Malcolm Gladwell Doesn't Care if You Retweet This

September 27, 2010 at 4:00 am PT

Malcolm Gladwell pees in the social media punch bowl today, with an essay designed to humiliate and/or enrage anyone who thinks that Twitter, Facebook et al can be used to do really significant things.

It’s a bit of a hammer to a fly, really. Because everyone knows, intuitively, that Twitter can’t overthrow governments and that Facebook can’t stop genocide.

But Gladwell spells it out for us, anyway:

The evangelists of social media…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…In other words, Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice. We are a long way from the lunch counters of Greensboro.

Gladwell doesn’t argue with the idea that Facebook and Twitter are good communication platforms, mind you. But he argues that communication alone doesn’t do anything–getting stuff done takes hard work, structure and person-to-person contact. And in the case of really big things, like the civil rights movement, it takes personal risk.

And social networks can make all of that stuff harder to achieve, he says:

It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact. The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient. They are not a natural enemy of the status quo. If you are of the opinion that all the world needs is a little buffing around the edges, this should not trouble you. But if you think that there are still lunch counters out there that need integrating it ought to give you pause.

Gladwell–or someone using his name and image–does have a Twitter account, by the way. He joined in December 2008, and now has 60,661 followers. He has used the service to send out a grand total of 22 messages. (He does have an interesting blog, although he hasn’t done much with it lately…)

Also: The New Yorker is now available as an iPad app–publisher Condé Nast used the Wired/Adobe (ADBE) template for this one. So, if you feel like shelling out $4.99 for an issue, head to the Apple (AAPL) iTunes store.

Tagged with: Adobe, app, Apple, blog, blogs, Condé Nast, digital, entertainment, Facebook, government, Greensboro, Internet, iPad, iTunes, Malcolm Gladwell, MediaMemo, New York, New Yorker, Peter Kafka, politics, search, Silicon Valley, social media, social networking, television, Twitter, video

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http://www.harrr.org/rrr righini

“The platforms of social media are built around weak ties.” Risky words to sustain a theory.
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/ PKafka

Think he meant that in a pretty clinical way. Where’s the risk?
http://www.harrr.org/rrr righini

this kind of definition sees only the high part of the long tail of motivations that bring people using a media. He doesn’t show the data source where he took his insight from, so I do not trust those words yet.
Anonymous

I think the most telling thing here is that a guy like Gladwell, who has built an impressive audience for books, talks and articles, isn’t so impressed by social media. But most writers, constantly trying to build an audience, are or at least see it as essential whether it’s working or not. You can see how Gladwell got bored with his Twitter feed. Probably not the kind of thing that will move the needle for him in terms of sales and notoriety. But for political candidates and charities seeking small donations and the like, I bet social media seems plenty activist enough.
http://twitter.com/jilliancyork Jillian C. York

I agree with Gladwell in part, but think he ignores the broader point: that tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and mobile phones are a complement to traditional, “strong-tie” activism. “Digital activism” alone is fairly useless, but the utilization of digital tools can make traditional activism infinitely stronger.
http://twitter.com/mikehenriquez Mike Henriquez

I think social networks can help, if used correctly to create and fuel social movements, however i do agree with many of the things the author says (BTW I’ve just read ATD article not the NYs one yet) if used only as a way to publicize stuff you “like” on the web or in life in general then Social networks are nothing but an instrument for your ego, it is sad that is the way most people -me included- use them.

As a way to communicate and keep in touch with real friends and relatives -who the hell has 4985 real friends?- or keep informed of stuff you are interested in, they are a great tool, that’s the reason why i keep using them, so you may hate them or love them but they are the present and future of communications so you might as well accept them or even enjoy them (i do)
http://ecoMinima.com Chris Baskind

They said the same thing about music in the Sixties.

I suppose I get his point. Social media is just another tool, as were the telephone, mimeograph machine, and bullhorn a generation ago.

You can do a lot when you have the right tool for the job.
http://twitter.com/GoodMenProject The Good Men Project

Anyone who thinks that Social Media can’t be used for activism simply hasn’t acted when connected with people, ideas, organizations or other activists. But wake up, Malcolm –> those people wouldn’t have acted anyway.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=685591807 Anne Bilek

“The high part of the long tail of motivations”… I looked that up in my “social media bullshit to english” dictionary and I still don’t know what that means.
http://twitter.com/millerlarry Larry Miller

Gladwell has some very good points, but he doesn’t go deeply enough. For example, in citing Granovetter’s pioneering work on the “strength of weak ties,” he doesn’t delve into more recent work, such as Damon Centola’s experiments. And he doesn’t address the power of “naturally occurring” social networks to foster behavioral change. I blogged more about this today at http://mednetworks.wordpress.c.....al-friends. — Larry Miller, CEO of MedNetworks
Anonymous

Many civil rights activists in the 1960s were subjected to covert warfare by our government, which used various PSYOP tactics against them. One was social extermination through strenuous campaigns to slander people out of positions of influence and other social roles, such as that of the active church member, the productively employed citizen, etc. Back then, it was illegal. You perhaps remember the Congressional hearings in 1974 that exposed this illegal COINTELPRO by our CIA. In 1989, NYU professor and attorney Brian Glick found that the program, which Congress assured the public would be discontinued in the 1976 report on the ’74 hearings, had been in full operation in the 1980s, against activists helping refugees fleeing U.S.-backed civil wars in Central America, some of whom were Glick’s clients.

These programs now are not only all LEGAL they’ve been supplemented by many more laws and the military’s adoption of technologies that literally destroy private thought – and, therefore, private speech and the associations they can create. That “strong-tie” phenomenon Gladwell speaks of is obliterated in this covert warfare, which is conducted right here by the Joint Forces. The gov’t has obviously been aware of the research Gladwell has given us in his article for quite some time.

I live this hell every day. Millions of Americans do. George Bush promised (when he created his propaganda machine, the office of global communications) that covert warfare against anyone and everyone who dissented against the (for example) police state which our country has become (www.dontfearyourfreedom.blogspot.com) would never end, and I have to tell you, it’s a promise the Commander-in-Chief has kept, no matter what his name or skin color have been.

Is my 10 minutes of tapping out this comment on my iPhone effective activism? If you read it – if I am allowed to post it, so you and others can see it and even learn more at the link above – is that activism? I’ll still be typing my random comments somewhere else tomorrow, building no community, no strong ties, not even doing the real work I feel I must do to be an ACTIVE-ist, just the way my government wants it, because they know the answers to these questions: no.

I have no ability to use a phone freely, my email, to join activists in other groups, be it at my former church, or anywhere else, or to start my own group without support and backing. There are many reasons for this, but the objective of each battle strategy in use against me is the same: a virtual prison.

That’s why, instead of sitting down in the front of the bus, I stood up when the bus driver threatened to have me arrested because I pushed back when he tried to portray me to my fellow passengers (many of whom were my neighbors) as a racist, elitist and even godless social malcontent with a very carefully orchestrated PSYOP, street theater. Did you know the military uses public transportation in their covert war? It’s true. There’s even a department that coordinates it. Did you know your military uses ultra-sonic messaging tools to alter your perceptions, and, therefore, your behavior (not just directed communications such as this one, which have narrow parameters – online activism works, or it doesn’t, as activism – which do not explore postulates other than those given that may be more valuable to understanding an issue; see above)? This bus driver didn’t have me arrested (surprise, surprise; covert warfare isn’t effective if it’s not covert, and a legal action is not private), and their little PSYOP wasn’t at all successful because I kept my cool and acted fearlessly, with alacrity and confidence. Wish all such of my protests turned out that way.

So all I can say is social networking tools are great for those who have First Amendment rights. For the rest of us, not so much. We have to stand up as and where we can, alone. Wonder why Gladwell didn’t mention that. Probably the same reason he doesn’t care if you re-tweet this.
http://twitter.com/gideonro Gideon Rosenblatt

Did Gladwell overstate his case? Yeah, sure, but do we think he would have caused this much of an uproar if he’d candy-coated his critique?

I used to do a lot of work in online activism and I’m actually quite thankful that Gladwell raises this issue so publicly for us. It is time for a fresh assessment of how social networking tools translate into real social change.

In my view, the problem with online social networking tools has less to do with the tools themselves – and more to do with how organizations fail to connect their social network organizing with their efforts to deepen their relationships with people.

Facebook is an excellent medium for using our social ties to expose people to new issues. By “liking” something on Facebook or re-tweeting something on Twitter, I tell my friends and followers “hey, I’m watching this issue – I care about it” and doing that in a networked public forum makes it easy to spread.

That’s the easy part though. The hard part is connecting that interest back to someplace where a person can go deep – someplace where they can build a deep connection with a mission and with others who share that same passion.

More: http://www.alchemyofchange.net.....rong-ties/

Malcolm Gladwell Doesn't Care if You Retweet This

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