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Social media does
not provide the kind of social ties that social change requires argues
New York Times best-selling author, Malcolm Gladwell in his October
2010 piece for the New Yorker titled, “Small Change: Why the Revolution
will not be tweeted.”

According to him,
the kind of activism associated with social media websites such as
Facebook and Twitter is built around weak ties; allowing people to
“friend,” “like” or “follow” acquaintances that they might not be able
to connect with or stay in touch with. To him, these sort of weak ties
seldom lead to high risk activism. They also seldom lead to high impact
activism, he argues.

Activists the world
over are mad and are calling his argument mindless hogwash from an
intellectual who does not even own a Facebook or Twitter account. I
agree with them. Though I have profound respect for Gladwell and some
of the seminal ideas he has contributed to the world, unfortunately,
this time, I think he misses the point.

The most frequently
used argument against social media activism by critics such as Gladwell
is that it is all noise, no action. In fact some writers now
derogatorily call any form of mobilisation that uses social media –
“clicktivism” or “slacktivism.”

“Clicktivism” or
“slacktivism” they say, is a form of activism that reduces action by
creating the illusion of doing something. For instance, by “liking” a
Facebook page or tweeting a Twitter hash tag, participating individuals
are deluded into thinking that they are effecting change when they in
actual fact are not.

Of course, such
criticism is valid. Any social movement wishing to make impact on the
ground that exists solely on the pages of Facebook and Twitter should
not be taken seriously. However, any movement that uses the power of
social media to mobilise people to effect change offline is one that
should definitely not be overlooked.

The problem with
Gladwell and others who critique the power of social media is that they
confuse bad activism with the use of social media tools. It is bad
activism to encourage people to “like” a Facebook page or tweet a
Twitter hashtag without translating the online participation to on the
ground change. What should be criticized are “slacktivists” – social
media activists that mobilise people online and keep them there without
connecting participants with opportunities to effect grass root change.
Sadly, in this new age of viral media, the world has many
“slacktivists” and this is the true problem, not social media.

Often times, social
media activists do not define the goals of their movements
appropriately. Many Facebook pages for instance are organised around
the idea of gathering people online and sharing links and information
with them. While this is perfectly valid if the goal is solely to equip
people with information, if the goal is to organise people to act in
the real world, creating a Facebook page is often not sufficient. It
should be viewed instead as the first step to getting people to act.
For instance, if the goal is to solve a given national problem, then
sharing links, comments and opinions online is merely a first step. At
some point a face to face meet-up should be set up where concrete
actions and project plans can be drawn out and discussed for
implementation. Afterwards, subsequent follow up meet-ups should be
organised until the goal is achieved.

Sadly, very few social media movements make the transition into this important phase.

An oft used example
of effective social media activism is Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential
campaign. President Obama’s campaign was successful not simply because
he was able to garner so many Facebook likes, but because he was able
to channel his social media support base to make donations. These
donations were then used to buy out large advertisement spots in the
media thus helping him strengthen his campaign in the real world. But
he did not stop there. He gave his supporters the tools and directives
that enabled them organise their own offline Barack Obama meet ups and
fundraisers. This helped him use his online support base to build a
powerful offline grass root movement.

Another good
example is a 2008 protest organised by a young Colombian engineer,
Oscar Morales. Morales used Facebook to launch a massive protest
comprising millions of Colombians to march in 27 cities throughout the
country. For a country like Colombia, which had no history of mass
demonstrations, this was unprecedented and phenomenal.

I implore all
Nigerian social media activists who wish to implement real world change
to make the important transition from online mobilisation to offline
implementation if they haven’t started doing so. The latter is the
harder but most important phase. It lacks the buzz and the flash of the
former, but without it, all that has occurred is
clicktivism/slacktivism/noise. Social media can change reality. It just
has to be used effectively.

To Malcolm Gladwell, you miss the point this time. Stop blaming the messenger (social media). Blame the message.