Small Change Malcolm Gladwell Analysis

Superior Essays
As of 2014, 38 percent of suicide cases were related or caused by social media. Scientist further investigated this correlation and found out that 50 billion of contents are shared monthly using social media. Many of us question this outrageous catastrophe, but to truly understand the immense power behind social media, details must be acquired. Identifying the details of social media, social media is a relatively new phenomenon that has lingered this world for the past decade. With the fusing of technology, internet-based applications have allowed the sharing of messages, thoughts, and details at the speed of light. The dawning of the new age has come, where social media is an extension of our body, exhibiting our everyday lifestyle. In Malcolm Gladwell’s essay “Small change”, he described the many viewpoints on the impacts of modern technologies such as social identity, communication dynamics, and even the effect of social media on activism. He clarifies social media by drafting a comparison of events from the various ages we dwelled. I will be discussing how Gladwell disrupts …show more content…
Gladwell constantly disrupts the flow of his writing, featuring confusion in his reading. First, I found it disturbing that there was no chronological order of what Gladwell is trying to portray. An example can be found when Gladwell started his saga with the historic reference of the story of Woolworth’s lunch counter. Furthermore, the introduction shifted in various ways, misleading points as it changed from scenario to another. I am well aware Gladwell’s plot to intertwine his thoughts in between each scenario, but it wound up the destruction of the build-up of his thesis. After a recollection of his excerpt, I found out there are actually more details about the historic scenarios than his message towards his readers. Overall, I was not impressed with the bouncing of

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Social Media's Impact on Revolutions Authors use a variety of techniques in order to get the audience to connect and interpret an article. In the article, “Small Change”, by Malcolm Gladwell, he uses pathos and logos effectively so that he is able to get readers to connect to his work. Pathos appeals to the audience’s emotions, and logos refers to the logic of the writer when appealing to the audience’s intellect. Such rhetorical appeals help to strengthen his article on the limitations of how social media has not helped to start revolutions.…

    • 1207 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Malcolm Gladwell's article, “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted,” is a rhetorically successful argument that depicts why social media is not an effective tool in organizing social or political activism. Social media was just rising in popularity and worldly politics were tense at the time, so Gladwell had a wide audience of readers. In his article, Gladwell describes multiple examples of protests that had no means of social media during these events. Consequently, these protests tended to be more stronger, organized, and more emotional to the people that participated. He begins his article with a description of the Greensboro sit-ins of how a group of four college students grew to almost seventy thousand all “without email,…

    • 750 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As Gladwell so eloquently put social media “makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact” (9).…

    • 562 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Malcolm Gladwell the author of “Small Change” Why the Revolution Will Not Be Retweeted. Educates readers about Civil Rights movement events from the past, and the effects of social media in today’s time. Technology has evolved over the years, giving birth to social media. Social media is wonderful for a lot of things, but is social media an effective resource for activism?…

    • 1539 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    We live in an era where social media is at its peak. Many people are of the opinion that social media has contributed to new age revolutions, however Malcolm Gladwell is one of the few who have contradicting ideas. In his article “Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted”, he argues that “social media can’t provide what social change has always required.” In his defense, he asserts that social media is a tool, not a cause of social change. He narrates with a number of examples, using protests from the past to support his arguments.…

    • 1087 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Malcolm Gladwell Analysis

    • 223 Words
    • 1 Pages

    The great Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) one said, “I have never let schooling get in the way of a good education. The author Malcolm Gladwell wrote about a proposition of needing 10,000 hours of working at a craft to become really good at it, if not a master. I can agree with this statement, in that amount of time, repetition and sheer experience lead to a higher quality of work. Likewise, over time you begin to see patterns in what you are working with.…

    • 223 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In Gladwell’s second section, he looks at a couple arguing over something as simple as a pet, and then can decipher each of their unconscious feelings into much more. For…

    • 693 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Marcus Gladwell in his article “Small change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted” speaks about the role of social media in activism and how historically activism has been done since the Civil Right’s Movement. In general Gladwell tends to disagree with the importance of social media in strong risk activism that in which you’ll see in Greensboro, Iran, Tehran, or Germany during the fall of the Berlin wall. Authority, social ties, hierarchy, participation and strategy are the topics in which Gladwell focuses in on and compares modern activism with its historical counterpart. As their tools rather than their cause are defining more and more activists, Gladwell notes that the “fever” caused by earlier activities can never truly be recreated.…

    • 736 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Has social media truly impacted activism? This is a question Malcolm Gladwell answers In his article, “Small Changes”. Gladwell pushes back the notion that social media has helped us become better organizers of protests than we’ve been before and that sites such as twitter are accountable for the surges of uprisings we’ve been experiencing. The core of his argument is that internet activism, while having reinvented social activism, is inefficient in regards to challenging the status quo, and I concur. 
 The article begins with an anecdote, which Malcolm Gladwell consistently returns to discuss.…

    • 1347 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Lastly it connects behavior with striking, a tragic example of snap judgment, Gladwell clarifies this with the example of four police officer not understanding facial cues and their wrongful behavior cause a innocent person…

    • 1356 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Well-known journalist and author, malcolm gladwell, in his introduction of outliers, describes the anomaly of a small city named roseto. Gladwell's purpose is to impress upon the readers the idea that outliers do not start out as outliers and to understand their success, one needs to look beyond their intelligence and ambition and their personality traits and examine their culture, their family, and their generation. He employs the rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos and logos. These combined with his friendly tone creates an effective argument for his idea.…

    • 456 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Social media has a major impact on political activism and media as a whole. In Malcolm Gladwell’s essay, “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted”, Gladwell argues about the relationships between social media and social activism. Gladwell insists that social activism needs strong connections rather than weak networking. Gladwell states different arguments that leads to many valid viewpoints. He clarifies two alternatives: The relationship between strong ties and weak ties and hierarchy organizations and networks.…

    • 1148 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Illusion of Revolution Malcolm Gladwell, a best-selling author, in his essay "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted" critiques the use of social media as a tool in organizing social and political activism. His purpose is to argue that social media is ineffective in creating real change. He creates an informative tone and uses allusions to convince readers that social media is not as dangerous to the status quo as many are lead to believe.…

    • 761 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Social media has been a controversial debate for several years now, rather it be the topic of violence, brain development, and social skills. A modern day poet, Sherman Alexie gave his point of view on the topic. In the poem “ The Facebook Sonnet” by Alexie there is a strong use of satirical irony or sarcasm, hyperbole, and pathos to empathize how the use of social media is taking over everyday communications between people. When you have a social media page you connect with people of your past and of you present. Whatever you post they see and vise versa.…

    • 546 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Social media is a great way to express oneself whenever and wherever one pleases. Although social media provides many useful aspects, there are also negative features in which can lead to life-risking behaviors. The freedom of social media can cause several conflicts, including affecting the self-esteem and self-confidence. Social media has its ups and downs. No matter what age or place, social media…

    • 1731 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays