"Gladwell is a spirited contrarian. His argument in the New Yorker was an attack on the prevalent idea that online social networks represent the future of campaigning and protest, and perhaps – in totalitarian states – of revolution. The bestselling author of The Tipping Point unpicked this notion with typical chutzpah, moving quickly from emotive and carefully selected individual case studies to sweeping universal principles.
Gladwell examined the most effective mass protest of modern times – the American civil rights movement. Using an account of the courageous coffee bar sit-in in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960, he argued that such activism was based on the strength of intimate friendships and shared experience, and directed by hierarchical power, could never have arisen from the 'weak ties' and 'horizontal' associations that characterise the campaigning of online 'friends' and 'followers'."
A piece from the Guardian discussing Malcolm Gladwell's article in the New Yorker: "Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted". Gladwell makes the distinction between social movements held together by "strong ties," that is a close friendship between participants, and online social networks which tend to be comprised by "weak ties." In many ways Gladwell is rehearsing the type of argument he made in The Tipping Point, for example, the crucial influence key connecting people had in creating a tipping point in the world. Gladwell's ultimate point is that there is a difference between a weak-tie Facebook friend and a strong-tie close personal friend. While he acknowledges that remarkable things can be done by tapping into the latent power of weak-tie relationships, he keeps his focus on the failure of incapacity of social networks to be effective in practice. Interestingly, Gladwell argues that social movements are most effective when they are organized as a hierarchy. He argues that "Al Qaeda was most dangerous when it was a unified hierarchy. Now that it has dissipated into a network, it has proved far less effective." As we talked about in class, the effectiveness of a network is determined by how effectively it works together to achieve the program that holds together the various nodes. It seems to me that Gladwell is saying that networks are inherently comprised of weak ties where individual nodes have only a weak connection to the central program. This seems to be a weakness in the argument--something where other evidence may cast a different light on the ideas.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all#ixzz11UMVhwOR
