Malcolm Gladwell Small Change Analysis

In history, there have been many social changes that have occurred like the industrial revolution, the abolition of slavery and the Civil Right Movement. The less powerful not having enough voices to overcome the obstacles being erected by the powerful and many more examples. These voices play a major role when it comes to making big political and social changes. In “Return to Hayneville,” Gregory Orr recounts his experience and involvement in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. He argues that vocal campaigns and movements in public discourse and deep connections within people, help bring about change in today’s society. Whereas, In Vivian Yee, Alan Blinder and Jonah Engel Bromwich, “Parkland Students Start a Social Movement” they bring

Social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, have allowed their users to stay connected with others more than ever before. Although, when it comes to social and political activism, these sites are the least effective method for change. The creation of these social media sites has made many people believe that, by spreading their “knowledge” and information to their followers and fellow networkers, they can easily solve an issue that has risen in society; however, Malcolm Gladwell, staff member of The New Yorker magazine, disagrees. In his essay, Gladwell opens with a description of the Greensboro sit-ins. He emphasizes how effectively members participating

Although Baron makes valid points that agree with Gladwell, he also made a point that proves otherwise. Social media can actually make a change in society and create a huge revolution. The President of Egypt was overthrown due to social media. At the beginning of Baron’s writing, he discusses how the role of “Twitter, Facebook, smartphones, and the Internet in general” (329)

This paper analyzes and responds to Malcolm Gladwell’s The New Yorker article, “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted,” concluding that though Gladwell provides a decent context for his argument, it is ultimately made less effective because of its comparisons and underlying assumptions. This paper shows how Gladwell’s comparison of contemporary social movements to those of a prior non-digital age works against his main argument by drawing an unfair parallel in which the two systems of comparison are far too different to draw any binary conclusions. The purpose of this paper is to consider how rhetoric, including the use of ethos and pathos, can influence how readers think about issues of social and political justice.

In his article “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted”, published in the New York Times on October 2010, Malcolm Gladwell looks closely into the notion of social change and the different means to achieve it. He makes a clear distinction between traditional activism, which implies sacrifices and physical devotion, and current activism, based on social networks. The writer considers that “social media can’t provide what social change has always required” (Gladwell, paragraph 1).

In the article “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted” by Malcolm Gladwell, he argues that the use of social media to start a revolution doesn’t help the cause to be as big or impactful than it could be. He explains the connection between social media with “weak-ties” versus “strong-ties.” In relation with these “ties,” throughout the article Gladwell goes back and forth from discussing the successful approaches of the Civil Rights Movement and their strategies for their cause without the use of social media, to how ineffective other various organizations in the past and present turned to social media to try their cause.

One of the main arguments in Malcolm Gladwell's "Small Change" is that social media has a huge impact on activism positively and negatively.In the 1960's it took 10s of thousands of people to come to make a change like the sit-ins but now with twitter and facebook, people just have to group together and contact the network they want, to make changes.It's a lot safer to get a point across on social media then taking the risks people took back then to get a point across. Social media has no real sense of authority so they don't make as much of a movement as the N.A.A.C.P did. With social media comes no organization or structure which causes false information to be passed around. In the end, both types of activism have their positive and negative

“Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted.” by Malcolm Gladwell focuses on previous examples of activism that occurs with and without the use of social media. The first event he talks about is the Greensboro, North Carolina sit in. To sum of the event, 4 African American college students were denied service. During this time the Civil Rights Movement was taking place, so the African American community were fighting against being segregated and discriminated everywhere they went. This event was used in Gladwell’s favor to show that this event happened without the help of social media. Gladwell uses the story of a person in need of a bone marrow transplant to explain how thousands of people got to sign up for the campaign. The simple

In Malcolm Gladwell’s article “Small Change: The Revolution will not be Tweeted” There is an example of large-scale change which caused by the social media there was Twitter revolution at Moldova, Iran in 2009. People started to use Twitter as a tool for protest the government and it became a huge change. This could be possible because people could argue with more confident when they stand up against government through the Social Media. The Malcolm Gladwell’s response about this kind of social event was “Social media, the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended, making I easier for the powerless to collaborate, coordinate, and give voice to their concerns” (Paragraph 7, Gladwell) Also he called

Does social media “shrink the world” by bringing us closer together? In his article Small Change, Malcom Gladwell asserts that social media might be connecting more people, but the bonds it forms allow us to stay comfortably separate and avoid impacting meaningful social reform. Gladwell makes it apparent that he believes social media and revolutions are unsuited for each other. His article, written just two months before the beginning of the Arab Spring, was written in response to what some contemporaries have dubbed, “The Twitter Revolution” in Moldova. This revolution, as well as another in Iran, was heralded as examples of the merits of social media, with some even nominating Twitter for the Nobel Peace Prize due to their belief that Twitter had played a major role in these uprisings. Gladwell writes against a sentiment of righteousness and accomplishment that advocates of social media maintain in an attempt to convince people that the true motivation behind social change is conviction. He raises the point that while it is exceedingly easy for someone to join a cause, such as hitting a ‘like’ button, it is far more effortless for them to quit. This sentiment seems to be fueled mostly by opinion, looking only at how social media did not cause revolutions and avoiding analysis regarding how

Malcolm Gladwell’s article "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will not be Tweeted" raises a significant question about the prospective contribution of web-based social networking to the advent of progressive social movement and change. Gladwell bold declaration that "the revolution will not be tweeted" is reflective of his view that social media has no useful application in serious activism. Contrasting various elements of the “high-stakes” lunch-counter protests in Greensboro, North Carolina in the 1960’s with the “low-stakes” activism achieved through social media, Gladwell concludes that effective social movements powerful enough to impose change on longstanding societal forces require both “strong ties” among participants and the

In Malcom Gladwell’s “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not be Retweeted” he argues that social media has negatively impacted activism. For the most part, I disagree with his argument, however I do disagree with some of his points. He uses multiple examples of protests from the past, like the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project in 1964, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s movement, the sit-in in the Greensboro case, which quickly spread like wild fire from four college students to thousands of people all over the country simply by using strong connections unlike those online today. Gladwell also uses examples of terrorist groups like the ones in Afghanistan, the Red Brigades in Italy, and even the movement that led to the tear down of the Berlin

What determines a movement? Malcolm Gladwell defines what pushes a movement to make a difference. He analyzes the concept of “strong ties” and “weak ties” and how these relationships affect an individual’s willpower and determination to help a cause. Gregory Orr puts these ideas into context in his memoir, “Return to Hayneville”, in which he recounts his experience and involvement in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Malcolm Gladwell’s “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted”, focuses, in particular, on the civil rights movement concentrates to the lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina. Gladwell’s ideas and opinions of social and political emancipations are given a real world setting, as

In the reading “Small Change : Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted,” Malcolm Gladwell discusses the act of four brave college students and their act of social activism. The four freshmen from a local all black college sat down at a counter in a diner near Greensboro, North Carolina and were denied service because of their race. The students refused to leave and instead started a protest there at the restaurant. The numbers of people protesting with the four young men increased as the story spreaded across states. The story of the sit in was done without the use of any technology or social network. Gladwell discussed the effectiveness of the sit-in because of the relationship between

Some, including Malcolm Gladwell, a famous Canadian journalist, uphold a negative view that social media is not capable to make real social activisms. In the article, Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted, Gladwell states, “the platforms of social media are built around weak ties,” (Gladwell 406) whereas high-risk activisms in the past concern more of the strong ties. In other words, Malcolm believes that closed relationships are critically required for the activisms while social media only provides distant connections among acquaintances. Therefore, weak ties offered by social media, “seldom lead to high-risk activism”