"Why the revolution will not be tweeted" - Malcolm Gladwell

In a forthcoming publication for the Rockefeller Foundation, my colleague Edgar Masatu and I reflect on ICTs and Citizen Agency.

The soaring penetration of mobile communication devices around the world is having profound effects on access to information, business models in financial services, forms of social mobilization, and sources of innovation. We explore the ability of social media to serve as an “aggregation of voices from the bottom up,” and cite examples such as social media being credited with amplifying the mobilizing power of Thailand’s Red Shirt protestors and facilitating citizen journalists to “report” on the Chinese and Iranian authorities’ responses to recent street protests. Lawrence Haddad from the Institute of Development Studies in the United Kingdom predicted that driven by ICTs, “people power in development will move into a new age.”

But, should we believe the hype that ICTs may re-shape the relationship between the state and the citizen? Is the technology enhancing citizens’ participation in civic life or their ability to hold governments more accountable? Can social media change politics?

Malcolm Gladwell has a different perspective and does not think that social media is (or can be) an instrument of big change.The article is called ‘Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted” Here is one of his sentences in his inimitable style:
“...Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice. We are a long way from the lunch counters of Greensboro.”

Intrigued? Read more at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all#ixzz10odV5zGi