Summary Of Malcom Gladwell Small Change

1394 Words6 Pages

Within Malcom Gladwell’s essay “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will not be Tweeted,” he brings up a lot of bold claims about today’s generation and its revolutions. Many of these claims are based in factual evidence and sound logic. His characterizations of today’s generations and their relationship with technology are not very far off from reality. He outlines the effectiveness of revolutions in the past that occurred without social media like Twitter or Facebook. He even brings up valid commentary on action based revolutions versus passive revolutions, arguing that the former is historically more effective. However, Gladwell fails to effectively justify some of his audacious claims, leading to some noticeable gaps in his argument. Although …show more content…

Like a fever, opinions and information are contagious and spread fast because of online interaction. As a result of this, many times there is a collective mindset that is formed on a particular issue relating to a revolution. Having people all recognize that there is a problem provokes a more meaningful response than just going to a protest. This response is usually seen within prompting the government to act on a particular issue, allowing for more substantial change to happen within the country. If there is a national problem and the general consensus has the outlook that something must be done about the problem, the government will be more likely to fix this problem. Some people may argue that because of the hive mind effect that the internet seems to promote, there is no room for disagreeing and minority voices are silenced. Yet, this is not a new concept in today’s country. Just because it is happening a lot on the internet doesn’t mean it didn’t happen before there was anything like the internet. If you look back at the United States’ history, you will see that many minorities have been wrongfully silenced. Examples range from the enslavement of African-Americans to the Japanese internment camps, and in all of these examples there was a hive mind consensus that ended up oppressing these minorities. I would make the argument that because of the amount of information readily available on the internet, people realize more often than not that the hive mind might be wrong on a certain