Weak Ties + 18 Days in Egypt

Talking about the Gladwell vs. Stone debate may seem like I’m going way back into things we’ve already talked about and moved on from, but I can’t seem to get their argument out of my head. Even in our reading for this week about pranking, some of Harold’s statements made me think, “Gladwell wouldn’t like this.” For example, in the Truth campaign, they put signs in magazines to make it easy for kids to tear them out and put them up. Harold says this, “provides young people with a quick and easy way to protest, to feel as if they are committing a subversive act, however small and temporary.” I have a feeling Gladwell would argue that these are weak ties between the audience and the rhetors.

While their debate lingers in my mind, I am still torn between Stone and Gladwell. I would like to believe that social media, Twitter in particular, has the power to help change and start movements, such as those happening in the Middle East. I watched a lot of news coverage during the beginning of the Arab Spring, and was fully under the impression that Twitter played a large role in organizing the uprisings, so Gladwell’s points to the contrary somewhat deflated my good opinion of Twitter as an agent for change. After I read Gladwell’s article, Stone appeared a bit whiny and defensive in his article, and I was left conflicted.

That is, until I stumbled across “18 Days in Egypt,” a collaborative, interactive documentary project. The producers are using the power and reach of social media to collect real stories and put them all in one place to show people around the world what happened to start this change in the Middle East.

Yes, the media probably dramatized the involvement of Twitter in the Arab Spring, and yes, social media is not as pervasive in the Middle East as it is in the United States, so of course there will be more action here than there, but does that matter? Looking at this project, to me, it doesn’t matter. Social media is still playing a part, no matter how small or large, and it is still creating ties, no matter how “weak” or strong. It’s relative, and I don’t think something like this needs to be quantified (in terms of how many people are tweeting where, who consistently follows what is going on, etc.) in order to be considered legitimate.