by Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith
CommonDreams.org October 8, 2010
[This article is dedicated to the late Tim Costello, who taught us so much about social movements and organization.]
An October 4 New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell, "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will not be Tweeted" poses an important question: What if anything is the potential contribution of web-based "social networking" to social movements and social change? The article's answer, drawing primarily on an account of the civil rights movement, is that social movements that are strong enough to impose change on powerful social forces require both strong ties among participants and hierarchical organizations -- the opposite of the weak ties and unstructured equality provided by social networking websites.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/08-3