Yes, We Can Tweet

Malcolm Gladwell recently wrote an article arguing that social media hampers the likelihood and effectiveness of high-risk activism. Dave Pell disagreed.

In his article, Pell tries to argue that giving people a voice, while not strictly necessary for success, could hardly be viewed as a bad thing:

The realtime, social web is clearly not a required element to organize and execute a high impact revolution. Neither is a megaphone, but it sure makes it easier for the folks in the back to hear you.

But the analogy doesn't work. A megaphone is a centralized communications device. By using one, I establish myself as a dominant figure in the room. My volume commands your attention. Twitter and its distributed communications brethren are like giving everyone in the room a megaphone. No one voice can stand out. No one voice can guide. And centralized guidance, Gladwell argues, is what successful high-risk activism requires:

Boycotts and sit-ins and nonviolent confrontations—which were the weapons of choice for the civil-rights movement—are high-risk strategies. They leave little room for conflict and error. The moment even one protester deviates from the script and responds to provocation, the moral legitimacy of the entire protest is compromised. Enthusiasts for social media would no doubt have us believe that King’s task in Birmingham would have been made infinitely easier had he been able to communicate with his followers through Facebook, and contented himself with tweets from a Birmingham jail. But networks are messy: think of the ceaseless pattern of correction and revision, amendment and debate, that characterizes Wikipedia. If Martin Luther King, Jr., had tried to do a wiki-boycott in Montgomery, he would have been steamrollered by the white power structure. And of what use would a digital communication tool be in a town where ninety-eight per cent of the black community could be reached every Sunday morning at church? The things that King needed in Birmingham—discipline and strategy—were things that online social media cannot provide.

Again, Pell disagrees:

Gladwell goes on to argue that Facebook and Twitter create a kind of connectedness that is ultimately the opposite of what’s required for true activism.

The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with. That’s why you can have a thousand “friends” on Facebook, as you never could in real life ... The Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvelous efficiency. It’s terrific at the diffusion of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, seamlessly matching up buyers and sellers, and the logistical functions of the dating world. But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.

I don’t know about you, but my Facebook and Twitter communities are made up of both weak-ties and strong ones. I have several family members and best friends with whom I share an online connection. I would label them as strong ties. I also share online content with many people who I’ve never met.

But Gladwell's characterization of Twitter and Facebook relationships as "weak" is unrelated to the strength of any small subset of real relationships represented therein. That you may be connected to close, personal friends on Twitter and Facebook does not make those technological associations "strong".

These digital connections are weak, and not simply because the majority of the real relationships they represent are too. Twitter and Facebook are, at their core, impersonal media. They are fueled by public bulletins, statuses, and wall posts1. Everyone has a megaphone with which they can shout their way into your feed2. It is this impersonality, Gladwell argues, that hinders these technological ties from being anything more than weak, and it is that weakness that prevents them from inspiring and motivating:

It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact.

Of course, "impact" and "inspiration" and "motivation" are relative. But live-tweeting a sit-in won't provide the organization and strategy necessary to make whatever secondary actions it "inspires" worthwhile. Social media is not something to be harnessed. It is the unruly mob to successful activism's disciplined army. If its by-products are helpful, it will be in spite of the medium, not because of it.

Pell concludes by stating that "any inherent weaknesses in the technology are beside the point." Unless those weaknesses undermine the very work you seek to accomplish. Then they are entirely the point.

  1. Sure, each service has its own private messaging functionality, but that is not what defines them. The bread-and-butter of these services is public pronouncements. The private messaging they offer is little more than branded email.
  2. Yes, it's possible to carve out a very small, private niche for you and your closest friends. But I'm willing to bet good money that if it isn't already, such use is becoming increasingly rare.