Small Change Gladwell Analysis

Malcolm Gladwell, a writer for the New Yorker and one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2005, makes a bold claim in his essay published in 2010 entitled Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted. The essay, mainly in response to the increasing effect social media taking part in our lives, focused on the relationship between social media outlets and activism. Gladwell’s claim of the relationship can be summed up to; social media couldn’t bring about activism due to the weak personal connection it provides or rather the weak-tie it provides. He conveys this through the use of anecdotes such as: the Greensboro sit-in, a phone theft, and The Twitter Revolution. Although Gladwell makes a good point in his claim about how personal connection plays a key role in activism, his claim about social media is not entirely true, in fact, social media is playing more of an impact in activism and has a better potential for strong personal connection or strong-tie than Gladwell thinks.
The main anecdote Gladwell uses is the Greensboro sit-in during the 1960s, a sit-in that represented the fight against segregation …show more content…
At this point, you might be asking, “So what?”, “Why should I care about this?”. Well, if a person with a good deal of influence conveys an opinion, it could affect many things. In this case, it's the connection between social media and activism. His opinion could change the course of the future for activism, and potentially in a negative way too. So, we shouldn’t dismiss the idea that social media can lead to strong-tied relationships and be able to start an act of activism, and while there needs to be more solid research over this topic overall, we shouldn’t dismiss Gladwell’s, my, or any other idea of the topic at