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I appear to be one of the few who agree with Malcolm Gladwell that vast systems of inequity, such as Jim Crow laws, will not likely be changed by means of people putting up some thoughts on the Twitter. (Still I didn't realize people were seriously suggesting such a thing!)
Next, Malcolm will inform his readership that masturbating will likely not lead to pregnancy.
And once again, his followers will remember why they adore his singular genius, which mirrors their own.
I'm just waiting for Ashton Kutcher to say the word and I'll start tossing Molotovs.
Who can forget @MLKjr's 'I Had A Dream' tweet?
"I hve drm that my 4 lttl childrn will 1 day lve in nashun whre they wil not be judgd by clr of their skn bt by the contnt of there chcter."
Totally agree! RT @VanBurenBoy I hve drm childrn will 1 day lve in nashun whre not judgd by clr of skn bt by contnt of chcter #FF #MLKJR
I absolutely cannot WAIT for Andrew Sullivan's reaction to this. Haha speaking of Anticipation List, if only you could bet on the outcome in Las Vegas.
He does hint at some interesting ideas that could explain why modern activists are so shitty. Younger people are more likely to have large networks with weak ties (human rights campaign bumper stickers), while older people are more likely to have smaller networks with strong ties (god hates fags signs). The idea that the latter style of organization straight-up trumps the former at driving social change would explain a lot.
Once in a while the obvious sort of needs to be stated out loud.
Well … I belong to both kinds of networks and I don't see a static difference in quality, any more than you can say that the traditional office is always bad, or always good. It depends on the individuals making up the group, every time.
I also didn't get why Gladwell would think that the Iranian demonstrators would have been twittering in Farsi. The government had shut every other method of communicating down. I have no idea how easy it is to text in Farsi, but for sure one of the chief aims of the Iranian demonstrators was to get the word out, outside Iran, of what was happening. To say nothing of the fact that English seems to have become the worldwide lingua franca of everybody under 30.
But the main thing is, I don't think we've even begun to see how these huge social networks can be harnessed politically. They're too new. (Sure helped us win in 2008, though.)
Twittering in farsi is just as easy as texting in farsi — why in the world would they not do so? Oh, I now why. Because no one (relatively speaking) in Iran USES TWITTER.
and English is the lingua franca of an young, educated urban elite minority! Another reason for the social networking fail.
Gah.
Iran is the most-wired country in the Middle East, with over 60% cell phone penetration at that time. As for the "educated urban elite minority", what the heck. Is that a problem, that the college kids were the ones doing the demonstrating and photographing and twittering? I hope ours will! I will gladly join them.
Over 150 people died in that thing. Ahmedinejad is still halfway in charge, but the fallout from the riots has weakened him and the mullahs whose bidding he serves. Largely owing to the bravery of these kids.
Well, I don't think he proved that small groups with close ties trump large groups with loose ones; he just sort of stated it. Actually, I would rather he spent more of the article talking about the differences between those in modern activism, rather than the fairly stupid "twitter was fucking USELESS in the 60s" thesis he seems to have picked.
As for Iran: the young, educated urban elite are an integral part of the Green movement, as they have been in most revolutionary and activist movements throughout history. It's not really all that shocking that they used English on Twitter.
What is shocking is that Gladwell was stupid enough to just assume that some English tweets means no Farsi tweets, and then use that as the basis for more assumptions. All the feeds I followed (except for @oxfordgirl, an expat) used both Farsi and English. Basic and obvious failure to fact-check.
@DoctorDisaster YES to all points.
Gladwell's article is so ridiculous. Note he doesn't actually cite to anyone making the argument that Twitter = Malcolm X, because he couldn't. Even his examples from the Iranian protests – it was plain at the time that there were two concurrent things going on: some organizing/protesting/information sharing via Twitter, and then on a much larger and more important scale the people on the streets. It wasn't an either/or proposition, and he seems to imply that it was.
Perhaps to you, but
The cadre of prominent bloggers, like Andrew Sullivan, who championed the role of social media in Iran, Esfandiari continued, misunderstood the situation. "Western journalists who couldn't reach-or didn't bother reaching?-people on the ground in Iran simply scrolled through the English-language tweets post with tag #iranelection,"
Moreover he's not making the connecting between Malcom X and Twitter. Malcom X doesn't even appear in the article. It's rightful slap back at people(such as the quoted) who feel that we're in a new age of activist paradise where burning blog comments is a legitimate substitute for actually getting off your ass and doing something.
(#doingsomethingisreallyhard)
And more importantly, there's an implicit assertion that the form of the protest on the ground was likely rooted in pre-election socio-political organization. But who knows, really? Major hassle learning Iranian history or Farsi when there's some armchair activistin' to do!
I wonder how many of you actually read the article.
I think his point was the media is hyping the impact Twitter and social media is having. Have none of you heard any references to the "blogosphere" and "social networking" on cable news and how it's changing everything?
While I think that these new forms of communication are, and will be, vital to the development of a more civil society and in educating the masses, I do think that the news media generally doesn't understand the technology, and therefore they portray these technological developments often as revolutionary, when they are not in themselves a revolution.
I read it, and I appreciate the distinction you're making, but I don't think anyone supposes that joining a Facebook group to "support" this or that cause is any substitute for giving real time or money.
It's just purity trolling to suggest that there is anything wrong with subscribing publicly to a "cause." Maybe it would be better to call this kind of proto-activism or casual activism something more like "gateway activism." I bet a lot of people started their political involvement with a Bob Dylan album and a Che t-shirt, and what would be wrong with that?
I can't agree. And it's not just "social networks" – the same principle applies in the physical world. For example, I think there are a pretty large number of people who think that putting a magnetic ribbon on their bumper == "supporting the troops".
Not that I think there's anything wrong with this kind of passive support – not everyone is in a position to be able to march in demonstrations, contribute money, volunteer time, whatever… and passively expressing support for causes is better than nothing. But I also think that a lot of people do nothing more than retweet a message and then rub their hands together, saying "my work here is done".
Hmmm… evidently "blockquote" is not one of the tags I can use at the Awl. The first line should be understood as a quote from barnhouse, obvs.
Okay, but it's not like someone who would otherwise be joining the Peace Corps is going to forget all about activism because he or she joined a Facebook group. There were bumperstickers before!
An actually really good article. I'm sure I wasn't alone in my vigorous eye rolling when the tidal wave of euphoric "omg twitter liberated Moldova" nonsense hit.