bcbm
12th October 2010, 10:17
interesting op-ed from the new york times
Just as The Social Network hit the multiplexes, Malcolm Gladwell took to The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell) with a stinging takedown of social networks as vehicles for meaningful political and social action. He calculated that the nearly 1.3 million members of the Facebook page for the Save Darfur Coalition have donated an average of 9 cents each to their cause. He mocked American journalists glorification of Twitters supposedly pivotal role during last years short-lived uprising in Iran, suggesting that the rebels celebrated Twitter feeds written in English, not Farsi did more to titillate blogging technophiles in the West than to aid Iranians in their struggle against totalitarian rulers.
With Facebook and Twitter and the like, Gladwell wrote, the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will was supposed to be upended, so it would be easier for the powerless to collaborate, coordinate, and give voice to their concerns. Instead, he concluded, we ended up with the reverse: social media increase the efficiency of the existing order rather than empowering dissidents. In his view, social networking is far less likely to recreate the civil rights movement of the 1960s than to track down missing cellphones for Wall Streeters.
full editorial here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/opinion/10rich.html
Just as The Social Network hit the multiplexes, Malcolm Gladwell took to The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell) with a stinging takedown of social networks as vehicles for meaningful political and social action. He calculated that the nearly 1.3 million members of the Facebook page for the Save Darfur Coalition have donated an average of 9 cents each to their cause. He mocked American journalists glorification of Twitters supposedly pivotal role during last years short-lived uprising in Iran, suggesting that the rebels celebrated Twitter feeds written in English, not Farsi did more to titillate blogging technophiles in the West than to aid Iranians in their struggle against totalitarian rulers.
With Facebook and Twitter and the like, Gladwell wrote, the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will was supposed to be upended, so it would be easier for the powerless to collaborate, coordinate, and give voice to their concerns. Instead, he concluded, we ended up with the reverse: social media increase the efficiency of the existing order rather than empowering dissidents. In his view, social networking is far less likely to recreate the civil rights movement of the 1960s than to track down missing cellphones for Wall Streeters.
full editorial here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/opinion/10rich.html