Blog Post #1

Malcolm Gladwell’s “Small Change”

  1. Gladwell’s argument is traditional activism is more effective than social media. He started the essay with a story that is traditional activism and throughout the essay, he compares and contrasts traditional and social media. Social media is a low risk while traditional is high risk. Social media has weak ties while traditional has strong ties. Social media is a network and traditional has hierarchies.
  2. Gladwell’s ethics are equally for all and to stand up for what you believe in. All races are equal and all can start movements that can make a change. Digital life has no real interactions and all the connections are not real. It also doesn’t have the strong ties you have in real life. Real-life meaning the world outside of social media. He joins in as someone who objects social media and sees it to a point as useless in terms of connections, movements, and networks. I imagine myself as joining this conversation as to agree with him in the ethics and race. But I will have some arguments with him about digital life. Digital life allows us to stay in contact with those who move to different states or countries. It allows us to make friends in different states and countries. Gladwell brings in other voices towards the end of his essay as he talks about Evan and his phone. But throughout the essay, he brings in voices that support his view and ones that oppose his view. Real-life stories count as his evidence. Examples are the four college students from A&T who sat at Woolworth lunch counter and Evan’s phone story. Gladwell acknowledges counterarguments by incorporating them into his argument. He talks about the negatives and positives of social media. Gladwell acknowledges the audience by talking about both sides. He reaches out to older and newer generations.
  3. I was convinced by his argument because the points he made in his essay made sense to me. The strong ties versus the weak ties. The high versus the low risks. The network versus hierarchies. The way he set up his argument in the way he did and the examples he used really impacted me. People before social media were closer than they are now. That’s one point I got from his argument. So because of that movements were closer than they are now. Social media does have strong connections between people who know each other in real life but with those who haven’t met face to face the connection between them is weaker.