Malcolm Gladwell's Small Change

Malcolm Gladwell’s article, “Small Change” describes the structural differences between social media and traditional activist movements. But is this structural difference enough to call this shift in activism revolutionary? Throughout the entire article, Gladwell emphasizes the word that the students who joined the sit-ins across the South during the winter of 1960 describes the movement as a ‘fever’” (Gladwell). This term is important in unpacking whether or not the structural differences really were revolutionary. A fever in medical terms, is when the body is abnormally increases in temperature. The importance of understanding this definition is because a fever is a response and a symptom to an issue in the body and not the actual cause or reason behind an issue. In the context of the article, the response and symptom of the social injustices as Gladwell presents are seen through the historical events of Greensboro sit-in in the 1960’s, the Mississippi Freedom Project in 1964, the

For example, the social social structure of social media is weak, loose connections and not hierarchical. In contrast, the social structure of traditional activism such as the sit-ins and protests are characterized by strong, high risk strategies, and hierarchical. These systems results in very contrasting characteristics and shows that there is a shift from protests that happened through traditional protests and current 21st century social media. It should be noted that both, social media and traditional activisms are in response to a “fever”. Traditional structure of activism is illustrated through the segregation of the South in the 1960’s while social media structure is illustrated through Facebook and Twitter responses to raise money for Darfur or Save Sameer. Both can achieve similar responses to help save people, however, their structure and methods are quite