After rereading through Malcom Gladwell’s “Small Change” I found two places where I want to work with and work against what Gladwell was saying. To start, I am planning to work with what Gladwell wrote in terms of social media creating weak ties and how that effects activism. Here, Gladwell wrote that “The kind of activism associated with social media isn’t like this at all. The platforms of social media are built around weak ties.” and that “Weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.”. I am going to come into the conversation here by agreeing with Gladwell, as I agree that social media is built around weak ties because it allows you to “connect” with a lot of people without having to make connections. I am also going to include an example here from my life by saying something about how I follow people on Instagram who I have never meet but feel a sense of connection too because I am able to see aspects of their life via social media. Additionally, I plan to write about how activism that is solely on social media is solely built upon and around these weak ties which causes distanced activism because it results in removal from the actual issue because people don’t feel as personally connected. Finally, I plan to talk about how even though I believe that social media is built around weak ties and thus social media activism is as well, I don’t think that activism that is on social media doesn’t work but I think that alone, it is not as powerful or moving as physical activism is. Next, one place where I plan to work against what Gladwell wrote is in his writing that “[social media] makes it easier for activists to express themselves, but harder for that expression to have any impact”. I disagree with this because I don’t think social media makes it harder to have an impact as I think that any amount of activism, no matter where it takes place can have an impact. Additionally social media allows for more people to see activism, which could thus lead to more people getting involved and then if that involvement leads to physical activism, it could make the overall impact of the activism greater. Overall, I plan to write about how I agree that social media is based around weak ties which can lead to distanced activism, however I don’t agree that social media makes it harder to have an impact, and in fact I actually think social media, if paired with physical activism, could make it easier for the expression to have an impact, rather than harder like Gladwell believed.