Why Retweeting Can Replace The Greensboro Activism In Malcolm Gladwell’s article, “The Revolution Will Not Be Retweeted” he started off by citing a protest in Greensboro, North Carolina when four black students went to a coffee shop and one of them sat on the table reserved for whites. It then received a lot of attention motivating other students nearby to join. It further led to a big national protest. According to Gladwell, he describes this kind of protest as high-risk activism and by which it produces strong ties. Strong ties are formed from people who are able to establish a deep connection and relationship with each other such as families and friends. Furthermore, he compared this activism to the activism happening on social media. According to him, even though “the Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvelous efficiency” and even though “it’s terrific at the diffusion of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, seamlessly matching up buyers and sellers, and the logistical functions of the dating world” (Gladwell 240) still it results to weak ties leading to low-risk activism according to Gladwell. Therefore, “…the platforms of social media are built around weak ties” (Gladwell 238) and that “the new tools of social media have reinvented social activism” (Gladwell 237), he said. Generally, weak ties for him are you acquaintances and the people you don’t meet frequently.…show more content… Gladwell went back and forth, comparing and contrasting strong ties from weak ties. He wraps up his essay by citing the viral phone loss in which social media was greatly involved. And he concluded that social media is “a form of organizing which favors the weak-tie connections that give us access to information over the strong-tie connections that help us persevere in the face of danger” (Gladwell
