(E)DENTITY: Small Change

Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not be Tweeted

I like the article. It starts by describing the first Woolworth’s sit-in and uses it as the foundation for the argument of “weak ties” to “strong ties”. Malcolm Gladwell uses other examples of activism which occurred more recently. These are known for being influenced by social media but Gladwell points out that the perception of social media’s influence comes from a Western viewpoint. The Twitter Revolution acts as strong evidence for Gladwell’s explanation of social media consisting of “weak ties”. I agree with Gladwell that today’s activism is a lot less drastic than it used to be due to social media. People rack up donations because it only takes a few thousand people to donate a few dollars. Before, donations were dependent upon if a person was carrying cash on them, the size of the bill, and the level of effort it would take for them to dig out their money and put it in the bucket. It’s easier to be nice to strangers when all that’s needed is a few clicks of a mouse.

 Logos – Small Change

Malcolm Gladwell uses logos in his article. Woo hoo! (<– Just kidding. That’s pathos.) Gladwell uses logos to form his explanation of how the student protest in Tehran, Iran did not actually use Twitter to organize. The tweets were in English and grouped together by the hashtag “iranelection”. These tweets were curated by people in the West, not people in Iran. Gladwell also talks about how social media activism does not work as well as old-fashioned activism. The “weak ties” formed through various social media platforms are not strong enough to stand alone. Most protests and acts of resistance occur because of “strong ties” formed prior to the event. A participant is more willing to stick around if a close friend or family member is also involved. Gladwell shows this by drawing the connections between the four freshmen at the lunch counter.

Logos: a rhetorical strategy used to analyze a writing by working through the logical components presented by the writer.

Quote: “In the Iranian case, meanwhile, the people tweeting about the demonstrations were almost all in the West. “It is time to get Twitter’s role in the events in Iran right,” Golnaz Esfandiari wrote.”