Comments

1
People in power don't get that the people they spend time with in parties aren't the people that are rebelling against them, or that just one twitter or FB group can start a worldwide unstoppable and uncontrollable series of actions that can't be put back in the bottle.

Just look at the March issue of Vanity Fair and the poll there - most 65 and older don't even HAVE email and don't even know about Twitter or Facebook.
2
Paul, I kind of get the impression you're not Malcolm Gladwell's biggest fan.
3
Um, didn't the Egyptian government block twitter and the internet for at least a couple of days, during which the protest seemed to do just fine?

Insisting that the Egyptian people wouldn't have been able to free themselves without the help of our American technology seems like the worst kind of arrogance.
4
"Mincing and pouting"? You're saying he acts too faggy to have a point? Good luck with that, Mr. Butchy Butch.
5
i agree with #3

twitter is just noise
6
Instead of mincing and pouting about Malcolm Gladwell yet again, you could always just write your own books. You know, since you're a writer and all. Just sayin'. This bitter/harping/preachy tone is tiresome and off-putting.
7
Good call, Paul -- I agree, Gladwell is being a bit defensive about this and can't admit that some of the different media used in the revolution (not just Twitter, but other Internet outlets and cell phones) played an important role. It's not *just* the message, it's whether that message can get effectively transmitted to enough people to bring about public action.

Interesting tidbit: The case he uses to talk about how 'weak ties' from social media are less effective for social activism and revolution is that of East Germany. In point of fact, research on the fall of the DDR suggests that it was largely due to:
A) The mandatory group discussions that the regime had people attend, in which they wound up sharing their dissatisfaction with the government with one another. The idea is that basically people were isolated from each other for a while and didn't know how bad it was across the country, but then over time grew to learn that just about everyone they met in these discussions was unhappy with the regime--and then started saying "Why not get rid of this system?" (See the last chapter of The Group in Society, by the UW's John Gastil; or Perry Deess' research on the DDR, available online, I believe.)
B) The weak ties of social networks, which led to sharing ideas of revolution and change throughout the German public, once the process started -- the idea here being that it wasn't enough for you and your spouse and two close friends to say "Let's march on the capital" or whatever, but it was enough when you heard many co-workers or acquaintances saying the same thing. Check out a piece by Opp and Gern in American Sociological Review in 1993 for more info about this.
8
Someone's got a crush...
9
and yet, the Stranger still mocks the study of Communication any time the academic program comes up
10
it seems silly to argue whether this revolution would have happened without twitter and facebook. why do you hate gladwell so much?

he had a point in his original article when he said that social networks make it easy for people to show support for a cause, by clicking a "like" button for example, but don't necessarily do much extra to get people to stand up and really do something.
11
Twitter wasn't very important to the Egyptian revolution. It just wasn't. It's probably more important to people outside of Egypt who wanted to know what was going on, and even then, once the TV cameras moved in, Twitter was back to its old boring self. For that purpose, Al Jazeera deserves the plaudits, not fucking Twitter.

What made a difference in Egypt wasn't social media, it was feet on the ground in Tahrir Square, and a military that ultimately understood what it was about. For your counterexample, take a look at Iran, which was much more dependent on Twitter and Facebook, and failed utterly.

Social media is cool. It's not the be-all and end-all of everything. Don't get ahead of yourself.
12

fnarf, you are grossly underestimating the utility of the tools you mention to disseminate information, lobby resources (social networks), and organize.

But that figures, because you are old and out of touch with the prevalence of these technologies
13
Did anyone at The Stranger graduate from high school?
14
not even the news editor, @13
15
@9 no, they mock those who have Communications majors.

But where else would their advertisers find all those beer promoters if not for Communications majors?

@14 sounds like they were from South Seattle ...
16
"Would the revolution in Egypt have happened without cell phones, Mr. Gladwell?"

I think that's the main point. If Twitter didn't exist, then a different communication medium would have been used. Maybe it increased the ease of information transfer, but Twitter wasn't a game changer.

Citizens have been revolting for millenia. Saying Twitter made it possible is short-sighted and inane.

As far as "weak ties" go, well, honestly, a lot of things led to this point in Egypt. To say any one is right or wrong is very, very hard to disprove.
17
@12 is correct. Twitter fed the backchannels that Davos fed back into the business world that kept the people protesting safe, and created the relinked sat phone feeds so nearby media could gather info to send back into Egypt via radio and sat TV.

Fnarf thinks everything is the way the govt pretends it is.
18
I'm no fan of Gladwell, but he's right on this. The Western media's focus on the role of web based social media in this revolution, and in the 2009 protests in Iran is inaccurate, narcissistic and silly. Maybe facebook was useful in the very beginning, but the Egyptian government shut off internet service entirely on day 2 and it had zero impact on the ability of people to continue to protest.

I've traveled in places like Egypt. I strongly suspect that like in most developing countries the connections are slow, unreliable, and mostly only accessible through expensive internet cafes. 90% of the population probably never goes online at all. 30% can't even read, for crissakes. The idea that these protesters are tweeting each other vital information is silly, and the only reason the media is playing up this angle is because it has a huge boner for social media.
19
you know, I think Gladwell is a tool, but I also think the jury's still out.

It's pretty clear that consumers of these services deliberately work to create the perception that the tools are integral to events like Egypt, and Tunisia, and Iran, and that American media covers that pretty credulously.

Mass movements are a pre-technological aspect of human mass socialization, so, yeah, I would say it's totally possible to imagine these events without cell phones, or cars. How many of us here during the WTO had cell phones, let alone cell phones with data plans? A minority, I would guess.

Now, is it imaginable that you and I would have spectated with such avidity, especially via video coverage provided by a stunningly good Arab-world-based English language news channel? Of course not. Did our eyeballs help to guarantee the safety of those in the streets? It's hard to say, but I would hazard the opinion that it did matter.

In sum, is it possible that the Egyptian revolution could have taken place in the absence of social-media tools? Absolutely. Did the internet provide a larger platform for coverage of the revolution in such a way that it encouraged both on-the-ground participation and arguably discouraged the use of military force? Arguably yes.
20
Best account I have seen of what social-networking ment to the protests.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/th…

Egypt is a country of nearly 80 million. Facebook and twitter helped connect and mobilize a tiny fraction of the people.
These communication avenues did help spread word of what was going on inside the country to political gawkers like ourselves and so helped push international opinion against Mubarak. This may have made crushing the revolution harder.

21
excellent point regarding the shutdown, Matt.
23
Changing the subject slightly to strong ties, Obama just gave outgoing press secretary Robert Gibbs a framed cravat that he borrowed for the speech at the convention in 2008, and never returned until now.
24
My goodness, surely revolution cannot happen with out social networking. Good thing the Sans-Culottes had Twitter when they stormed the Bastille.

DUMB DUMB DUMB.

@18 Boom. You nailed it.

25
@17, oh, now Twitter fed the backchannels, now, did it? That's fascinating stuff. Backchannels that Davos (Davos?) fed into the business wor -- I'm sorry, I just saw something shiny. Oh, it's your brain. Small and round and shiny like a bb.

Everyone in Egypt has a cell phone now. Those were important to spread the word. But the word was spreading anyways; you don't need Twitter to tell you to go to Tahrir Square. Twitter's a less significant part of the story than Adidas (for running).
26
What Fnarf and matt said -- Twitter and Facebook may have been "instrumental" to the news (and erroneous rumors) of this revolution getting to some Westerners, but seemed pretty incidental to the revolution itself.

I heard that revolutionaries were circumventing the internet blockout with ham radios, which I thought was kind of cool and lotech.

27
Social Networks are built on weak ties. They aren't useless, but they're nothing compared to the physical inertia of the crowd, and like #11 mentions, a military that looked out for its people is brought this as far as it's come.

I'd fathom Egyptians had to do little more than look out their windows to become part of this event. Claiming Twitter or Facebook or whatever made this possible is viewing this issue through extremely American Technology #1! colored glasses.
28
Gladwell-Constant: 15-love.
29
Paul Constant literally believes that the Egyptian revolution couldn't have happened without Twitter

hahahahahahahahaha

Oh well, what do you expect from someone who couldn't graduate from high school
30
Reading what Gladwell wrote last fall, and what he wrote last week, his presumed errors are not apparent. Perhaps Mr. Constant could be more specific in his critique?
31
"Perhaps Mr. Constant could be more specific in his critique?"

He hasn't got one yet, just a grudge - or a crush.
32
It may have happened without twitter, facebook, myspace or whatever other cool new hip thing the kids were playing with, but it wouldn't have happened without the internet. The internet is the game changer here. Not some fucking service that happens to use it. The internet is the source of our anger, and is the answer to all our questions. Once we break out of spending time alone online, and become organized in ANY fashion, it's the start of the next revolution.

Please wait...

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