same sense as sitting at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960.” The average person who talks about the movements they care about via social media do not liken themselves to Martin Luther King Jr. himself, but rather another messenger to amplify the reach of the cause. In addition, our social justices issues aren't nearly at the same magnitude of the 1960s. Protesting segregation has an obvious formula for defiance - attend the places one is segregated from. Fighting disproportionate rates of incarceration based on race does not have a straightforward path because it involves changing police sentiment.

The job of social media is not to be the protest, but to be a means of organizing one. Facebook and Twitter operate in the ideological realm, influencing people to care about a movement in the first place. Deray McKesson, Black Lives Matter activist, suggests that “for so many people, what woke them up was a tweet or a Facebook post, an Instagram post, a picture.” BLM rose to popularity primarily through the #BlackLivesMatter handle and videos of abusive police officers. Social media was and still is full of footage of police mistreating black citizens outside the bounds of the law. As these videos circulated, an increasing share of people grew to see the issues BLM professed about the unequal treatment of citizens based on race. These “weak ties” can inspire people to vote differently.

While Gladwell misunderstood the motivations of social media activism, he was correct about the disorganization of the central message that social media encourages. People hijack social movements all the time for their own agenda, like using the BLM banner to spout anti-white rhetoric. BLM Toronto co-founder Yusra Khogali tweeted that whites are subhuman and are a genetic defect of blackness. Leaders like this give people the impression that BLM is racist when it was originally created to confront inequality in an inclusive way. Social media allowing anyone to participate in a cause rapidly decentralizes the message. Despite the lack of unity new digital platforms create, they remain ultimately critical in bringing attention to social issues and getting the public to care. Facebook, Twitter, and other social media foster the public sphere that people then use to organize physical social movements.

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-matter-digital-activism

Images:

http://5pillarsuk.com/2016/12/25/hamza-yusuf-stokes-controversy-with-comments-about-black-lives-matter-and-political-islam/

http://independence.barcelonas.com/2017/02/16/black-lives-matter-yusra-khogali-white-people-are-sub-human-and-justin-trudeaus-a-white-supremacist/