"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" (Gladwell).
I agree a great deal with this quote from Gladwell's article and understand where he is coming from. In the article he talks about the research that a large number of people in the thousands have contributed to causes and made donations but they have averaged out to pennies a piece. Is social media making a difference in the way of activism today? I have to say that I think it is a great tool for raising awareness for causes and things that are going on, but I don't think that it is necessarily the tool for causing change.
Yes I think that social media can create some change by allowing people to voice their opinions and creating lists of people to sign a petition to get something changed. Unfortunately, from my own experience on Facebook I feel that there are so many posts to click "Like" or "Share" for spreading the word on anything and everything that I think that people are becoming saturated with so many causes that they no longer believe half of it any more or are becoming sensitized to the never ending "please join us" posts that pop up on their feed continually.
I think that today and now to really bring awareness to a group, that they need to have a social media presence to reach more people and let themselves be known, but only those who are truly willing to do something outside of clicking and sharing will effect much true and lasting change. Gladwell states something to this effect in his article, "But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism" (Gladwell).
I have a personal experience in a situation where my husband and I decided to run a marathon in Iceland to raise $12000 for diabetes because he lost his father to the disease and when family and friends found out, they all chipped in to help us spread the word and to get a turn out to our fundraisers. The paper did interviews and we set up a website and sent out e-mails and got a lot of response to the effect of "we love what your doing," but the core of the people that contributed and showed up were those that were close to those who were close to us.
So from my own experience, I think that I agree with this article that tight-ties that are close to the cause are going to be the actual motivators and those who go out and participate.
Works Cited
Gladwell, M. (2010). Small change: Why the revolution will not be Tweeted. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all
