Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted 305
An anonymous reader writes "Social media is ill-suited to promoting real social change, argues Malcolm Gladwell in this article from The New Yorker magazine. He deftly debunks conventional wisdom surrounding the impact of Twitter, Facebook and other social media in driving systemic social change, comparing them to the organizational strategies of the 1960s civil rights movement. For example, the Montgomery bus boycott, he argues, was successful because it was driven by the disciplined and hierarchically organized NAACP. In contrast, a loose, social-media style network wouldn't have sustained the year long campaign. He concludes that social media promote social 'weak ties' which are not strong enough to motivate people to take big risks, such as imprisonment or attack, for social change."
I don't know..... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:What about Anonymous v. Scientology (Score:1, Informative)
In contrast to Germans whose non-social-media actions got CoS restrained by federal legislation.
Re:He has it all wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Gladwell is a profesional contrarian (Score:2, Informative)
Re:WTO? (Score:0, Informative)
Roger that. Protesting to our leaders, begging them for democracy... it is a bit odd, isn't it?
Why do we have leaders? Why do we protest to them, hoping that it might change something?
The real way to make a difference in politics is to IGNORE the leaders. Here is the way to get started: http://metagovernment.org/wiki/Main_Page [metagovernment.org]
Re:It's about who is doing the protesting. (Score:3, Informative)
The amazing thing is that only one statement in your post is remotely accurate.
If it's the same group of unemployed twits
Most attendees at protests in the developed world are either employed or students. Unemployed people generally are too busy scraping pennies and trying to find work to go protest anything.
Protesters these days are mostly on the wrong side of history and only effect fantasy land (where they reside).
Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - protesters were generally against them, both have turned into quagmires, and neither have achieved their stated aims (Iraq, because the WMDs we were after didn't exist, Afghanistan, because Osama bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora). Explain how the protesters were on the wrong side of that one.
You can find .25% of the population to protest just about anything (e.g. WTO etc).
0.25% of the population is approximately 15 million people worldwide, or 750,000 people in the United States. If it's that easy, prove it by organizing 750,000 people to protest stupid protests.
The fact that .25% is still a large number of people should not give their opinions any more weight.
Who's opinions should we give weight to? People who bother to get out and protest, people who answer public opinion polls, rich people, politically connected people, or some other group of people? No matter how you slice it, you're going to get a subset of the population.
Making real change is hard work that starts by understanding reality.
The one true statement in your entire post.
Most protesters just want to break things and/or find a nice slutty protester girl.
I'll make an assumption here: at least 5% of protesters who break things are caught by the police. In a typical major protest, there are about 100,000 protesters and about 300 arrests. That means that at most 6% of the protesters could even remotely be considered to be interested in breaking things.
As far as finding a nice slutty protester girl, if you've actually been to a protest you'll figure out pretty rapidly that a large number of protesters are married, often with children, a lot of them are elderly, and that the public image of a bunch of rowdy college kids hasn't been true since at least 1975 or so.
Re:Um... (Score:5, Informative)
. In contrast, a loose, social-media style network wouldn't have sustained the year long campaign.
TeaParty
Q.E.D
I do not think that means what you think it means.
I'm not commenting on the validity of the TeaParty movement at all, I'm just saying that it seems to be counter to what the author just said
The "Tea Party" movement, like the Montgomery Bus Boycott, was started and sustained by a top-down organization. Unlike the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the organization is an extremely well-funded group of the extremely wealthy industrialists, with major media support, from the very beginning -- the "Tax Day Tea Party" protests in April 2009 that were the beginning of the movement were organized and funded by corporate lobbying groups and actively promoted by Fox News, and the movement continues to be funded heavily through the same corporate lobbying groups and promoted by Fox News.
So, no, the validity of the Tea Party movement aside, its existence is absolutely not a counterpoint to the argument that a loose, social-media style network couldn't have sustained a year-long campaign similar to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, because the Tea Party movement isn't sustained by a loose, social-media style network.
Re:Um... (Score:2, Informative)
Bullshit. The Tea Party movement was created by the mainstream media. Fox News organized a lot of the first events and sent cameras to cover it, all the while pretending it just spontaneously happened. It has taken on a life of its own, but it was originally a fake "grass roots opposition" so that Fox could pretend the people were opposed to Obama.
Re:Um... (Score:5, Informative)
The main two channels for funding, from day one, are Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity.
The main institutional communication medium is Fox News, who even billed the original FreedomWorks and AFP-organized Tax Day Tea Party Protests as "FNC Tax Day Tea Party Protests" on the air in promoting them.
Fox News is not a loose, social-media style network. Neither are Freedom Works or Americans for Prosperity.
It is funny how the same Industialists and Corporate Lobbying groups can't get their established politicians (Crist) elected, and tea party people (Rubio) are winning elections.
The same lobbying groups that are funding the Tea Party movement are usually not backing the candidates that the movement opposes.
Other lobbying groups might be, but differing lobbying groups (even if they are perceived as being on the same side of the left/right divide) backing opposing positions is hardly new.