The Role of Weak Ties in Social Activism
For this post, I wanted to revisit an old concept we covered at the start of this course: strong and weak ties in a network. Specifically, I wanted to do so, since I’d come across this article – linked below – about the role that weak ties can play in allowing for effective social activism.
The author of the article, Jonah Lehrer, begins by discussing a paper that he says brings up many strong points. In that paper, the author claimed that since online networks are full of only weak ties, they aren’t suitable for genuine social activism. However, Lehrer believes that networks with weak ties are actually more likely to have successful social activist movements. To support this, he references Mark Granovetter’s 1973 paper, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” which after research on different communities, concluded that small groups with strong ties aren’t able to cohesively work together for social activism. On the other hand, weak ties connecting larger communities could help foster trust between loosely affiliated groups, thus allowing them to come together and work for a singular cause.
In this case, I feel I’m more inclined to agree with Lehrer than the original article he mentions, as it’s true – even if there are small groups of closely-knit individuals working for a cause, it’s hard to imagine them being able to accomplish much if they’re unable to communicate or cooperate.
Some other interesting points were covered in the article relating to strong and weak ties; for instance, Lehrer discusses how strong and influential leaders generally form a multitude of weak ties as opposed to a few strong ones. Leaders who form only a few strong ties, he argues, aren’t able to have a broad outreach and often networks with several strong ties may end up fragmented and cliquish, making them unsustainable.
https://www.wired.com/2010/09/weak-ties-twitter-and-revolutions/