Here comes everybody (and their agenda)

In a recent article in the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell takes on Clay Shirky by proposing that real social change does not and cannot take place in the world of social media, because online interaction enables only “weak ties” between individuals, and that real revolution relies on “strong ties” between people and issues.

In discussing the strength of adherents to an issue, Gladwell isolates relationships among people, and doesn’t really address the notion of commitment to personal change. He doesn’t address, for example, the possibility that individuals can make a difference by simply altering their everyday activities.

So I guess how you see this issue depends on what you think a revolution is. No doubt some people would make the distinction here between revolutionary and evolutionary movement, but I wonder if real social change is being effected in ways that don’t necessarily involve strong ties between individual and issue. Maybe not all causes require that people be passionately devoted to them. Maybe people are beginning to see, for example, the power of their spending habits, or the effectiveness of their everyday food choices, or the value of collaborating with strangers on community projects.

Maybe positive social change is being more effectively achieved not through violent upheaval, but through piecemeal nudges.

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I previously posted elsewhere on this topic:
I read Gladwell’s piece in the New Yorker earlier today and immediately thought, ‘Oh, Malcolm, you iconoclast, you.’ Taking on Clay Shirky is no simple effort. But his article, in typical Gladwellian style, is largely anecdotal and doesn’t really point to any hard data to back up his claims. The problem with his argument is that it mandates an either-or dynamic: either you’re lending your name to an online petition or you’re out in the field actively playing a role in the theatre of social change. (Or, as he would have it, you’re carrying out actions in a structured and disciplined hierarchy of instruction.)

And I’m not convinced that’s the way social movements are unfolding in our post-web2.0 theatre. Isn’t it possible that one is a complement to the other?

One major difference in the two sides is the way in which information is conveyed: written language versus speech. Gladwell seems to privilege the latter (an affinity that in postmodern terms is being a sucker for ‘présence’). But social movements have long used written/symbolic forms of communication (posters, books, pamphlets, graffiti, etc.) to reach a wider audience. Access to information is a critical factor in motivating people to act, and the network (democratic) model of spreading ideas has far greater reach and far more profound implications for individual choice than the centralized, strategic approach he’s promoting.