When ten thousand protesters took to the streets in Moldova in the spring of 2009 to protest against their country’s Communist government, the action was dubbed the Twitter Revolution, because of the means by which the demonstrators had been brought together.
They would all have remembered the murder of Emmett Till in 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott that same year, and the showdown in Little Rock in 1957. It was McNeil who brought up the idea of a sit-in at Woolworth’s.
It shifts our energies from organizations that promote strategic and disciplined activity and toward those which promote resilience and adaptability. It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact. The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient. They are not a natural enemy of the status quo. If you are of the opinion that all the world needs is a little buffing around the edges, this should not trouble you. But if you think that there are still lunch counters out there that need integrating it ought to give you pause.
It doesn’t have an editor, sitting in New York, who directs and corrects each entry. The effort of putting together each entry is self-organized. If every entry in Wikipedia were to be erased tomorrow, the content would swiftly be restored, because that’s what happens when a network of thousands spontaneously devote their time to a task.
The civil-rights movement was high-risk activism. It was also, crucially, strategic activism: a challenge to the establishment mounted with precision and discipline. The N.A.A.C.P. was a centralized organization, run from New York according to highly formalized operating procedures. At the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the unquestioned authority. At the center of the movement was the black church, which had, as Aldon D. Morris points out in his superb 1984 study, “The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement,” a carefully demarcated division of labor, with various standing committees and disciplined groups. “Each group was task-oriented and coordinated its activities through authority structures,” Morris writes. “Individuals were held accountable for their assigned duties, and important conflicts were resolved by the minister, who usually exercised ultimate authority over the congregation.”
In Germany in the nineteen-seventies, they go on, “the far more unified and successful left-wing terrorists tended to organize hierarchically, with professional management and clear divisions of labor. They were concentrated geographically in universities, where they could establish central leadership, trust, and camaraderie through regular, face-to-face meetings.” They seldom betrayed their comrades in arms during police interrogations. Their counterparts on the right were organized as decentralized networks, and had no such discipline. These groups were regularly infiltrated, and members, once arrested, easily gave up their comrades. Similarly, Al Qaeda was most dangerous when it was a unified hierarchy. Now that it has dissipated into a network, it has proved far less effective.
Even revolutionary actions that look spontaneous, like the demonstrations in East Germany that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, are, at core, strong-tie phenomena. The opposition movement in East Germany consisted of several hundred groups, each with roughly a dozen members.
It is the power and strength generated from close personal ties. The “strong tie” theory suggests it was because the original four protesters in Greensboro had such close ties —friends from high school, and college dorm mates – that they were able to engage in such high-risk activism. And activists throughout the South in the civil rights era engendered these close ties.
The second reason, Gladwell argues, social media activism is different from traditional activism, is that social media is not about hierarchical organization. This is good for some types of activism, but hierarchy, says Gladwell, is exactly what made the civil rights movement ...
True. But as a percentage/fraction of the TOTAL connections one builds online, that statement would probably ring false. MOST connections fostered online are 'weak', relatively speaking, to ones either initiated or strengthened through 'offline' meetings and interactions, and then continued (or made more frequent) by the Web/Internet.
It’s always good to slow down and seek a new perspective, especially when the tools for social change at our disposal are changing so fast. But the Internet and social media are just that, tools. Activists should continue to master their tools so they can someday master their craft.— Aaron Lester
The Internet and social media are very powerful tools that will never challenge the status quo, concludes Gladwell. “If you are of the opinion that all the world needs is a little buffing around the edges, this should not trouble you. But if you think that there are still lunch counters out there that need integrating it ought to give you pause.”
Networks and 'going-viral' have been in-vogue in the last decade and beyond. Gladwell uses historical evidence to claim that networks are necessary but insufficient for high-risk challenges to the status-quo. For example:
Malcolm Gladwell, author of articles and books like 'The Tipping Point' and 'Blink', has contributed a thought-provoking analysis into the relative strengths and weaknesses of face-to-face vs. online activism. While others resort to shallow and hypocritical dismissals of online activism as 'clicktivism' ...
"In the [US Civil Right movement in the] late nineteen-fifties, there had been: 1 sixteen sit-ins in various cities throughout the South, fifteen of which were formally organized by civil-rights organizations like the N.A.A.C.P. and CORE. 2 Possible locations for activism were scouted. 3 Plans were drawn up. 4 Movement activists held training sessions and retreats for would-be protesters.
Movement activists held training sessions and retreats for would-be protesters.
They had been briefed on the earlier wave of sit-ins in Durham, and had been part of a series of movement meetings in activist churches. When the sit-in movement spread from Greensboro throughout the South, it did not spread indiscriminately.
Like the broadcast media, social media can bring attention to a specific issue for a very limited time and result in a minor breakthrough, but Gladwell doesn't see social media campaigns as high-risk. Blogging about torture and human rights in Egypt and other places is high-risk and has resulted in some change.
Yet there are growing numbers of exceptions: Blogging about torture and human rights in Egypt and other places is high-risk and has resulted in some change. It has both put people at risk and has also reduced the risks of people imprisoned or threatened.
Many years ago, whenever a social grouping wanted to pass complains that had been neglected, there existed a group of people well known to each other and with enough courage to resist over the complains. This was and still is referred to as activism. This group then mobilized people to resist and demonstrate.
The upheaval of social media has made people to lose the meaning of activism. Activism includes values, a structure of operation, commitment, and a strong personal connection to the movement involved. Activism requires one to give his personal basic details including contacts.
It also shows that activism is about individuals knowing each other and forming powerful bonds with each other. “With Facebook and twitter and the like, the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended, making it easier for the powerless to collaborate, coordinate and raise their concerns” (Gladwell 314).
With the growing technology on social media, many have transformed their thinking. Many think that to have a friend on twitter or Facebook is the same as having a friend they know at a personal level.
With the rapid advancement in technology, specifically on social media, the advent of Facebook, twitter and the internet has greatly affected change in the history. However, this does not mean that technology can change the course of history.
Gladwell, Malcom. “Small Change: Why Revolution will not be Tweeted.” In Graff,