Can Twitter affect real social change?

Malcolm Gladwell posted an interesting article in The New Yorker last week about the effectiveness of Twitter in affecting real social change. In it Gladwell postulates that real social change can never come from loose networks of people that do not know each other but through structured organization working to create a change. 

Not surprisingly, the founders of Twitter, Ev Williams and Biz Stone, found Gladwell’s article “laughable,” ”absurd” and “pointless.” Ev Williams countered by saying, “Anyone who’s claiming that sending a tweet by itself is activism, that’s ludicrous — but no one’s claiming that, at least no one that’s credible.“

While they may disagree on the surface, when you really look at what Gladwell and Williams are saying, they are basically in agreement. Twitter has never claimed to be the new face of social activism. Hundreds of bloggers did that. Twitter alone will never be able to affect social change. Social media  by itself will never be able to affect social change. The only thing that can ever create lasting change is people.

Twitter, Facebook, Care2 and any online site or application are just tools to help organize, provide a voice and create awareness of issues, problems or needs. Like radio, television and newspapers before them, social media is only a means to an end, not the means itself. 

In his article, Gladwell points out that the four black students  who staged a sit-in at a local diner in Greensboro, NC that helped end segregation in the state in the 60’s didn’t have Twitter to help them, and they were able to create real change. That’s true but they did have newspapers, telephones and local television coverage. There is no difference between that coverage and using Twitter and Facebook. In fact, the viral, real-time and populist aspects of the latter arguably make them even more potent.

Without Twitter, we wouldn’t have been able to raise awareness of the earthquake in Haiti as effectively - or helped  shed international light on the  problematic  elections  in Iran.   

A mass broadcast tweet means nothing on its own, but if it can  inspire one person to take up a cause and motivate others to create real offline change then social media can make a difference. While Malcolm Gladwell is correct about Twitter not affecting real social change, he is completely wrong about Twitter. It is the latest tool, along with newspapers, email, television and radio that can be used to create change. And that will be the real legacy of social media websites and applications when it comes to social activism. 

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.

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