In Malcolm Gladwell’s essay in The New Yorker, “Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted”, Gladwell reflects on the most important social movement that affected our nation, the Civil Rights Movement. His main premise is that in today’s society, where every news story posted on social media, social issues such as the Black Lives Matter movement or the Women’s March whose stories of protests are posted on these sites have a different kind of fervor than that of social movements today.
The key difference between how the Civil Rights Movement was reported on and how social movements today are reported on is obviously the technology. With the advent of the Internet and the inventions of the Web 2.0 and social media people now have the ability to report on issues that affect them and their communities. The use of smartphones also adds fuel to the fire by allowing us to record audio and visual images to report and share the issues that are occurring around us. According to Gladwell, “The kind of activism associated with social media isn’t like this at all. The platforms of social media are built around weak ties,” (Gladwell 2010). What Gladwell means by this is that the way social issues are reported on today don’t have as much of fervor as that of the Civil Rights Movement in the way that they are reported on. He refers to social media as “weak ties” in the fact that platforms such as Twitter and Facebook and the way they are constructed, “Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances,” (Gladwell 2010) don’t allow social issues to garner as much ‘fire’ as opposed to traditional journalism.
In regards to Gladwell’s views on social media and its ability to have value in social issues, I both disagree and agree with Gladwell. While social media is an ever constant entity in our lives, it has the ability to make us aware of issues outside our own world while at the same time keeping us in our own little bubble. What I mean is that social media platforms, especially Twitter, and the way they are constructed help us become aware of the issues facing our world. Facebook and Twitter both are strong platforms that helps us write and share these issues. For example, the recent Women’s March after the inauguration of our 43rd President, showed how easy it is for people from different corners of the Earth can come together and share their shared experiences through social media. People around the world were able to share their support and the different ways people came together in support of Women’s rights.
Social media can also be as Gladwell stated the ‘weak ties’ on how we post about social issues. We can all be for a social issues such as the Women’s March or the Black Lives Matter Movement by retweeting, tagging, and posting about them, however it’s the physical actions we take that make the point. In my opinion, just posting or retweeting a tweet proves the ‘weak ties’ Gladwell mentions. At the same time the amount of followers we have or who we follow, which is the entire premise most social media platforms are built on also adds to the effect we have on promoting and talking about social issues important to us.
In Kwame Opam’s essay in which he interviewed Deray McKesson, Opam asked why he was so optimistic about social media’s value in regards to social movements. McKesson stated “I met so many people across the country who did not understand their own power, who didn not believe the sound of their own voice and they found it over the last two years,” (Opam, McKesson 2016). What McKesson means by this is that without social media, even with all of its nuances, people have found an outlet to voice their opinions. Social media is an exciting and scary tool in today’s society where anything can be interpreted in a different way than what it was initially meant to mean. I believe that social media can be a positive tool in today’s society in reporting about social issues. Social media’s power can reach a vast amount of people in a short amount of time, all that it needs to do is to recognize its power and help people recognize that they can do more than just retweet, tag, or post on Facebook.
Sources:
Gladwell, Malcolm, “Small Change,” The New Yorker, 10/4/10, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-3 (viewed 5/4/17)
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 (viewed 5/4/17)
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