Small Change Gladwell Analysis

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Summary Paper In his “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted”, Malcolm Gladwell refutes the idea that the connections on social media can potentially promote social revolution. Essentially, he suggests that the social net work on the Internet is not potent enough to trigger revolution. Gladwell starts this discussion with the Civil Right Movement. Four African American teenagers successfully brought great social changes “without e-mail, texting, Facebook, or Twitter”(Gladwell 401). On the contrary, even social media allegedly helped civil movements in countries such as Iran and Moldova, those stories were later proven to be false. (Gladwell 403). Then he explains the reasons of such phenomena. Gladwell argues that the social media only establishes a weak tie between us. Such weak tie can be very effective in carrying out preexisting social orders as demonstrated by the story of asking a teenager girl to give back a stolen phone(Gladwell 413). In the meantime, it is also insufficient to cause social revolution. Social revolution often means defiance of the government and preexisting order, thus potentially extremely dangerous. With the example of Martin Luther King, Galdwell suggests that to carry out such plan requires a deeper sense of commitment and leadership which those weak tie on social media can not…show more content…
since the beginning of 20th century was achieved by peaceful civil disobedience), and closely connected to the central problem. By explaining the incidences in the Civil Rights Movement, Gladwell clearly presents the sense of commitment and leadership that are required in this type of activities. After proving this sense of commitment and leadership does not exist in the social media, Gladwell arrives his destination in a logical and natural
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