Tag Archives: Politics

Gladwell v. Twitter

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Malcolm Gladwell’s recent piece in The New Yorker, Small Change, takes on Twitter, Facebook and social activism.  As usual, Gladwell has forced many of us on the Internet to stop, read, and think.

Gladwell’s critique is  social media, despite the hype, can’t drive true social/political change.  For one, social media activity doesn’t require the sacrifice that builds strong bonds.  Social media is about weak social ties. Also, he continues, social media lacks hierarchy, which is required for organization and strategy – essentials for activism to succeed.

The Atlantic Wire has a summary of blogs offering dissenting opinions.  Most useful is The Economist Free Exchange, which points out that social media makes social ties, regardless of their strength, more efficient and this can strengthen social bonds, particularly when there is the need to sacrifice.  Also, lacking hierarchy allows a movement to resist being crushed because there is no brain to kill (of course, there is no brain to guide the movement, either).

Points well made by both sides.  Reading Gladwell a second time, he seems to be focusing on the sacrifice and emotional involvement that the great U.S. civil rights movement required.  These bonds were personal; most of the activists were recruited into the movement by someone already involved.  His point here approaches something that I tried to make in a presentation last spring (immodestly  The Chavez Imperatives):  Social media does a lot of things right.  It provides an information source that facilitates communication between like-minded people and a way to find more like-minded people.  This is especially true if  it is guided through one site, such as the Obama 2008 campaign.  However, social media cannot deliver emotion, which is the key to building a social movement, and also a brand. For that, you need direct interaction with people, whether sitting at a luncheon counter with fellow students while being mocked and insulted, or simply being involved in a product launch event – these things build passion.

Let’s be clear.  I am not equating the U.S. civil rights movement’s sacrifice with the facile sacrifice of laying down extra cash for some branded flip-flops.  No, that would be asinine and ugly, and there are enough of those sites.  My point is only that turning an idea into a trend requires participation and sacrifice, whether it is risking your life, or your peer group’s approval.  In fact, this may be why social media is better for marketing rather than social change – because the “sacrifices” are lighter.

Unanswered Questions: Brewer’s Headless Bodies

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Today’s lessons: Any question you refuse to answer will be asked again until you answer it.  Any erroneous statement you make will be questioned until you admit the error.

When I posted earlier my back-to-school special on media training, I was unaware that Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer had a follow up performance to her disastrous opening statement in last week’s debate — extended moment of silence broken only by gibberish.  Her failure to say anything for her administration furthered the perception that she is a public figure trying to make a career out of one law.

Yet she made a greater error with her refusal post-debate  to discuss her statement regarding decapitated bodies being found in the Arizona desert (at the 4 minute mark).  Brewer has been claiming since early June that law enforcement agencies have found decapitated bodies in the desert near the border.  She has stood by this claim even when confronted by reporters with the fact that no coroner records support her.

So last week, after appearing as something of a headless body in the debate, she stumbled out to the waiting press and proceeded to ignore the decapitation question when it was asked three times.  She then exited as the press howled in dismay.

Finally, she said that she “misspoke” which would sound believable, except that she had insisted that the statement was true many times.  Even so, she seems to doubt that she actually said it: “That would be an error, if I said that.”  Even this could have been an acceptable explanation within 24 hours after she first made the statement, not now.

I suspect that the original statement wasn’t an intentional lie, though it was wrong and it served her political purposes.  It seems that she composed the statement out of two things – concerns over immigration and violence in Mexico.  The problem is that once she refused to admit that it was a mistake, she made it a lie that she repeated.  All she had to do was say, “I didn’t mean it that way.  I was trying to say something catchy and it went too far.”   She didn’t and so the question continued to insist that it be answered and that she admit the error.

A Little Bird: Hatoyama’s Odd Speech

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During my undergraduate days, I studied Asian history under an urbane, old-school academic.  Prof. T. could be erudite and absent, often at the same time.  That’s what made him so interesting.  Looking back, it is difficult to tell if some, or even most, of the confusion was mine — a second-semester senior looking for the door rather than to the books, but this is how I remember him.  Prof. T. had an understated wit, which more than made up for when his lectures moved onto an entirely different country without notice. (“And so that brings us up to the 19th Century in Thailand” — Thailand? What happened to Burma?)

One day, I happened to see him across a parking lot.  He waved at me (or was it a butterfly?) as he got into the driver’s seat.   Panic gripped me – oh no, Prof. T., don’t drive! I caught shout before it could escape, but worried until he arrived to class the next day.

Prof. T. has been on my mind because the previous Japanese prime minster, Yukio Hatoyama, seemed to be of a similar disposition.  The U.S. press (much noted by the Japanese press) described him as loopy.  Perhaps, his academic background had something to do with it: Ph.D., Industrial Engineering, Stanford.  Regardless, this trait made Hatoyama oddly interesting. He seemed to not have a firm grip on what he wanted to do as PM, but, brave fellow, was willing to give it a shot despite the lack of target or aim.

Watching his resignation speech June 2, I initially thought my Japanese had misled me, but now that I’ve had time to check, it wasn’t my Japanese.  Hatoyama did say, somewhat figuratively, that a bird told him it was time to resign.   Starry Brooke has a detailed translation, but you can watch the video.  The bird flutters in at 6:30 minutes.