Social Media, Social Movements, and weak ties
https://www.wired.com/2010/09/weak-ties-twitter-and-revolutions/
This article written by wired explores how social media, viewed through the lens of weak ties, can explain a lot about social movements in today’s world. The article claims that most of our creativity and sources of new ideas actually come from our acquaintances, not our friends. The reason is because our friends are less likely to challenge us and they also give us more biased information than an acquaintance with whom you have good relations. Sociologist Mark Granovetter takes this a step further and ties in social media. He explains that social media is all about establishing weak ties with people–friends of close friends. If I am pretty good friends with John, and John is pretty good friends with Andrew (who I may have talked to once or twice or even never before), then chances are Facebook will recommend Andrew to me as a friend. If I friend request him, then I now have established a weak tie with Andrew. Social media like Facebook does this at a huge scale with very minimal effort; all you need to do to establish a weak tie with someone is just click a button on Facebook. This way, you can establish hundreds of weak ties with acquaintances, and view hundreds of their posts, some of which could be very useful to me (like posts about clubs, fraternities, tutoring, housing, etc).
The article disagrees with the notion that social media has weakened the ability to create social movements, and I agree with the article. The article explains that social media has made political activism much easier in recent years. Take a figure like Martin Luther King, whose main platform was not social media, but the network of black Baptist churches all across the south, which were attended by the vast majority of black christians in the 1950s and 60s. He certainly did not know every one of the millions of black christians (and some white christians) who responded to his call to March on Washington in 1963. Most of his relationships to the rest of these people were through weak ties. Because King established many deep relationships with other pastors, student civil rights organizations, and community leaders, he was able to establish weak ties with all of their followers as well. His reputation was really admired by a lot of important people locally, so when King organized something, masses of people would respond to him. Now, social media has made so much easier to organize events on a whim (King had to really work VERY hard to provide momentum to his movement when he wanted a large march or protest to happen, it was said he had the heart of a 60 year old when he died at age 39). Now, events like the women’s march, the climate change march, and the national school walkout to protest guns in February 2018 can be organized and executed by a vast network of people connected through weak ties on Facebook. If an event occurs, such as the mass shooting in Florida in February 2018, student activists can plan and advertise a protest on social media within a month after the event occured (as what happened) and create a national news story.