Summary Of Malcolm Gladwell Small Change

In Malcolm Gladwell’s essay, “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not be Tweeted”, he compares the structures of social activism with how personally invested or connected a person is in the movement as well as the risks. Gladwell concludes believing the internet, or mainly social media is an ineffective tool for creating social and political change. He focuses on activism during the civil rights movement, mainly, the Greensboro sit-ins. For modern society, Gladwell focuses on activism in the “so-called Twitter Revolution” (171). It was the first of February, 1960, at four-thirty when four African American college students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina, which did not serve blacks

In Iran, during protest upon a rigged election, the Farsi version of Twitter had yet to have been released and the government effectively had shut down the internet in major cities, which then point to the tweeting to have originated from the West from English-speakers. Rather than just not truly understand or being there to have seen what occurred, their actions actually allowed the government to hunt opposition leaders through photos that had been posted after protest had died down. Though social media made it easier “for the powerless to collaborate, coordinate, and give voice to their concerns” (Gladwell 171), in this case, there was no difference, no “true” activism to be seen, and only furthered oppression. This is not to say social media is cannot help progress change. They can, yet they help facilitate it, not drive it. Gladwell only views the ineffectiveness of social media in making change. Gladwell ends with how what he believes the best networks can do is help a person get his phone back from teenage girls and ironically writes “Viva la revolucion” (180). This is the “so-called Twitter Revolution”, this is

Black Lives Matter and Anonymous are prime examples for which have grown out of social media and technology in this time. Yet, these same groups than contradict this argument and so create a paradox as these same groups have also had their messages much more easily misconstrued, allowed for radicals to taint their names, and adheres to Gladwell’s argument of no central authority. So Gladwell is not wrong when it comes to the states, but countries unlike our own, where oppression is stronger, where the truth can only be found through technology. It is the spread of knowledge that allows us to think, yet to think only goes so far unless action is taken which is due to knowing and understanding and that the ignorant does not face. It is the truth that sets us free, yet we are oppressed by a system built to do so. So our theories and analyses from the past cannot be discarded completely, yet they cannot be applied without