Malcolm Gladwell Use Of Social Media

Throughout the world, we are beginning to use social media sites and the Internet as our primary means of communication and source of information. The Internet is changing the way the people connect to profound events, making firsthand sources and feelings accessible. As a result of this, these events become more personal so that we relate them back to our lives differently, inspiring us to effect meaningful change in the world more often.
The Internet now gives us unprecedented access to important events around the world directly as they happen, and the reactions of the people affected by them. Two popular social media sites, Twitter and Facebook, are a prime example of this. Twitter provides a live stream where people tweet their feelings …show more content…
He that points out that “thousands were arrested and untold thousands more radicalized” after four black students were denied the right to eat at a lunch counter, and that they did so without the use of the internet. Gladwell does not think that social media is effective in creating meaningful change. According to Gladwell, revolutions depend on personal involvement to the event or someone affected by the event, while “the platforms of social media are built around weak ties” and “seldom lead to high-risk activism.” Weak bonds that can make people feel something temporarily are also broken easily, and Gladwell argues that these bonds cannot lead to the kind of action necessary for a revolution. While it is true that a large part of social media is based on weak bonds, ultimately the people with whom we have these weak bonds are not the ones to whom we are paying the most attention. When using social media, people follow others that they are close to, or groups that they think are meaningful, and devote most of their attention to these groups, rather than the people that with whom they have only weak bonds. Social media makes it easier to create many weak bonds, however, this does not mean that it is impossible for meaningful relationships to develop between both people and ideas. To Gladwell, the kind of activism found on the internet “doesn’t require that you confront socially entrenched norms and practices.” However, oftentimes the stories shared through social media do lead people to question their involvement in unethical practices, or how they contribute to damaging social norms. In Milner’s article Hacking the Social, Milner gives an example of how the internet is used to confront social hierarchies such as gender inequality. “There were extensive pushbacks against the notion of the friend-zoned nice guy” in which Reddit