[liberationtech] Malcolm Gladwell on Traditional vs. Online Activism

[Patrick Meier (Ushahidi)]

Hi All,

Thought I'd share my
thoughts<http://irevolution.wordpress.com/2010/10/07/gladwell-newyorker/>on
Gladwell's piece. I think he's spot on.

All best,
Patrick



On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 10:38 AM, Luke Allnutt <AllnuttL at rferl.org> wrote:

>
> Hello there. I’ve been lurking for a few weeks on this list and just
> wanted to introduce myself. I’m the editor in chief of Radio Free
> Europe/Radio Liberty’s English website and write a blog, Tangled Web,
> about the intersection of new technologies and foreign policy etc.
> http://www.rferl.org/archive/Tangled_Web/latest/3281/3281.html
>
> Anyway, I’m really enjoying the discussions on this list and hope to
> contribute more in the future.
>
> Here are some thoughts, blogged here *
> http://www.rferl.org/content/Why_Malcolm_Gladwell_Is_Wrong_About_Digital_Activism/2171985.html
> *, about Gladwell’s recent article on digital activism.
>
> * My major problem with the piece is the way that Gladwell makes such a
> clear distinction between traditional activism and digital activism. In
> fact, the two overlap and complement each other. As Jillian C. York blogged,
> the two are *false polls: *<http://jilliancyork.com/2010/09/27/the-false-poles-of-digital-and-traditional-activism/>
>
> *[B]y drawing a distinct line between traditional” and “digital” (or
> online and offline, if you prefer) activism, pundits and journalists are
> doing a disservice to both the utility of digital tools and to the
> resilience of traditional advocacy.*
>
> The reality is that these days a good deal of activism will have some kind
> of digital component. As a label, cyberdissident is becoming *increasingly
> irrelevant. *<http://www.rferl.org/content/There_Are_No_More_Cyberdissidents/2149734.html>Activists
> fighting oppressive regimes want to get their messages out and, unlike
> politicians who tend to fetishise technology, they just want to use the most
> effective tool, whether that’s a print flyer, a sit-in, or a Facebook group
> -- or a combination of all of the above.
>
> Take Azerbaijan’s *“donkey bloggers”: *<http://www.rferl.org/content/Azerbaijans_Donkey_Bloggers_Are_Just_The_Beginning/2094553.html>labeling
> them digital activists is something of a misnomer. They’re young activists
> who, because they’re not living in a cave, have chosen to use digital tools
> to skewer their government. They also do old-world things like meet and
> rally. They’ve probably even been known to wave a placard now and again. But
> just because they have chosen to use Facebook and YouTube as weapons of
> choice, does that make them lazy and ineffective?
>
> Another big distinction Gladwell makes is between networks (weak,
> ineffective) and hierarchical structures (strong, effective). But the two
> have coexisted in the past and will continue to coexist. Activism has always
> had a mix of strong-tie relationships and weak-tie relationships. For
> instance, to use a Western model, there were the letter writers who met
> weekly in the church hall (strong ties) and then there were the people in
> the street who popped a few cents into a collection tin and got a lapel
> sticker in return (weak ties). To a degree, that dynamic has been recreated
> online. Nowadays, a few might gather to protest outside an embassy, while
> many will join a Facebook group. The dynamics of group involvement and the
> relative importance of various components of those groups were not clearly
> understood then and are certainly not now.
>
> * As *Lina Srivastava writes* <http://linasrivastava.blogspot.com/>, the
> problem with Gladwell’s article -- and in many other critiques of the role
> of new technologies -- is that he elevates the “digital” as opposed to the
> “activism.” This makes us focus on the computers rather than what people do
> with the computers. But I think journalists and digital activists are
> themselves partly to blame for this fetishizing. Even in our use of “donkey
> bloggers” or “cyberdissidents” or “Twitter revolution” -- the
> reader-friendly tags and boilerplates so loved by journalists -- we tend to
> overemphasize the technology at the expense of the activism. And as people
> who are enthusiastic about digital activism, we are all too happy to
> emphasize the technology when something is cool and new and successful.
>
> * The problem with any assessment of the impact of digital technologies is
> that, as the excellent report *“Blogs And Bullets” *<http://www.usip.org/files/resources/pw65.pdf>points
> out, the evidence is still fragmentary and we are reliant on anecdote and
> intuition. Twitter, after all, is only four years old and it’s just too
> early to measure impact (it was always difficult to measure the impact of
> traditional activism as well). So articles or essays -- whether they be
> cyberutopian or cyberskeptic, to use the two extremes -- tend to trot out
> the same anecdotes again and again. In the cyberutopian camp, we have the
> open-source crowdsourcing project *Ushahidi* <http://www.ushahidi.com/>and the FARC protests in Colombia. And in the cyberskeptics camp, we have
> the critiques of the role played by social media in Moldova and Iran. It's
> just too early to know.
>
> Iran now has become synonymous with the failure of social media (and
> there’s no doubt that Twitter’s significance was hugely exaggerated). My
> colleague, Persian Letters blogger Golnaz Esfandiari was quoted in the
> Gladwell piece, as she wrote a *good article*<http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/07/the_twitter_revolution_that_wasnt>last year rightfully playing down Twitter’s role in the postelection unrest.
> So the reader might conclude that Iranians aren’t using social-networking
> tools at all in order to bring change to their country, but as Golnaz just
> blogged today, Iran's opposition *continues to use Facebook*<http://www.rferl.org/content/Iran_Says_Facebook_And_Twitter_Are_Countrys_Hidden_Enemies/2171343.html>for campaigning (they’re also launching a newspaper).
>
> Gladwell, like any gifted writer, is selective about his juxtaposition of
> anecdotes. The civil-rights movement is the mother of all anecdotes: it has
> everything, bravery, drama, a shared sense of moral clarity. That noble
> example is juxtaposed next to a few platitudes a U.S. official makes at a
> conference and a wild claim that Twitter be nominated for a Nobel Prize. Not
> exactly comparing like with like.
>
> (As a side note, there’s a common implication in any article on
> “clicktavism” or “slacktavism” that traditional activism is always presented
> as utterly selfless, noble, and involving ultimate sacrifices, unlike the
> kids of today with their fancy-pants phones and their lattes and their
> narcissism.)
>
> * Throughout the article, I kept thinking -- and I don't want to get all
> Clay Shirky here -- wouldn't digital technology make that more effective.
> Those brave Greensboro protesters would still have sat at the counter, but
> couldn’t their cause be broadcast more quickly through social media?
> Couldn’t the offline activities of the committed core be amplified to a
> critical point by the weak-tied masses (those of us clicking “like” and
> changing our avatars)? Gladwell’s argument is that it wouldn’t be, that we
> would be deterred from physically protesting because we had made an online
> “sacrifice,” but there just isn’t any compelling evidence to support either
> thesis. Or, while we’re doing counterfactuals, imagine the *Montgomery bus
> boycott * <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Bus_Boycott>organized
> through Twitter and geo-location tools. There might have even been an app
> for that, written by some open-source whizz kid. Find the nearest car pool
> by logging in with your location-based phone. More flexibility and better
> organization could have meant a much larger number taking part.
>
> Ultimately, Gladwell’s mistake is that he focuses on Revolutions rather
> than revolutions. The former are extremely rare but the latter are
> thankfully more common. We are so preoccupied with overthrowing governments
> and regime change, that we risk overlooking the incremental benefits that
> digital activism can bring everyday. (A hazing video in Armenia goes viral
> and leads to an officer’s conviction. A Russian blogger’s harrowing account
> of the state of a regional hospital trickles up into state-run media.) No,
> it’s not regime change, but it’s undoubtedly making a difference.
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