User:Laurier Rochon/readingnotes/gladwell1/
Malcolm Gladwell > Small Change
Just a few thoughts...
"Social media cannot provide discipline or strategy"
It seems like the main discrepancy separating Gladwell's arguments and his critics' would be to what extent 'political change' is meaningful, and how it can be defined exactly. While I couldn't agree with all of Gladwell's claims, it seemed that opposing texts contained just as many misconceptions and assumptions about new media as it was challenging itself.
Gladwell really strikes a chord when he tackles issues of hierarchy and strategy, which are very tied to his low-risk/high-risk argument. It is universally accepted that within these social networks, if any, hierarchy is generally horizontal, not top-bottom. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, all views are treated democratically without discrimination - etc., you know the drill. It turns out though, that social networks possess, outside of their closed-lid inner workings, a structure of control - which just so happens to be the same when you look under the hood : private corporations (And in most cases - American ones. This is a detail, but an important one). As Parrika rightfully pointed out in his critique : "social networks are aggregation sites for collecting information for marketing". Idem for your Air Miles Card or your Albert Heijn 'bonus card', which does nothing else but track what you buy, and where you buy it. In effect, giving out bonus savings can be mathematically calculated to pull in highly valuable marketing data for very cheap - this is what Facebook and other social media platform providers are after : data. Keep in mind also, Twitter, Facebook and others alike are run by private corporations which haven't opened up to an IPO yet, but are estimated to be worth billions of dollars. Articles and findings showing how you and your data are worth much more than dollars, abound on every corner of the Internet.
I would argue that these much higher level, exclusive circles of power (the ones who detain it already), are the ones who possess the fundamental political agency that important 'change' necessitates, not the end users. These corporations control the structure, they own the data (on their servers) - and ultimately they make the important calls. Case in point, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's creator and the world's new youngest billionaire donates 100$ M to the New Jersey (Newark) school board : have you ever seen a Facebook page have that kind of impact in the 'real' world? Ultimately, the hundreds of million users from all geographic configurations generate traffic, clicks and income (ad revenue), but it seems like the kids in Newark are the ones hitting the jackpot. By selling digital space on their website for top dollar (thanks to the millions of procrastinators inflating Facebook's PPC ratio), pulling data to sell from an array of apps and taking a cut on transactions from their free services fed to users, the average Joe is a gold mine. No wonder their greeting messages are so warm and fuzzy. Obviously, there is more to the specific story of the Newark kids (the school board's original grant application didn't go through thanks to trivial details), but it still shows the inner workings of a rather large, spectacularly powerful social media machine capable of articulating 'change' in the real world.
Obviously, it would be ignorant to completely dismiss the idea that social media platforms can have any impact on our world, but we should be cautious in defining the scope of this 'change'. Sparking interest, debate, and perhaps questioning politics in a broad sense is something social media is very good at, yet it represents a shift in perception, and not a change in itself. It's indeed a great beginning, but I view these 'social' tools as incredibly simple and effective 'socializing' machines that serve as jumping boards for further action. They allow 'socializing' in the sense that they successfully manage our weak ties and acquaintances, mediate the messages these friends publish (and eventually reach us) but also allow ideas to organize, grow and disseminate into the world. Notwithstanding the importance of this, concrete action needs to be taken in the real world, where strategy and discipline' rule. Facebook can help coordinate a million-person march for whatever cause - if nobody can embody, lead, and elevate this cause higher than its original state (strategy, hierarchy), this march will go down in history as a fun family picnic.
Social media platforms are low risk, low commitment, and therefore, low impact systems - an intrinsic property that easily explains their popularity. One can do many 'things', or 'interact' extensively in a very small time period, but the roots of these interactions will never be deep, they have been mediated too heavily by technology. As Gladwell would say "It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have an impact".
If those four students from Greensboro had the luxury of a Twitter account in the sixties, I assume the protests would of organized somewhat faster, information spreading like wildfire - but the heart of the intention, and the physical presence that annoyed so many yet made the boycott meaningful, would be exactly the same.