The 2010 Debate Over Online Activism and Protest

Malcolm Gladwell’s 2010 New Yorker essay argued that social media could not match the commitment required for major protest. Critics replied that online tools and face-to-face organizing were connected, not opposing forms of action.

Gladwell’s essay included the line “The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted” and was released September 27, 2010, before appearing in the October 4, 2010 issue. It became a focal point for a wider argument about the role of digital networks in social change.

Gladwell’s central argument

In The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell said social media was especially good at creating weak ties, meaning connections that could bring many people into low-commitment activity. He contrasted this with people taking serious personal risks in organized campaigns.

Gladwell used the Greensboro lunch-counter sit-ins against segregation as an example of change built through strong relationships and a hierarchy. His view was that serious protest needed committed participants and organization, rather than a loose crowd gathered through online services.

He also questioned media accounts that described events in Moldova and Iran as Twitter revolutions. Gladwell said those stories reflected a Western media narrative, rather than proof that Twitter had driven political change.

Critics rejected the split

Jillian C. York of Harvard’s Berkman Center responded on September 27, 2010, in “The False Poles of Digital and Traditional Activism.” York wrote that treating digital activism as a separate movement created a false division because digital tools could support established forms of activism.

York said online tools could quickly bring together large groups, gain media attention, and provide one shared source of information for a cause. She argued that separating digital work from traditional activity harmed both ways of organizing.

York also noted that marches and letter-writing efforts could include people who participated only once. She added that online participation could involve real danger in countries where political expression was restricted.

Other writers said Gladwell’s argument left out existing discussion of slacktivism, the concern that online gestures might never become deeper engagement. They also pointed to research and debate about networked groups, the relationship between strong and weak ties, and organizing that moved between online and offline settings.

Ties and problems at scale

Zeynep Tufekci wrote on technosociology.org that Gladwell’s main mistake was a mismatch of scale. Tufekci said current problems operated globally, while human relationships usually formed at a local level.

Tufekci did not treat weak and strong ties as alternatives. She argued that a wide base of weaker connections could help create networks containing stronger relationships, allowing the two kinds of ties to support each other.

She also observed that corporations and nation-states were the only actors organized at a global level. Her argument shifted attention from whether online activism was real toward whether people could organize widely enough to address problems that crossed local boundaries.

Nancy Scola of techPresident raised a related question. Scola asked why modern problems, which differed from those of the 1960s, should require exactly the same forms of activism used then.

Different forms of change

Anil Dash argued that social change did not always come through direct confrontation. He used the Maker movement as an example of people responding to intellectual property rules by producing their own goods.

Leo Mirani wrote in The Guardian in October 2010 that Twitter and Facebook helped long-running protests in Kashmir reach mainstream Indian press coverage during the summer of 2010. Mirani also reported that Facebook’s users in India grew from 0.7 million in summer 2008 to 3 million in 2009 and 13 million in 2010.

Geoff Livingston largely agreed with Gladwell but said the issue was not simply one thing or another. Livingston argued that the subject required the space of a book, rather than a short and absolute judgment.

Beth Kanter and Allison Fine argued for combining online and offline work, which they called “online and onland.” Their position captured a main response to Gladwell: digital networks could not replace every part of protest, but they could be part of how people organized, communicated, and acted together.