Malcolm Gladwell's Article 'Innocence Of Muslims'

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Rae’Van Carlisle English 101-037 Critique Essay 1 1 October 2012 “Innocence of Muslims” a video posted on Youtube, has over 4 millions views. The video sparked protest in Benghazi, which eventually lead to the death of U.S Ambassador J. Stevens and three other embassy workers. The acts that came of this video could be said to be high risk activism and somewhat of a revolution and a social network was behind it all. In Malcolm Gladwell‘s article “Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted” he argues that social networking is no way to spark a revolution solely because they are built around “weak ties” between people. He lingers on Civil Rights movement and how it was centered around “strong ties”, he proves his point that there must be…show more content…
But do to the lack of South Asians in the bone marrow database he was not able to find a match at that time. Bhatia friends got social networks involved by asking people to register and sending in cheek swabs. Due to this effort, almost 25,000 people registered in the database. This is what Gladwell presents to us to prove his point that in order to get people involved. He implies that when using social media, in order to get people involved you should not ask much of them. Gladwell says that “Donatings bone marrow isn’t trivia matter. It doesn’t involve financial or personal risk; it doesn’t mean spending a summer being chased by armed mean in pickup trucks” (3). In reality, not many people would just up and decide to send in a cheek swab, just because it does not require too much work. Because if you are a match and decide to go through with the surgery, you subject yourself to pain that could last for several days up to a few…show more content…
“These events in the early sixties became a civil-rights war that engulfed the South for the rest of the decade and it happened without e-mail, texting, Facebook, or Twitter”(Gladwell 1). He is right, all the sit-ins that started in Greensboro all started without the help of emailing, Facebook, or Twitter, but it started due to strong ties. And yes, Gladwell is right that these strong ties between friends was the essential motivation to actually go through with their plan. Within a week, sit-ins had spread all over the south , and once again it did it with out social networking, and it was the strong ties of the Greensboro sit-ins that helped transform the weak ties from all the other cities to strong

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